Terms of Reference
Framework for Incorporating Climate Change Considerations into Fisheries Stock Assessment
National Peer Review – National Capitol Region
May 8-9, 2018
Montreal, QC
Co-Chairs: Keith Lennon and Ian Perry
Context
The Prime Minister’s mandate letter set the “use (of) scientific evidence and the precautionary principle, and (to) take into account climate change, when making decisions affecting fish stocks and ecosystem management” as a top departmental priority.
The Aquatic Climate Change Adaptation program (ACCASP) is aligned with the Minister’s mandate letter commitment to use scientific evidence and the precautionary principle, as well as take into account climate change when making decisions affecting fish stocks and ecosystem management. A key activity under ACCASP was to advance understanding of the vulnerability of commercial species and their prey to the impacts of climate change and to develop a strategy to incorporate this knowledge into fisheries stock assessments and fisheries management decisions.
To ensure that Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) is able to deliver on this mandate commitment, a CSAS peer review process has been organised to develop a framework for the systematic integration of oceanographic/environmental climate change stressor data and fish stock vulnerability information into stock assessment advice in order to enable climate-ready decision making in fisheries resource management.
Risk Assessments conducted under ACCASP identified common risks and information needs associated with climate change across all DFO Regions. Shared biological risks across DFO Regions promotes the creation of a common framework and climate-related tools to efficiently and effectively incorporate climate change into decision making. Identifying approaches and options that will remain biologically and socio-economically sustainable in the face of climate-change is a critical need, as the best management decisions for Regions or their aquatic resources today will not necessarily be the best management decisions in the future under climate change.Objective
The overall objective of this peer review process is to develop a scientific framework for incorporating climate change information into fisheries stock assessment advice. This will be accomplished by meeting three sub-objectives:
- development of a framework for incorporating environmental variation and climate change into DFO processes for generating stock assessment advice (Working Paper #1);
- review practices and current methods (employed at DFO and internationally) for integrating environmental variation and climate change considerations into stock assessment and fisheries management decision making; (Working Paper #2)
- provide recommendations on best practices for how to include and present environmental variation and climate change considerations in DFO’s stock assessment advice, which is applicable to multiple taxonomic groups and DFO Regions and informative to resources management.
Expected Publications
- Science Advisory Report
- Proceedings
- Research Documents (2)
Expected Participation
- Fisheries and Oceans Canada (DFO) (Ocean Science Branch, Fish Population Science, Technical Expertise on Stock Assessment (TESA), Fisheries Management, Fisheries Policy)
- Academia: Technical University of Denmark (DTU) (Denmark), National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) (USA), Institute of Marine Research (IMR) (Norway)
Notice
Participation to CSAS peer review meetings is by invitation only.
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