The project addresses the conflicting EU objectives of maintaining sustainable fisheries in European waters with all the economic benefits afforded to the community through the fishing industry, whilst at the same time maintaining biodiversity and avoiding negative effects on the environment. COST-IMPACT aims to put an economic valuation or costing on marine ecosystem resources or goods and services and indicate how this value is affected by fishing. This will provide fisheries and coastal zone managers with an effective tool to determine their policies.
The primary objectives are to provide advice to decision makers on:
1.) How demersal fishing impacts the biodiversity of marine benthos and the associated goods and services, such as nutrient cycling that they provide
2.) How these impacts influence other marine ecosystem processes and then
3.) What the likely values of marine ecosystem goods and services are and how these values are affected by fishing.
The project will help managers to integrate fishing policy with environment policy. COST-IMPACT will provide tools that help determine whether a balance can be achieved between the economic value of a fishery and the impacts of fishing on marine ecosystems and the economic value of the goods and services they provide.
With such knowledge strategies can be developed for management of fisheries effort. Such strategies would balance the environmental impact on marine benthic biodiversity and the services the benthos provides for marine ecosystem functioning against the socio-economic benefits of fishing.
