The 'responsiveness gap' in RFMOs: The critical role of decision-making policies in the fisheries management response to climate change

The impacts of climate change, owing to their potentially vast reach and scale, embody a critical challenge for fisheries management organizations. We conduct a systematic literature review to present an overview of how the peer-reviewed academic literature recommends fisheries management frameworks should respond to the climate change-driven uncertainty, vulnerability and risk facing resource bases. Our review identifies 21 different potential management responses. Adaptive management was the most commonly identified strategy, with institutional capacity development and input/output controls also frequently cited. We contrast our findings with illustrative cases characterizing management practice and outcomes in RFMOs, and argue that the ability of RFMOs to implement the climate change mitigation strategies identified in our review is a function of an organization's decision-making rules. We argue that consensus-based decision-making policies limit adaptiveness, and that a 'responsiveness gap' exists between consensus and majority-based decision-making frameworks. This gap will become more evident, and increase in importance, as the impacts of climate change shift from potential to kinetic. Considering that decision-making rules in RFMOs are unlikely to change, we argue that increased analytical effort concentrated on institutional contexts and member state interest complexes may promote adaptive management, expediting the pace at which scientific recommendations and findings inform policy and practise in RFMOs.