The Precautionary Approach and risk management: can they increase the probability of successes in fishery management?

Considerable progress has been made in the implementation of the Precaution ary Approach to the protection of fish stocks, but applying the Precautiona ry Approach to the protection of fishing communities lags considerably. The principle of intergenerational equity, one of the main tenets of the Preca utionary Approach, and the principle of sustainable utilization both imply that the Precautionary Approach should explicitly incorporate the protectio n of fishing communities, not only the resources they depend on. Risk asses sment aims primarily at evaluating the consequences of various harvest stra tegies in terms of probabilistic statements about future trends in yields, biomass, and dangers to the stock, while risk management involves finding a nd implementing management policies, strategies, and tactics that reduce th e risk to the communities exploiting them. Not all fishery management appro aches deal equally well with risk, with some compounding rather than reduci ng risk. Portfolio management, whereby fishing enterprises have the ability to choose among a diverse portfolio of harvestable resources, would mitiga te against the risk of fluctuations in the abundance, availability, or pric e of individual species. Although much remains to be achieved in better ass essing risk, fishery management agencies should immediately implement risk management.