Robert Arthur

• PhD
• Managing Director at Woodhill Solutions

The Mekong region is experiencing rapid economic and social change, frequently presented as transitioning from an agricultural to industrial economy. Investment in large-scale hydropower development is central to this strategy, in which small-scale fisheries are most at risk. Small-scale fisheries in the region represent up to 17% of global inland...

Key elements of tenure systems, rights and governance issues in the vast, diverse and complex inland fisheries of India are summarized. The objective is to highlight how inland fisheries have been changing and the associated challenges for governance and tenure. The legal and policy contexts, within which fishing in rivers, wetlands and estuaries t...

Fish from marine and inland capture fisheries is an important food that contributes significantly to diets and health, but their contribution is somewhat overlooked in food security and poverty-related policies. Given the current numbers of malnourished people globally, there is a pressing need to consider how to better realize the potential of fis...

Following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014, this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition, food security, and economic growth in developing and emergent countries. In doing so we evaluate...

Extremely low greenhouse gas emissions are an overlooked environmental benefit of inland capture fisheries that complements their significant role in supporting livelihoods and food and nutrition security. Their avoided emissions can be calculated from the increased emissions from replacement animal protein sources, the most viable being livestock....

This paper addresses why food security implications of projected losses to inland capture fisheries due to hydropower development have been neglected in policy arenas. Drawing on the case of the Lower Mekong Basin, this paper applies a conceptual framework for analyzing this question as a case of fundamental food system change. Four inter-related a...

Harmful fisheries subsidies contribute to overfishing leading to environmental and societal impacts. If only fisheries and ecosystems within the subsidising nations' jurisdiction were affected, then unilateral actions might be sufficient to help safeguard our ocean and the people reliant upon it. However, just as fish move between jurisdictions, so...

In many parts of the Global South, small fish represent an important food, combining multiple essential nutrients with availability at low cost and in small quantities. This can make them of particular importance to poorer people. Farmer-managed culture-based fisheries in West Bengal, India, can provide important local sources of small fish of the...

Inland fisheries in South and Southeast Asia represent important sources of food, and many are extensively stocked. Stocking often catalyses wider changes in inland fisheries is considered in this context. Stocking can be beneficial, providing additional sources of food, incentives to manage, and income-generating opportunities. However, there are...

In 2016, an application was prepared by the Malawian government for the Elephant Marsh on the Shire River to be granted RAMSAR status. As part of the support for that application and to help guide the resulting management plan, the eco-social holistic environmental flow assessment model DRIFT was set up for the Marsh. The aim was to predict the res...

Harmful fisheries subsidies contribute to overfishing leading to environmental and societal impacts1. If only fisheries within the subsidising nations’ jurisdiction were affected, then unilateral actions might be sufficient to help safeguard our ocean and the people reliant upon it. However, just as fish move between jurisdictions2, so too do the s...

The impacts of fisheries on ocean resources are no longer considered in isolation but should account for broader ecosystem effects. However, ongoing ecosystem-wide changes added to the inherent dynamics of marine ecosystems, create challenges for fisheries and fisheries management by affecting our ability to ensure future fishing opportunities and...

a.Aim: To demonstrate the societal values of inland fishes through nine services provided by inland fishes. Each service is defined, key stakeholders identified, and threats enumerated. Diverse case studies (geography, taxonomy, fishery-type) provide examples to highlight the societal values around the world. b.Main concepts: Nine societal services...

Hydropower development can result in both environmental and social change. Modification of riparian environments and the creation of storage reservoirs can alter fish assemblages, change access arrangements and create new opportunities within and outside fishing. These opportunities may be perceived differently by different stakeholders, leading to...

The next few months will be crucial in determining whether the world's major fishing nations will deliver on commitments under the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) of the United Nations to prohibit harmful fisheries subsidies. Timing is of heightened importance given that the EU-the second-largest subsidizer-is reforming its financial instrumen...

Open access fisheries, in which the right to catch fish is available to all, is frequently identified as a fundamentally problematic situation. Given recent recognition of the extent and significance of small-scale fisheries and fisheries in developing countries it is worth examining how fundamental or universal the problem of open access is. There...

Small‐scale fisheries are recognised as making important contributions to nutrition and economic development despite a lack of accurate quantitative information on catches and consumption. While direct measurement remains the most appropriate way of collecting such data, it is impractical at large scales. Instead, household surveys based upon infor...

This study examined the environmental benefits delivered through the European Maritime and Fisheries Fund (EMFF) in England, between 2014 and the present. The aim of this study has been to identify the role of the EMFF in delivering positive environmental impacts, the effectiveness of projects funded, and lessons on the implementation of the progra...

While information regarding fishing vessels flying the flag of each MS is publicly available through the Community Fishing Fleet Register, information about the ownership of these vessels and the quota that they are allocated is not always available. Despite a lack of data, it is becoming increasingly apparent that the common perception of fishing...

This document presents the results of an expert knowledge elicitation workshop which identifies policy mechanisms of relevance to the issue of mosquito net fishing across the relevant sectors of public health, fisheries management, development and conservation. A synthesis of current policy and future recommendations is contextualised within the re...

Subsidies that promote overfishing place fish stocks at risk and threaten the livelihoods and food security of millions of people. Already, almost two thirds of the world’s commercial fish stocks are either already fished at maximum levels or are overfished. This working paper explores the effects of harmful fishing subsidies. What are the risks th...

A ‘subsidy’ is a form of direct or indirect government support, often monetary and often provided to the private sector. Subsidies to the fisheries sector have been attracting increasing attention and are identified as important in terms of monetary value and the potential impact on fleet capacity, fishing effort, production and market value. Howev...

This report presents a collation of existing data on the extent of non-local labour across the EU fisheries sector, including the catching, processing and aquaculture sub-sectors, in order to identify trends of employment between 2008 and 2013 and across a range of scales (EU-wide, Member State and NUTS 2). Due to the novel nature of this topic in...

Inland fisheries can provide a wide range of social benefits, many of which make important contributions to both household livelihoods and national economies. These benefits and how they are created and distributed, however, are essentially social phenomena, perceived, valued and utilized by people and the social and economic worlds in which they l...

Pursuit of the triple bottom line of economic, community and ecological sustainability has increased the complexity of fishery management; fisheries assessments require new types of data and analysis to guide science-based policy in addition to traditional biological information and modeling. We introduce the Fishery Performance Indicators (FPIs),...

https://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/documentation/studies/socio_economic_dimension/

Our interest lies in how small-scale fisheries in the Mekong region can be better managed and sustained to ensure that the needs and aspirations of the people associated with these fisheries are met. As elsewhere, fisheries in the Mekong region face a crisis of governance. Given this situation, adaptive co-management appears particularly appealing...

Farmers in developing countries face a number of issues as they experience the rapid transition from subsistence farming to a more market-oriented rural economy. Commune Agroecosystems Analysis (CAEA) is a participatory analysis methodology used to identify and prioritize agricultural development needs at the commune level. Tools and techniques de...

Overfishing is a messy and contested term often associated with problems of numbers of people, particularly poor people, and something inherent in the nature of fisheries themselves. It has an intuitive appeal, implying something wrong and something that needs to be done. Although often grounded in science, when overfishing appears in policy debate...

The inland capture fisheries of the Mekong represent critical sources of nutrition in rural diets in a region that faces endemic food and nutritional deficits. However within regional development debates that prioritize utilising the waters of the Mekong to generate electricity, capture fisheries are often presented as ultimately doomed, and theref...

Tropical floodplain wetlands and the fish communities they support are subject to great pressure from human demands for water and aquatic living resources. In densely populated agricultural areas where such pressures are greatest, floodplain wetlands may be dewatered for the dual purpose of crop irrigation and fish harvesting. Viewed as highly dest...

Wetlands in Bangladesh represent complex, dynamic natural environments rich in biological diversity and providing a range of ecosystem services to local people. Capture fisheries are a direct link between biodiversity and the poor, but have been declining from overexploitation and wetland degradation. Since 2007 a network of 250 community based org...

A central objective for the UK Department for International Development (DFID)-funded research on renewable natural resource systems has been that the research commissioned results in significant positive developmental impacts. This paper examines how the DFID-funded Fisheries Management Science Programme has approached the assessment of the impact...

Herbivorous or omnivorous tilapia and carp species form the backbone of tropical inland aquaculture and fisheries enhancement and have been introduced widely outside their natural ranges. Perceptions of their impact on native fish faunas vary widely, but there have been few rigorous assessments. To quantify the impact of tilapia and carp stocking o...

Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi-scale society-environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co-management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning ( experiential and experim...

Since early 2007 there has been a rapid acceleration in hydropower development in the Mekong Basin. The value and importance of capture fisheries in the Mekong Basin and the threat of hydropower development to their productivity and sustainability is now well established, widely cited and rarely challenged (MRC, 2003; ADB, 2004; MRCS/WUP-FIN, 2007)...

Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi-scale society–environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co-management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning (experiential and experime...

Fish stocks are widely reported to be in decline in many of the world's oceans and inlandwater bodies. While this poses significant environmental problems, a major concern isthe impact of these declines on millions of people who depend on fish as a source of bothfood and livelihood. Efforts to manage fish stocks for sustainable production have, int...

Building trust through collaboration, institutional development, and social learning enhances efforts to foster ecosystem management and resolve multi-scale society–environment dilemmas. One emerging approach aimed at addressing these dilemmas is adaptive co-management. This method draws explicit attention to the learning (experiential and experime...

Stock enhancement initiatives have become an increasingly popular intervention in inland rural fisheries development over the past two decades, with stocking being a high priority on inland fisheries development agendas in Southeast Asia. However, stock enhancement initiatives have shown that whilst releases of cultured juveniles have the potential...

Many tropical fisheries are inherently of a multispecies nature, with any given type of fishing gear harvesting a wide range of species. Species-aggregated relationships between fishing effort and yield or catch per unit of effort (CPUE) provide important information for the management of such fisheries, as well as insights into ecosystem-level res...

The increasing shift towards co-management has prompted managers to reflect upon their new roles and reconsider information requirements. This technical paper, in two parts, is aimed to meet the growing need among co-managers for guidelines to help design and implement appropriate and cost-effective data collection programmes or systems. Part 1: Pr...

The generation of potentially useful information that subsequently fails to be communicated and shared with those who could best use it, is a common problem in development research. This article describes one approach to sharing knowledge, generated through adaptive co-management, within and between a wide range of stakeholder groups. It was develo...

stocking. This uncertainty may be due to (a) limited prior knowledge of the physical, biological, technical and institutional characteristics of individual sites which can show great variability; and (b) the complex dynamic interactions that occur between the biological characteristics of the resource, the technical intervention of enhancement and...