Breaking with business as usual to integrate human dimensions research in ICES science and advice

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Abstract The International Council for the Exploration of the Sea (ICES) has included human dimensions in its science and advice selectively and implicitly throughout its history, but formal recognition of social science and humanities as a core research theme only emerged in 2015. This paper examines the circuitous path of how and why ICES evolved towards including human dimensions research. Drawing on key milestones and critical turning points, we identify the drivers that have advanced interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary approaches to fisheries and marine science, as well as the persistent barriers that continue to constrain progress. These barriers include effectively implementing integrated ecosystem-based management science and advice; organizational resistance; awareness, and appropriate use of social sciences; capacity in terms of experts, funding and data; and paradoxes surrounding stakeholder, Indigenous, and rightsholder participation. A self-reinforcing dynamic persists: where human dimensions research is not routinely expected, it is rarely requested; where it is not requested, it is rarely included. Consequently, the ICES advisory system continues to reproduce the very conditions that still keep human dimensions research at the margins. We argue that the challenge is no longer simply to add a human dimension layer to existing science, but to rethink how ICES defines problems and explores solutions, whose knowledge counts, and how experts from different disciplinary and practitioner backgrounds can collaborate to shape just and responsible futures for people and the sea. Fully integrating human dimensions research requires broadening the prevailing scientific paradigm to situate advice within social, cultural, economic, and political realities, and to recognize uncertainty as an inherent feature of coupled social-ecological systems. Such a shift would enable ICES to routinely evaluate management measures across all three pillars of sustainability, providing a more comprehensive evidence base for assessing policy options and their consequences. In doing so, ICES would strengthen its capacity to deliver robust, policy-relevant advice and reinforce its leadership in addressing contemporary fisheries and marine science challenges.

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