As ICES embraces a larger and more central role for the human dimension, this session explores how the many inter- and transdisciplinary actions underway relate to one another.
ICES has long recognized that successfully managing heathy ecosystems requires understanding and managing human behaviour, with ICES Strategic Plan placing increased attention on the role of humans in ICES and the ecosystem. Many ICES groups have developed tools and frameworks that facilitate understanding the connections between the social and ecological components of the ecosystem. Stakeholder involvement is key in developing such conceptual models of the ecosystem and developing effective and workable trade-offs among possible management solutions. ICES Strategic Initiative on the Human Dimension (SIHD) has worked with other members of ICES to integrate research on humans into ICES activities. In a complementary manner, ICES Working Group on Maritime Systems has reflected on inter- and transdisciplinary understanding and recently coordinated approaches across the regional integrated ecosystem assessment (IEA) expert groups. In 2017, the Workshop on Balancing Economic, Social, and Institutional Objectives in Integrated Assessments identified the importance of economic, social, and institutional objectives for fisheries management and emphasized the role that IEAs can play in investigating and presenting information relevant to different types of objectives. In June 2018, two new groups, Working Group on Economics and Working Group on Social Indicators held their first meetings and are currently working to improve economic and social data collection and analyses.
A key challenge for ICES is to ensure that scientific output from economic and social scientific analyses can be effectively accessed and integrated with natural scientific analyses. This will occur in ecosystem and fisheries overviews and through a diversity of other means of scientific communication and coordination but more attention is needed on how to do this effectively.
The purpose of this session will be to examine efforts within ICES and its Member Countries to deepen our understanding of how social science and inter- and transdisciplinary research can improve ICES science and scientific advice for the management of marine resources.
The session aims to provide examples of both standard and cutting-edge tools and research, and strives to tie these tools and case studies to the broader question of how ICES can best develop institutions that will promote well-rounded approaches to the complex, interdisciplinary problems that we face in marine science. Members of ICES groups that focus on human behaviour and experiences (e.g., SIHD, WGMARS, regional IEA expert groups like WGNARS and WGINOSE, WGSOCIAL, and WGECON) will also give brief overview talks on the actions and visions of their groups. Finally, at the end of the session, a panel of researchers and marine resource managers from ICES Member Countries will comment on the presentations.
