Science, partnership and decision support processes in fisheries: sharing experiences and practices and identifying Lessons learnt from an interdisciplinary perspective

Implementation of Ecosystem Based Management in fisheries has led to higher integration of knowledge in advices and higher engagement of stakeholders in the decision support Process. As part of the process, fisheries scientists contribute in different ways and at different levels to decision support and experienced partnership approaches in the context of research projects or institutional decision support. Role of scientists in the process is however not trivial to define and operationalize. Several pitfalls can occur that scientists may have experienced through partnership projects or in the expert assessments done for authorities. A workshop was organized from 15 to 17 January 2018 as part of the ScipaDe project of the Cluster of Excellence ('Labex') funded by the French 'Investment for the future' program and supported by the French Ministry of Research and Education. It brought together biologists, economists and social and political scientists involved in decision support processes and partnership approaches in fisheries at European level to share experiences and views across case studies, disciplines and projects. Context, content and lessons learnt from concrete experiences of bio-economic impact assessment of fisheries management scenarios provided in different case studies were reviewed and the links between scientists-stakeholders-decision makers in the decision support process in fisheries was explored through discussions and SWOT analyses. An Australian case was also reported to put into perspective the approaches and lessons learnt described at the European scale with respect to the institutionalized partnership platform for decision making used in Australian. This report provides information on the SciPaDe project, the participants to the workshop, the content of the workshop and the main perspectives and tasks identified. The workshop underlined the need to continue and better structure networks around interdisciplinary approaches, to share our vision of the role of scientists in decision support process, our experiences, methods and recommendations and to disseminate lessons learnt from analysis of practices in integrated science decision support in fisheries.