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Small pelagic fish species contribute substantially to the food security and livelihoods of local communities in developing countries. In West Africa, and particularly in Benin, small pelagic fisheries attract many migrant fishers who are key actors in the sector. This study assessed the characteristics and sociocultural impacts of the small pelagic fishery in Benin using qualitative approaches, including focus group discussions (n = 9), in-depth interviews (n = 35), a literature review, direct observations and secondary data. The findings showed that indigenous fishers from Benin and foreign fishers from Ghana are the two major groups of migrant fishers involved in small pelagic fishing in Benin. These fishers mostly use three categories of fishing gear: gillnets, seine nets, and hooks and lines. Over the period 2014–2018 the annual catch fluctuated between 1 123 and 2 040 tonnes, with the peak catch recorded in 2018, with a commercial value of €3 030 587. Apart from migrant fishers, fishmongers constitute another important pillar of the value chain. Conflicts among migrant fishers in the sector in Benin are related to landing fees and fishing gears. We discuss the urgent need to give attention to the sector through quantitative research and law enforcement to ensure its sustainability.

Marine coastal ecosystems are crucial to human populations in reducing disaster risk. Least Developed Countries are particularly vulnerable to the effects of climate change, such as sea-level rise and storm surges. The Mauritanian coast, West Africa, ranks among the most vulnerable worldwide to sea-level rise, and coastal communities in the National Park of Banc d'Arguin (PNBA) are particularly at risk. Here, we assessed the service of coastal protection in PNBA by (1) mapping the coastal marine ecosystems with Sentinel-2 imagery and determining their spatial wave height attenuation rates; (2) assessing the vulnerability of villages and natural habitats to coastal hazard risk; and (3) assessing the applicability of coastal protection measures in the PNBA. We found that a total of 83% of the populated coastline presents a moderate to high risk of flooding and erosion, with Iwik and R'Gueiba being the most threatened villages in the PNBA. As for the ecological risk, two low-elevated islands, which support breeding colonies of birds, are particularly vulnerable to sea-level rise. However, in other areas, the rupture in the dune cord created new lagoons that present valuable ecological and economic interests like the Lagoon of Bellaat. Improving the comprehension of wave attenuation provided by coastal habitats, combined with identifying the vulnerability and applicability of coastal protection measures, is essential for achieving the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction goals. In the PNBA, relocation of identified villages at risk is probably the best cost-effective solution with the least disturbance to both breeding and wintering birds. Protection of coastal ecosystems will also ensure a continued provision of other ecosystem services, including food supply for sea dependent populations, and contribute to achieving the Paris Agreement and Sustainable Development Goals.

A Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) is under discussion for the period 2021–2030, which will replace the “Aichi Targets” adopted by the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2010. Given the limited success in meeting most of the Aichi Targets, this new framework must adopt a different approach. A key challenge the GBF must address is its implementation at national scales. Four ways this implementation challenge can be addressed include: The framework must move away from numerical targets to pursue positive trends in biodiversity, through adopting a “vectors of change” approach; The framework should be structured to focus on ecosystems and processes; The framework should synergise more extensively with existing biodiversity-relevant global agreements to maximise leverage and reduce overlap of resource use; The framework must adopt a much stronger theory of change than is in the current GBF Draft, to serve as the roadmap governments can use in upscaling their implementation of biodiversity conservation, sustainable use and benefit sharing. Finally, the GBF must become a “learning framework”, committed to facilitating and enabling governments to each meet their specific biodiversity challenges, while sharing back experiences with the global community, leading ultimately to realising the 2050 CBD vision of people living in harmony with nature.

We share many of the views of de Groot et al. on the relevance of ecosystem services (ES) and the constructive role they have played in highlighting the importance of nature to people. Here we aim to further clarify how the concept of Nature’s Contribution to People (NCP) contributes to science and policy.It was not the aim of our article to review the literature on ecosystem services (ES). The point of our article was to explain the concept of NCP not to review the extensive ES literature. We are in full agreement that the influence of ES has been long and rich, from its first mention in the peer-reviewed literature (1) to the present. As explicitly stated in our articles (2, 3) and further clarified in our figure S1, the IPBES approach owes much to the influence of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MA) (4). The NCP framing has a number of elements that were present in the MA, as well as new elements.Ecosystem services are a subset of NCP, but there is more to NCP than ES. Beyond apparent similarities in definitions (e.g. services = contributions in some cases), the ES and NCP framings are different, with NCP being epistemologically, ontologically and methodologically more pluralistic. ES are part of NCP, that is, the ES approach represents an important subset of ways to understand nature’s diverse contributions to people.

Daniel Faith makes several very good points. We deal with only one of them in this short response, the role of biodiversity as a source of options for people now and in the future. We agree with Faith that biodiversity at all scales, from local to global, is critically important for humans in the face of the unknown, and for the future production of nature’s contributions to people (NCP). We also agree that NCP in the face of the unknown should include both those associated with particular components of biodiversity, and those related to the continued existence of the variety of life. One of our categories of NCP indeed addresses these two aspects. “Maintenance of options” (NCP 18 within the generalizing perspective, Table S1) refers to the capacity of ecosystems, habitats, species or genotypes to keep options open in order to support a good quality of life. This includes the future benefits or threats derived from particular genes, organisms, groups of organisms or ecosystems, be they still unknown or already known but their future uses as yet undiscovered. NCP 18 also includes the contributions of all species, populations and genotypes to processes for coping with environmental uncertainty, such as the resilience and resistance of ecosystems in the face of environmental change and variability. Finally, it recognises future benefits or threats that may be anticipated from ongoing biological evolution, including rapid contemporary evolution. Using the eloquent metaphor of Faith et al., the existing global variety of life is a “storehouse”, and the on-going evolutionary process is a “factory” of new benefits and threats; both are included in the NCP framework. The NCP approach also seeks to integrate the various ways in which nature keeps our options open through the lens of other knowledge systems (context-specific perspective), from contributing to food autonomy at the household and local levels, to mutual enhancement of regional crop diversity and social networks, to the deliberate dispersal along “song-lines” of nutritious non-cultivated species enhancing the liveability of forests for future generations.

[No abstract available]

International audience; The Regional Assessment Report on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services for Africa produced by the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES) provides a critical analysis of the state of knowledge regarding the importance, status, and trends of biodiversity and nature’s contributions to people. The assessment analyses the direct and underlying causes for the observed changes in biodiversity and in nature’s contributions to people, and the impact that these changes have on the quality of life of people. The assessment, finally, identifies a mix of governance options, policies and management practices that are currently available to reduce the loss of biodiversity and of nature’s contributions to people in that region.The assessment addresses terrestrial, freshwater, and coastal biodiversity and covers current status and trends, going back in time several decades, and future projections, with a focus on the 2020-2050 period.The present document, the Summary for Policymakers of the Assessment Report, was approved by the sixth session of the Plenary of IPBES (Medellín, Colombia, 18-24 March 2018). It is based on a set of chapters which were accepted at this same Plenary session. The chapters are available as document IPBES/6/INF/3/Rev.1 (www.ipbes.net).

International audience

21 p.; The paper presents an assessment of fishing activities and policies in order to contribute to a better management of aquatic resources which affect sustainable development in coastal zones around the world. We propose to define the societal cost in a sustainability assessment process of (positive and negative) effects of fishery metiers in different eco-regions (West African coastal upwwellings, and South-East Asian deltas). The originality of this article is (1) to consider the assessment process of the societal cost of fishing activities as a question of social choice and, (2) the comparison of fishing activities in a multi-criteria and multistakeholder approach in a deliberative perspective.

ICES – the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea – was founded more than a century ago out of concern for overfishing. However, today’s global marine ecosystems are for the most part in a degraded state, many alarmingly so. Why is the science used so little to make decisions compatible with long-term sustainability of fisheries? The paper argues that there is a large gap between the understanding of scientists and that of political and economic decision makers. Scientists investigate the fundamentals of nature and socio-economic systems. These approaches do not coincide with the perceptions, belief systems and experiences of most social actors, except in the long run. Communicating scientific results better and more pervasively to citizens is an avenue that holds great potential to shorten impact times – provided there is willingness to hear the message. Since the media brought the overfishing message to the general public in the early 1990s, the international discourse has gradually shifted. From ‘maximum sustainable yield’ (MSY) of single species, the discourse started to put restoration of entire marine ecosystems by 2015 formally on the agenda through the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation adopted at the 2002 World Summit on Sustainable Development. But results are few and far between as fleet overcapacity driving the process shows little sign of alleviation.It is desirable that international scientific cooperation engages more constructively with citizens, civil society movements, companies and government authorities to speed up adaptive learning. While not replacing political processes, research and research communication that are aware of the different mindsets, cultures and historically grown preferences in societies can help more effectively to bring about the conditions for recovery of lost ecosystem functions and productivity. Trust is a key condition for acceptance of the message. A few examples of the EC’s international S&T cooperation projects are given to explore opportunities and challenges to recover fisheries in crisis.

Cinquième groupe de travail IMROP/FAO Le cinquième groupe de travail destiné à l’évaluation des stocks et l’aménagement des pêcheries de la zone économique exclusive mauritanienne s’est réuni à l’Institut Mauritanien de Recherches Océanographiques et des Pêches (IMROP) du 9 au 17 décembre 2002. Les objectifs de ce groupe de travail étaient d’actualiser les résultats des groupes de travail précédents, en utilisant les nouvelles informations disponibles ; d’établir un diagnostic des différents stocks et pêcheries afin de définir les potentiels de capture ainsi que les caractéristiques de l’effort permissible et d’évaluer l’impact des mesures d’aménagement actuellement en vigueur et identifier les perspectives à venir. Les résultats obtenus ont contribué à la formulation de recommandations visant, tout d’abord la mise en place de plans d’aménagement cohérents, et ensuite à définir les impératifs de recherche de l’IMROP. FAO Published Environnement marin, Evaluation des stocks, Poissons démersaux, Poissons pélagiques, Céphalopodes, Crustacés, Pêche industrielle, Pêche artisanale, Aspects socio-économiques, Aménagement des Pêcheries

Forecasting has a key role in applied economics and management of fisheries. In this paper we report the forecasting competition between Autoregressive AR(p), Moving Average MA(q) and ARMA(p,q) models of the monthly average fisheries prices. We consider twelve species landed into Cornwall: Anglerfish, Cod, Crabs, Dogfish, Haddock, Hake, Lemonsole, Mackerel, Plaice, Saithe, Sole and Whiting. In our evaluation of the outof- sample forecasting accuracy of ten models, we show that simple ARMA(p,q) models generally prove to be the best forecasting models.