From means to ends: Insights into the operationalization and evaluation of sustainable fisheries

Objectives reflect values that matter to end-users, but can be challenging in resource management contexts where high uncertainty amplifies the complexity of acceptably satisfying multiple conflicting objectives. Structured decision-making recommends connecting assessable objectives with management alternatives and influencing factors in conceptual models called decision networks that reflect perceived cause-and-effect (means-ends) relationships. In this paper we applied decision networks to examine the contents of fisheries policies within and across jurisdictions. First, we compared implicit means-ends relationships of objectives and management alternatives from fisheries laws and policies to explicit structures in Canadian management plans. Plans were diverse but generally nested objectives from ends to management alternatives, demonstrating operational convergence on decision networks. Second, we compared how five jurisdictions used means and ends objectives to strategically evaluate fishery performance in “report cards,” and which were fixed into law and/or pre-operationalized with guidance for measurable objective elements. Across jurisdictions, guidance for reference points, probabilities and timeframes was more common for objectives subject to evaluation and legal obligations regardless of whether they represented means or ends. Target stock indicators formed chains of evidence in report cards, supporting evaluation of fisheries sustainability from actions to results (though absent indicators of desirable catches, an ends objective). Means objectives may sometimes serve as proxies for hard-to-define ends, depending on assumptions, but both are important. Decision networks help clarify, for both science and policy, the conceptual models and assumptions underlying management alternatives, objectives they aim to meet, and associated indicators evaluating fisheries sustainability at both operational and strategic levels.