Regional Guidelines on Indicators for Sustainable Management of Fisheries Refugia in the South China Sea and Gulf of Thailand

Abstract

Indicators play an essential part in the communication of scientific results to decision-makers. Many countries develop indicators to support effective decision-making and policy-setting at every stage of the decision-making cycle - during problem identification, policy formulation, implementation, or policy evaluation. In developed countries, many fisheries are assessed and evaluated using models of growing complexity that require data. Model results are often very complex, and their presentation may vary significantly between models. Compared with many developing countries, because the costs of data collection and analysis for these models may be relatively high, it is not feasible to collect all the information required, and a set of indicators can simplify the evaluation and reporting process. Hence, the finding indicators need to be presented simply and understandably. In this guideline, developing the indicators for sustainable management of fisheries refugia considers a structural framework representing all the relevant dimensions of sustainable development, e.g., economic, social, environmental (ecosystem/resource), and institutional/governance.