Science for management advice in the Arctic Ocean: The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES)

The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea was established in 1902 and is one of the oldest marine science institutions in the world. It has aged well – today it provides scientific advice for the management of the marine environment and the natural resources there to governments and regional commissions for fisheries and environment in the Northeast Atlantic. It has 20 member nations and a network of 6000 scientists and 700 institutes as the foundation of its activities, spanning from basic marine science via data management to the provision of scientific advice on marine management. The purpose of this chapter is to provide an overview of the ICES organization and its functions, discuss its provision of scientific advice and thereby its role at the science-policy interface in the North Atlantic and the Arctic, including how this role is changing with the development of integrated, ecosystem based management of the oceans. The final part of the chapter addresses the current governance of Arctic marine science and its science – policy interfaces

Sea, fish, and resource management in the High North

With more than five times the land area of the kingdom, Norway’s oceans extend from 55 degrees north in the North Sea to 85 degrees north in the Arctic Ocean north of Svalbard – a distance of more than 3,000 kilometres. More than 80 per cent of these sea areas lies to the north of the Arctic Circle. As for natural resources, these sea areas are very productive and sustain large commercial fisheries. Deep fjords and a sheltered coastline also facilitate a major aquaculture industry. These are the natural starting points for Norway’s position as the world’s tenth largest fishing nation, the world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmon, and the world’s second largest exporter of seafood (FAO 2020). Developments within ocean law in the 1970s led to extended coastal state jurisdiction, the establishment of 200-nautical-mile zones, and new relations among neighbours sharing sea borders (Tamnes 1997). While Norway has three neighbouring countries on land, it has seven at sea and therefore significant foreign policy interests there. Most of the large fish stocks that sustain the Norwegian fishing industry are shared with neighbouring countries, which requires cooperation in the management of resources. Many of these stocks are in the Barents Sea and the Norwegian Sea; therefore, international cooperation on fisheries management is an important dimension of foreign policy in the North. This applies at the circumpolar level through the development of a system to prevent unregulated fishing in the Arctic Ocean, regionally in the management of pelagic stocks in the Norwegian Sea, and bilaterally in the relationship with Russia, with whom Norway has its most economically important and extensive fisheries cooperation. Fish are an important aspect of our foreign policy and always have been (Kolle 2014). Here we look more closely at the role of fisheries management in foreign policy, especially in the North. Norwegian fisheries negotiators annually conduct some 20 rounds of negotiations and consultations with other countries, the most important of which are Russia, Greenland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, the UK, and the EU. The total value of the fisheries in these agreements was around NOK 55 billion in 2019, of which around one-third were granted to Norway

Marine Spatial Planning: Norway´s management plans

Since the adoption of a government white paper on ocean governance in 2001, Norway has worked on the development and implementation of marine spatial planning in the format of regional management plans. Management plans for the Barents Sea and the oceans off northern Norway and the Norwegian Sea were adopted in 2006 and 2009, respectively, and a management plan for the North Sea is planned for 2013. A key aspect of the plans is integrated assessment of the cumulative impacts on marine ecosystem from human activities (fisheries, petroleum, marine transportation, etc) on the one hand, and external sources (climate change, long range pollution) on the other. Another important feature is the identification of valuable and vulnerable areas requiring special management measures. These valuable areas have been used as input to define the spatial measures in the plans which includes routing systems for international ship traffic and zoning plans for petroleum activities. Fishing activities is also partially regulated used spatial measures such as MPAs and temporary closed areas. A monitoring system is set up with indicators and reference levels. The plan has been implemented through the regular governance structure without the establishment of new, formal institutions or new jurisdiction. An inter-- ]ministerial committee oversees the work, guided by three working groups. A revised version of the Barents Sea plan will be adopted late in 2010, taking marine spatial planning in Norway into its second generation. Key words: Marine spatial planning, Norway, Barents Sea, ecosystem approac

The development of scientific cooperation under the Norway - Russia fisheries regime in the Barents Sea

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The 2010 Norway-Russia Marine Boundary Agreement and Bilateral Cooperation on Integrated Oceans Management

More than three decades in the making, the 2010 agreement between Norway and Russia on a bounadry in the Barents Sea establishes a boundary, continues cooperation in fisheries, and lays the framework for cooperation on petroleum deposits straddling the boundary. The importance of the boundary goes well beyond the Barents Sea, as it demonstrated the capability of Arctic countries to resolve issues in a peaceful manner on the basis of international law. The agreement settles the most important outstanding foreign policy issue between the two countries and opens up new opportunities for cooperation. The article gives a brief overview of the agreement, the its negotiation and its implications at various levels of governance

Responding to global warming: New fisheries management measures in the Arctic

The northernmost commercial fisheries in the world take place in the northern Barents Sea up to around 80° N. This is an area where global warming is particularly intense and where large, previously ice-covered areas are now more accessible to fishing vessels. This raised questions whether existing conservation and management measures are adequate. In this paper, we discuss the process of developing new regulatory measures, including four large preliminary closed areas covering 442,022 km2 and an additional ten closed areas covering more than 3260 km2 that protects sites with biodiversity, specific to the region. The new measures, an amendment to an old regulation related to the management of impacts from bottom fisheries on ecosystems, is based on knowledge derived from more than 10 years of scientific surveys of the seabed ecology. A key finding here is that cost-efficient, large-scale mapping and monitoring of seabed ecosystems is important for the development of area-based regulations of fishing activities. In the process of developing the regulation the Directorate of Fisheries made its own analysis of the data from the scientific surveys by a novel approach using commercially available software. Such area-based measures also contribute to the achievement of Aichi target 11 and UN Sustainable Development Goal 14.5 on protecting maritime areas.acceptedVersio

How Integrated Ocean governance in the Barents Sea was created by a drive for increased oil production

-The Norwegian integrated management plan for the Lofoten–Barents Sea areas (BSMP) was initiated in 2002 following an international push for implementing ecosystem-based management, as well as a national drive to make new areas available for petroleum exploitation.. Governance of the plan was achieved through an inter-ministerial steering group working through its underlying institutions that have been tasked to work together during both development and implementation. This has achieved a high degree of integration across sectors and between government levels. Having the dual objectives of sustainable exploitation and conservation gives rise to a conflict over whether or not to allow petroleum industry access to the ecologically most valuable and vulnerable areas. There was an attempt at resolving this conflict by acquiring more knowledge, but the conflict is fundamentally a value-based question, which is impossible to resolve by gathering empirical knowledge alone. Nevertheless, the BSMP has been a positive vehicle for increasing the legitimacy of the complex decisions a modern society has to take in the management of ocean resources