Toward a Model for Fisheries Social Impact Assessment

This paper presents a model for Fisheries Social Impact Assessment (SIA) that lays the groundwork for development of fisheries-focused, quantitative social assessments with a clear conceptual model. The usefulness of current fisheries SIA’s has been called into question by some as incompatible with approaches taken by fisheries biologists and economists when assessing potential effects of management actions. Our model’s approach is closer to sessments as more useful if those assessments were provided in a format analogous to fisheries economists’ and fisheries biologists’ formats. This point was given further support by Sharp and Lach’s (2003) survey of Federal and state fishery managers and decision makers in the Pacific Northwest. They were asked about their knowledge of how to incorporate the social values of fishing communities into planning and decision-making. The authors concluded that it is unlikely that community information can be used in fishery plan development or amendment processes when it is presented in a qualitative, descriptive format. Stimulated by this discussion, the Office of Science and Technology of NOAA’s National Marine Fisheries Service invited a group of marine fisheries social scientists with expertise in social science modeling, quantitative methods, and marine fisheries impact assessment to create a conceptual model for predicting the social impacts of fishery management action alternatives using a limited set of quantitative and qualitative indicators. The resulting model was to be suitable for social impact assessment, and it was to include a dependent measure or output that would be analogous to the economists’ use of jobs, income, or total economic output in their models. This paper presents the results of the first phase of this group’s work. Wellbeing was selected as the dependent measure for marine fisheries social impact assessment in this model. While this model is not the only possible approach to social impact assessment, it does open a door to a room that is closer to those currently occupied by marine fisheries economists and their biologist counterparts. Historical Background Social impact assessment began as a field in the 1960’s as people became more concerned with human impacts on the environment (Finsterbusch and Freudenberg, 2002:408). The National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) of 19691 called for analyzing the impact of human actions on the environment when designated changes were contemplated. Early NEPA guidelines emphasized environmental assessment and did not require SIA’s. Few government agencies had yet invested in the social science expertise to do SIA’s. Social scientists, however, continued to perfect SIA methodologies (Shields, 1974; Finsterbusch and Wolf, 1977; Finsterbusch et al., 1983; Burch and DeLuca, 1984; Freudenberg, 1986; Barrow, 1997; Becker 1997; Burdge, 1994, 2004; Vanclay, 2003; Taylor et al., 2004). Preparation and passage of the Fishery Conservation and Management Act of 1976 (now the Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Act or MSFCMA, also referred to as the the economists’ and biologists’ assessments and is therefore more useful for Fishery Management Council members. The paper was developed by anthropologists initially brought together in 2004 for an SIA Modeling Workshop by the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. Opinions and conclusions expressed or implied are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views or policy of the National Marine Fisheries Service, NOAA. 1See http://ceq.eh.doe.gov/nepa/regs/nepa/nepaeqia.htm, accessed 25 May 2006.