Changing Course - Towards Fisheries 2010

• Preface by Chief Executive
• Nature's limits: The challenge
• Net gains: The change of course
• Fisheries 2010: The twelve founding principles
• Guardianship: Our children's future
• Foresight for the future: Strategic issues
• Our common future: Working with stakeholders
• Next steps for the Ministry: Where to from here?
• Project 2010
• Conclusion
• Glossary

Copies of this document are available from the Ministry of Fisheries.

Changing Course: Sustainable fisheries in a healthy aquatic ecosystem

Guardianship: Our children's future

Sustainable fisheries

It is essential to ensure that in 2010 the generation of New Zealanders born in 1996 will inherit from us fisheries that are at least as good, if not better, than those of today. To make sure this happens, we need to have an overriding goal - a strategic intent for New Zealand fisheries - embraced by the community. This strategic intent is what will direct all decisions about the management of the fisheries.

The strategic intent for New Zealand fisheries to 2010 is:

Sustainable fisheries in a healthy aquatic ecosystem.

Here, aquatic ecosystem means those features that make up the aquatic environment - its water and its physical characteristics. It includes those organisms that live in the water, and the way in which the water relates to, and connects with, the air and land.

Health is meant in an holistic sense - of ensuring not just the short-term survival of fish and aquatic life but the continued existence of the aquatic ecosystem to sustain the fisheries.

This strategic intent for fisheries acknowledges the interconnected nature of the resource, an approach which is fundamental to the proposed Fisheries 2010 Strategy.An enhancement of the concept of using our fisheries sustainably, it reflects the major shifts in community attitudes towards our fisheries over recent years. Once seen as a raw material for production of unlimited quantity, fisheries are now appreciated as finite resources which need to be managed in a way that ensure their long-term survival.

It also embodies a world-wide trend towards ecosystem based management of natural resources - a move towards understanding the ways in which a resource like fisheries is connected to all aspects of its biological, physical and social environment.

Ecosystem based management of our fisheries takes a more holistic approach to the resource and is explicitly focused on ecosystems. It is an enhancement of a resource management approach, based on common management principles and the market-driven focus of sustainable management.

This approach builds on the Ministry's existing vision for achieving sustainable fisheries. Sustainable fisheries involve:

-	Healthy aquatic ecosystems where the user of the resource contributes to the social, cultural, and economic well-being of New Zealanders without limiting the options for future generations.
-	Maori and the Crown working together to give recognition of and protection for customary Maori fishing rights.
-	Those with rights to harvest fisheries gaining responsibility to manage them, within the environmental limits and standards set by the Government.
-	Fisheries stakeholders understanding and respecting each other's rights and interests and constructively resolving issues among themselves.
-	Widespread voluntary compliance with fisheries laws, with non-compliance seen as unacceptable behaviour.

Achieving healthy fisheries

To ensure sustainable fisheries in healthy aquatic ecosystems are achieved, the Ministry advocates 12 fundamental principles which will help to minimise or resolve conflicts between environmental, economic and social objectives. These principles, which have been expanded above in Section 3, are already enshrined in environmental legislation such as the Resource Management Act and Fisheries Acts, in the Environment 2010 Strategy, and in a number of international conventions which are recognised by New Zealand.

Also crucial to achieving healthy fisheries is the co-operation, respect and support of stakeholders in such areas as: social participation in fisheries decision-making processes, provision of fisheries information, effective fisheries laws and policies. These are outlined in Section 7 below.