Supported by the Commission of the European Communities, Sixth Framework Programme

Web design by IFM:
Troels Jacob Hegland
 

Tjärnö Marine Biological Station, venue of the Koster-Värderöfjord workshop
Picture: Troels J. Hegland

The project ended 14 April 2008. Click star to download the Final Activity Report submitted to the Commission

SAFMAMS

Scientific Advice for Fisheries Management on Multiple Scales

SAFMAMS collated insights from existing research projects and management processes on the most useful forms of scientific advice for marine environmental management and communicated those insights to scientists and decision makers. The product is an outline of the various forms that such advice can take and a description of the circumstances under which these various forms are the most useful and cost effective.

The project involved three basic tasks.

• First, we collated information relevant to the forms that scientific advice can and should take from research projects focussed on fisheries management.
   

• Second, we interacted with nine sets of stakeholders involved in fisheries management decision making at various scales to help us sharpen the practical lessons from what we gathered from the research results.
   

• Third, we carried these lessons from fisheries to the broader marine management community, and beyond to people with a general interest in the relationship between science and policy, through specific networking and dissemination activities. This audience included various levels of government, science policy scholars, user groups and conservation NGOs. Lessons are applicable in a broad sense across Europe in Atlantic, Mediterranean and freshwater fisheries as well as other areas where science and policy converge.

The achievement of the SAFMAMS objective is measurable through eleven deliverables and nine workshops. The workshops were attended by various managers and stakeholder groups, including the European Commission’s fisheries management staff. The deliverables include reviews of the implications of research results for forms of scientific advice, best practices articles, a catalogue of marine environmental management efforts, two policy briefs, and a book on the relationship between the geographical scale of environmental problems and the forms of scientific advice that are appropriate for addressing them.