According to the press release of Swedish government the nation has taken a significant step toward achieving an ecosystem-based fisheries management. Sweden calls it the concept of area-based management plans (ABMP). The government said that the main aim of ABMB is to provide more integrated, cross-sector, ecosystem-based approach.
This would be complementary to the already existing instruments of recovery plans and long-term management plans (LTMP). The press release states that ABMPs would serve to harmonise different management measures, to link single stock long-term management and recovery plans in a specific area to each other and thus strengthen the ecosystem-based approach to fisheries management and focus on measures to manage, rebuild and protect habitats and species not covered by LTMPs.
The government says that recognizing the impacts that fishing activities have also on other aspects of the marine ecosystem, such as biodiversity, vulnerable habitats, food-webs and threatened species, is more important. It also said that the fisheries policy should act in concert with other policy areas such as the environmental policy so that it could achieve sustainable use of the oceans.
The paper also stressed that all commercial stocks, or groups of stocks, within a defined time period should be covered. Strict time frames for reaching the objectives should be included, as well as measures to be taken if the targets are not met. It also calls for regionalisation of the decision-making process, “dealing with fleet overcapacity in a systematic manner”, a stop to all subsidies “that increase or preserve overcapacity”, and a discard ban “in combination with a management regulating catches instead of landings”.
