Scenarios for Baltic herring fisheries

The project built exploratory and normative scenarios for Baltic herring fisheries with specific focus on the integration food security and safety aspects into the management of Baltic herring fisheries. Exploratory scenarios were built for the future of Baltic herring fisheries using 2040 as the target year. Four contrasting storylines were created based on two key uncertainties related to governance integration and environmental awareness. Policy documents, other scenario studies, and literature on the dynamics of Baltic fisheries were used as primary material. Backcasting, which is a normative scenario method, was used to define desirable future visions for the use of Baltic herring catch and to develop pathways of actor-specific governance actions to increase the use of the fish as a safe-to-eat food. The participatory backcasting exercise was organised as part of a two-day expert workshop in 2016. Workshop participants included eleven fisheries and dioxin experts across sectors and Baltic Sea riparian countries.

The scenario work produced three main publications: 1) Pihlajamäki et al. (2018) presents the results of the participatory backcasting exercise, i.e. pathways to increase the use of Baltic herring as safee-to-eat fish; 2) Sarkki and Pihlajamäki (2019) explores how backcasting recommendations work across the exploratory storyline; and 3) Pihlajamäki et al. (2020) apply Bayesian belief networks to exploratory scenario storylines to assess long-term changes in Baltic herring and salmon fisheries.

The scenarios were part of BONUS+ GOHERR (Integrated governance of Baltic herring and salmon stocks involving stakeholders) project (2015-2018).

All the figures I have uploaded are from the three publications mentioned. You can use them as long as you add the reference there.