Abstract

The presentation is about ECOST, a new four year international project funded by the European Union. The main objective of the ECOST project is to develop a new approach for the evaluation of fishing activities and fishing policies in order to contribute to a better management of aquatic resources which affect sustainable development in coastal zones around the world. For that purpose, a new approach based on the concept of societal cost will be developed. The project adopts the logic of the Johannesburg Plan of Implementation (JPoI) to restore as much as possible marine ecosystems by 2015. This also follows the philosophy of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF). The project mobilises 16 renowned scientific organisations to carry out joint research to meet that challenge, but is also associated with seven regional and international UN, development and management institutions and has close connections with NGOs in order to facilitate interaction with social actors and the dissemination of results and methods to the various levels of decision-making (local, national, regional and international).  Societal costs are all costs linked to fishing activities and fishery policies: these may be ecological (alteration of the capacity of a system), economic (all costs linked to production, management, subsidies and external factors) and social (related to the costs of poverty, social injustice, gender discrimination, food security and food safety). The project thus involves altogether 23 partners and is geographically spread over three regions: Africa, Asia and Caribbean (with the involvement of three countries for each region). Regions are characterised respectively by ecosystems of coral reef (Caribbean with Trinidad and Tobago, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic), coastal upwelling (West Africa with Guinea, Senegal and Guinea Bissau), and delta (South East Asia with China, Vietnam and Thailand). Within each region/ecosystem (eco-region) several fisheries have been selected as representative of regional and, indeed, global fishing activities. Furthermore, a marine protected area will be chosen in order to establish comparative analysis within each eco-region and to serve as a reference point.

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