Sociocultural ecosystem services of small-scale fisheries: challenges, insights and perspectives for marine resource management and planning

Sociocultural ecosystem services of fisheries, ranging from social cohesion to sense of place, render their contribution to social wellbeing particularly significant especially at local and regional levels. However, this contribution has not received adequate attention among policy-makers since marine management focuses primarily on provisioning services, and conventional economic indicators used to track performance and inform management, do not allow integration of sociocultural parameters. In our analysis, we draw lessons from small-scale fisheries and discuss in more detail attempts and methodologies to capture such aspects and identify avenues through which they can feed into marine management with an emphasis on spatial planning. The inherent difficulty in capturing sociocultural dimensions along with limited efforts to do so thus far, add to a missed opportunity to improve management and advance spatial planning efforts. In this context, we explore the importance of sociocultural ecosystem services in small-scale fisheries along with attempts and methods to capture and incorporate them into management and planning with a focus in the Mediterranean. We argue that sociocultural ecosystem services of small-scale fisheries constitute an essential element of sustainable development and key factor of enhancing the resilience of coastal communities.