Co-management of sea turtle fisheries: Biogeography versus geopolitics

Co-management between local communities and government agencies is promoted as a strategy to improve fisheries management. This paper considers the potential for co-management of sea turtle fisheries within four UK Overseas Territories (OTs) in the Caribbean, and for co-ordinated management among those territories. We focus on fisher incentives for engaging in co-management and on the potential to scale up co-management to a regional level. This paper presents data from Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos Islands, where 110 turtle fishers participated in a socio-economic survey undertaken as part of the ‘Turtles in the UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean’ project. Based on three established criteria for co-management (perceived crisis in stock, willingness to participate and community cohesion), results suggest that fisher support for co-management exists within each OT, but the extent of support for and views of specific management interventions varies among OTs. The implications of results for co-management in each territory, and for establishing co-ordinated management regimes in the region, are discussed in the context of current debates about the nature of resources and scalar (mis)matches between resource and management regimes.     

Early-stage transformation of coastal marine governance in Vietnam?

This paper examines an apparent ‘early stage’ governance transformation in the Tam Giang Lagoon, Vietnam. In this context, the role of key policy windows for innovative governance practice is assessed (e.g., changes to Land and Fisheries Laws). Also examined is the emergence of recent initiatives to catalyze a wider shift in governance practice in the region, including the formation of co-management institutional networks that contribute to trust building and learning, and the allocation of collective territorial use rights for fisheries. While these changes are consistent with experiences in other coastal marine contexts, the paper shows that place-based and longitudinal research is necessary to explain and predict the conditions and incentives that catalyze governance shifts. Differences between a governance change and more fundamental transformation are difficult to discern using point-in-time analysis. Moreover, the results show that current declines in ecological conditions in the lagoon may not be reversed by changes to access rights or the emergence of co-management. Rather, these governance changes may simply help to stabilize the situation and buy time until other livelihood opportunities arise. Assessments of governance transformation thus need to be linked to ecological outcomes (i.e., reversing degradation of coastal marine systems, avoiding biophysical tipping points) which may not be easily identified in the short-term. Despite uncertainty, the emergence of policy windows, evidence of institutional innovation, and small-scale rights allocation experiments, all suggest important shifts in the trajectory of governance are underway in the Tam Giang Lagoon.     

Co-management and “consciousness”: Fishers’ assimilation of management principles in Chile

Chile's new Management Area system delegates management responsibility to organizations of artisanal shell-fishers on the condition that they team with professionally trained marine biologists. A survey of participating fishers in Chile's Fourth and Fifth regions examined four social benefits predicted to result from this type of co-management: (1) improved rapport between fishers and the state, (2) greater awareness among fishers of ecology and the benefits of management, (3) cooperation between fishers and scientists, and (4) unity between fishers. A discussion analyzes the principal benefit encountered—fishers’ newfound “consciousness” of the value of management—within the context of co-management and territorial use rights.     

Comments on FAO's State of Fisheries and Aquaculture, or ‘SOFIA 2010’

Comments are provided on a few sections of the FAO's 2010 edition of the bi-annual ‘State of the World's Fisheries and Aquaculture’ (SOFIA), i.e., its characterization of the present as a period of ‘stability’, the peculiar role of China's fisheries statistics, the under-reporting of much of the small-scale fisheries catch from developing countries as a key aspect of the deteriorating quality of statistical data submitted to the FAO by member countries, and some other minor topics (but not aquaculture). Overall, this SOFIA report, like its predecessors, provides an excellent starting point for debates about the status of global fisheries, rather than settling them, and a few vignettes are presented, which illustrate this. Moreover, this debate should be broader, e.g., involve more university- and civil society-based researchers, to provide the wide variety of views and analyses required to strengthen FAO in its laudable mission of providing dependable information on the state of global fisheries.     

Why comply? Attitudes towards harvest regulations among Swedish fishers

Why do fishers break rules? And why do they follow them? The answers to these pertinent questions could contribute to reducing overfishing, stock decimation, environmental degradation, economic losses and community failures. This explorative paper presents findings from a nationwide survey among Swedish fishers, who were asked what, in their opinion, would justify non-compliance, why fisheries management regulations are not being respected, and what might help improve the situation. The survey was conducted to test four inducements often suggested in the literature: Fishers’ compliance/non-compliance is based on (a) their own benefit, (b) whether they feel morally compelled to do one way or another, (c) whether compliance is believed to create a negative impression among peers and (d) whether they accept the justification given for introducing the rules. Among other things, the study finds that the moral motives of law-abidingness and peer group solidarity rank the highest among the reasons for compliance, that large-scale fishers are more concerned about deterrence than small- and medium-scale fishers and also that co-management experience makes fishers less inclined to accept non-compliance by fishers who seek to boost their income.     

Co-management from the top? The roles of policy entrepreneurs and distributive conflict in developing co-management arrangements

This research examines attempts to develop co-management arrangements in the Maine lobster and Chesapeake Bay blue crab fisheries. It finds that the attributes of user groups and resources as well as government support are important in facilitating the development of co-management, but are not sufficient. This study highlights that the process of developing institutions for co-management is lengthy and time consuming and that user groups do not necessarily embrace changes to the status quo. I argue that the nature of distributional conflict and the affiliation of policy entrepreneurs account for variation in the development of co-management regimes in these cases.     

Adaptation to climate change in marine capture fisheries

This paper responds to the challenge of how and when to adapt marine capture fisheries to climate change by (1) providing a set of fisheries policy options to climate change; (2) developing a risk and vulnerability assessment and management decision-making framework for adaptation; and (3) describing the possible strategies and tactics for ex ante and ex post climate adaptation in the marine environment. Its contributions include (1) a discussion of how management objectives and instruments influence resilience and adaptation; (2) a decision-making process to assess vulnerabilities to climate change and to manage adaptation responses; (3) an inter-temporal framework to assist decision-makers on when to adapt; (4) a risk and simulation approach to confront the uncertainties of the possible losses due to climate change and the net benefits of adaptation; (5) an explanation of how adaptive co-management can promote flexible adaptation responses and also strengthen adaptation capacity; and (6) a selection of possible ‘win–win’ management actions.     

Trust relationships between fishers and government: New challenges for the co-management arrangements in the Dutch flatfish industry

Until the 1990s fisheries were largely managed by the state. Since then, Dutch government and the sector increasingly recognized that a fishing industry cannot be managed effectively without the cooperation and participation of fishers to formulate policy and to implement and enforce laws and regulations. As a result, in the nineties, the existing neo-corporatist arrangement was replaced by a co-management system in the Dutch flatfish fishery. Co-management is often seen as leading to greater procedural legitimacy and subsequently compliance. However, constructing an effective co-management arrangement is not only a matter of building institutions but also a matter of building trust relations between the government and industry. Institutional arrangements such as co-management can contribute to these trust building processes; however, a too strong reliance on institutional arrangements can lead to distrust when new challenges are being faced and institutional arrangements fail to adapt to these changes.     

Towards an EU Action Plan on Cetacean Bycatch

For decades, cetacean bycatch has been a major conservation and welfare concern in Europe, with high numbers of harbour porpoises, dolphins and whales continuing to die each year. Despite binding legal requirements to reduce bycatch, there has been limited effective monitoring or mitigation. Bycatch is also an important welfare issue. At this critical juncture, with discussion of incorporating monitoring and mitigation of bycatch of protected species in Europe into the Data Collection Framework and Technical Measures Framework taking place to help deliver the reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), a clear, effective strategy could identify the steps that are required by all EU Member States to reduce bycatch towards zero. Here, implementation of current monitoring and mitigation obligations are reviewed. Recommendations are made for the provision of clear EU guidance in order to improve and unify population surveillance and bycatch monitoring, with enhanced implementation and enforcement from Member States. A more regionalised evidence-based approach to monitoring and mitigation is in line with the move to more regionalised management under the CFP, with Member States robustly showing that bycatch levels are decreasing over a set period of time (e.g. 5 years) by a specified amount. To this end, an EU Action Plan on Cetacean Bycatch, comparable to the existing 2012 Action Plan for reducing incidental catches of seabirds in fishing gear, might be beneficial and could ultimately form a model for an international Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Cetacean Bycatch Reduction Action Plan.     

Red snapper discards in the Gulf of Mexico: Fishermen's perceptions following the implementation of Individual Fishing Quotas

In 2007, an Individual Fishing Quota (IFQ) program was introduced to the valuable red snapper (Lutjanus campechanus) fishery in the US Gulf of Mexico. This study assessed the current perceived scale and causes of red snapper discarding in the Gulf in recent years within the commercial reef fish fishery, according to commercial fishermen. Data were collected through interviews, which took place with fishermen in April and May 2010, and which were unexpectedly halted due to the Deepwater Horizon oil spill that occurred in late April 2010. Results suggest that for those fishermen fully participating in the IFQ program, snapper discarding has decreased since program implementation. For those not fully involved in the program (e.g., due to participation costs), discarding has likely since increased.     

Participatory research supporting community-based fishery management

This paper reports on a project to engage researchers and fishers together in adapting social science approaches to the purposes and the constraints of community-based fisher organizations. The work was carried out in the Scotia–Fundy Region of Atlantic Canada (the Bay of Fundy and Scotian Shelf). Its rationale reflects arguments that (1) effective community-based management requires that managers are able to pose and address social science questions, (2) participatory research, involving true cooperation in all stages, can support this process, and (3) there is a need to overcome practical and methodological barriers faced in developing participatory research protocols, to serve the needs of community-based management while not demanding excessive transaction costs. In this paper, we report on work with fisher organizations, both aboriginal and non-aboriginal, in which social science priorities were set by each organization, and small-scale research projects designed and carried out to meet these needs. This work identified interests among fishers in research on three different levels of meaning: (1) practical livelihood concerns, including what, when and where to fish, and with what intensity of effort, (2) social, economic and political issues (e.g., on institutional structures, politics of access and allocation, overlap and conflict between regulatory regimes), and (3) values and ethics that implicitly or explicitly guide policy development and implementation. Several research themes proved crucial, including those of power sharing, defining boundaries of a community-based group, access and equity, designing effective management plans, enforcement, and scaling up for effective regional and ecosystem-wide management. The research results demonstrate the effectiveness of extending participatory methods to challenge traditional scientific notions of the research process.     

Aquaculture stakeholders role in fisheries co-management

Industrial aquaculture has become one of the main protagonists both on the coasts and in international policy aimed at regulating matters concerning the sea. This new role is reflected in the recently adopted Common Fisheries Policy of the European Union, where the need to promote the sector and the involvement with other local actors, specifically artisanal fishers, is highlighted. However, the official promotion of this activity could be overvaluing its benefits while, at the same time, undervaluing the new barriers that it is introducing in fisheries co-management. Centered in Valencian Community (Spain) and through a qualitative methodology, this paper examines the views and positions of stakeholders directly involved in aquaculture activity (biologists, aquaculture businessmen and policy managers) on the possibilities of joint participation. It is concluded, that eroding the detected mistrust among stakeholders through "hybrid forms of participation" would be a necessary prerequisite to setting up a common framework for involvement leading to an effective co-management.     

On crafting a fisheries co-management arrangement in the estuary of Patos Lagoon (Brazil): opportunities and challenges faced through implementation

This paper aims to analyze a fisheries co-management regime in Brazil. The Forum of the Patos Lagoon, a collaborative partnership among communities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, was established to move fisheries management toward a negotiation-style decision processes. We find that while many successes are evident including the delegation of decision power, greater protection of artisanal fisheries, and greater legitimacy assigned the Forum as a decision-making body, several problems remain. These include conflicting institutional arrangements; minimal recognition of local fishers’ interests as concerns rules established; and less than optimal participation of fishers in the Forum. The paper closes with multiple suggestions for improvements of this co-management regime.     

Systems engineering principles in fisheries management

Fisheries management receives valuable, but often fragmented information from academic disciplines such as biology, economics, and social sciences. A multi-disciplinary perspective seems to be necessary if the fisheries are to become sustainable. Globally, overcapacity is considered as the most serious threat to sustainable fisheries, which indicates the need for a stronger integration of technological aspects into fisheries management. This paper discusses application of systems engineering principles and integration of technology into fisheries management. The systems engineering process facilitates implementation of multi-disciplinary information from researchers to fisheries managers in the decision-making towards sustainable fisheries, but may also be used to overcome multi-disciplinary obstacles among scientists. The article concludes that use of systems engineering principles may become a valuable contribution to fisheries management because of increased transparency and reduced risk associated with the decision-making process.     

A tenuous triumvirate: The role of independent biologists in Chile's co-management regime for shellfish

Fisheries co-management is usually defined by shared decision-making between fishers and the state. Chile's co-management regime for shellfish differs from the norm by incorporating a third party: independent biological consultants. This paper evaluates Chile's system and compares three-party co-management to two-party systems. It finds that consultants fulfill functions absent in two-party co-management, such as playing an intermediary role between fishers and the state, and also perform certain functions better than either of the other two entities involved, such as acting as a credible and objective source of information. It then discusses ways to perfect Chile's system, such as stepping up knowledge transfer activities so as to further empower fishers.     

Individual transferable quotas in Argentina: Policy and performance

The purpose of the article is to describe the Argentine ITQ system during the early years after the initial allocation in 2009 and introduce the Argentine case in the discussion on ITQs. This paper has been elaborated based on statistical information derived from fleet and catch data of the Fishing Log System of the Undersecretariat of Fisheries and Acquaculture and Management Reports on the Individual Transferable Quotas regime. The implementation of the Argentine ITQs regime took into account issues learned from other countries and from the theoretical debate about the pros and cons of the ITQ system. The Argentine ITQ regime introduced enough flexibility to dismiss the disadvantages of this system pointed out in other international experiences.     

Fisheries co-management as empowerment

Empowerment is both a condition and a goal of fisheries co-management. In this paper I attempt to explain what empowerment means, what it requires, and what can be expected from it. The concept emphasizes psychological as well as sociological factors. It works at an individual and a collective level. For fisheries co-management to become sustainable, empowerment must occur at both levels. Thus, co-management entails more than institutional design and participatory democracy. It also requires capacity enhancement. The good news is that these processes are mutually dependent and reinforcing. They should therefore proceed hand in hand, and it does not matter very much which of them is undertaken first.     

The “easy restriction” syndrome drive local fish stocks to extinction: The case of the management of Swedish coastal populations

Spatially sensitive management built on detailed biological and socio-economic knowledge is required to establish sound fishing regulations and to avoid extinction of small coastal populations of fish and shellfish. Highly productive isolated populations of several commercial species have historically inhabited the Swedish west coast, but during the past century these populations have been depleted by fisheries and with no sign of recovery. Since 1999 several fisheries regulations and different stakeholder co-management initiatives have flourished along the Swedish coast of the Skagerrak. They aimed to facilitate the recovery of collapsed local stocks but the established regulations failed to identify and restrict the main sources of mortality acting on local stocks and they have thus been ineffective to promote the recovery. Furthermore, regulations have operated on the weakest among stakeholders (e.g.. recreational fishers), which have minor influence over management, and the restrictions have been imposed without providing any data which supported the choice (i.e. the “easy restriction” syndrome). In line with the general “spirit” of recent Swedish fishery management, we conclude that managers, without the disapproval of Swedish scientists, have circumvented limitations which should address the largest mortality factor, i.e. the commercial fishery. The regulations presently in place, have been politically uncontroversial and easy to implement, but have been highly unsuccessful. We therefore suggest that stakeholders, including politicians, should start focusing on more effective and science-based management and less on what is politically attractive if Swedish citizens shall have a chance to witness the recovery of their once flourishing coastal populations.