African Inland Fisheries: Experiences with Co-Management and Policies of Decentralization

Most countries in Africa have promoted some form of decentralized fisheries management either as discrete co-management projects or as a component of broader decentralization processes that cut across other sectors. These initiatives were shaped by an international policy narrative that emphasises participation in decision making and development. A review of fisheries decentralization experiences in Cameroon, Niger, Nigeria, and Malawi reveals marked differences in purpose, strategy, and performance. In general, co-management projects are limited by their ability to scale up new practice and to maintain viable and representative management institutions. In other cases, the decentralization process is not well supported politically or locally or does not articulate with fisheries policy. Experiences of decentralization in other sectors provide useful lessons. Acknowledging the informal institutional environment or realpolitikof fisheries and the rural economy could provide opportunities to better manage and review the process of decentralization.     

Collaborative Management of Public Rangeland in Wyoming: Lessons in Co-Management

Collaborative processes are gaining acceptance as a means to integrate different values and interests in the management of natural resources. This paper examines one form of collaboration, Coordinated Resource Management (CRM), as it is being applied to public rangeland management in Wyoming. The study included personal and telephone interviews of participants in CRM groups, document review, and personal observation to understand how the process works to achieve consensus among diverse stakeholders. Groups used five mechanisms to deal with different values and interests in their processes: (1) elimination of unnecessary or “overlay” conflict; (2) limitation of values and visions considered; (3) use of broad goals to guide actions; (4) casting value differences as disagreement over facts; (5) a search for and faith in win-win solutions. These mechanisms vary in their usefulness for achieving co-management ideals. Where interests or values have come into open conflict, as in some conflict-resolution groups, CRM has had limited success. This paper suggests that successful co-management requires more than power-sharing structures. We have yet to develop highly effective processes that can work with conflicting interests. It is also argued that struggles among various interests for greater recognition (and hence power) will continue to undergird the power-sharing collaborative and co-management processes.     

Gendering Marine Conservation: The Politics of Marine Protected Areas and Fisheries Access

Drawing on ethnographic case studies from Madagascar, this research shows that multiple marine conservation projects have institutionalized inequitable access to marine recourses along gendered lines. Despite discursive and institutional shifts toward more “collaborative” and “community-based” conservation programing, there is a deficiency of women’s nominal as well as effective participation in community management organizations. This research shows that conservation organizations’ focus on proximate drivers of marine resource use, or a politics of picking the “low-hanging fruit,” over ultimate drivers such as global commodity chains, places disproportionate emphasis on marine spatial enclosures and restricting specific, and gendered, harvest methods. To address gender bias concerning access to and control over natural resources, we must go beyond the rhetoric of “community involvement” to address gendered inequalities in conservation decision making, and whose interests are served by conservation projects.     

Environment,Culture, and The Great Lakes Fisheries

The commercial fisheries of the United States and Canadian Great Lakes are in a long period of decline. Detailed statistics kept for well over a century document a fluctuating pattern of harvests of the major commercial species. In the 1940s, sea lamprey began to devastate the fisheries, an effect that has not been fully countered. Overfishing, nonnative species, declining nutrient levels, and chemical pollution have contributed to reduced catches. Court decisions in the United States and Canada during the past thirty years have awarded a sizable share of commercial fishing rights to Native North Americans for their own support and sustenance. The Lake Erie yellow perch and walleye fishery, based mainly in Ontario, is the most successful commercial fishing operation in the region. Despite the many environmental and cultural challenges, the Great Lakes fisheries live on.     

Fish and boats: Fisheries management issues in Northland

New Zealand fisheries management has been the focus of a great deal of research, largely because of the early, and very successful, introduction of a neoliberal property regime in the country's commercial fisheries. Less attention has been paid to the other management activities of New Zealand's Ministry of Fisheries. This paper outlines the fisheries management issues arising over the last decade in the region to the north of Auckland and the practices of the Ministry as it worked to address them.     

The Geography of Fish: The Use of Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis Tools in Fisheries Research

Rather than seeing the oceans as an expansive void, researchers using acoustic technologies can detect the heterogeneity of biological resources and view the marine environment as a three-dimensional landscape. Underwater remote sensing, using acoustics, provides high resolution maps of the spatial distribution of organisms in aquatic ecosystems. Analyzing the spatial pattern of species distribution within the water column and the impact of that organization on ecological processes bridges the fields of fisheries and spatial analysis. Tools and concepts familiar to geographers, such as remote sensing, GIS, and landscape ecology, contribute to the investigation of large lake and marine ecosystems.     

The Geography of Fish: The Use of Remote Sensing and Spatial Analysis Tools in Fisheries Research

Rather than seeing the oceans as an expansive void, researchers using acoustic technologies can detect the heterogeneity of biological resources and view the marine environment as a three-dimensional landscape. Underwater remote sensing, using acoustics, provides high resolution maps of the spatial distribution of organisms in aquatic ecosystems. Analyzing the spatial pattern of species distribution within the water column and the impact of that organization on ecological processes bridges the fields of fisheries and spatial analysis. Tools and concepts familiar to geographers, such as remote sensing, GIS, and landscape ecology, contribute to the investigation of large lake and marine ecosystems.     

From Moral to Markets: The Rhetoric of Responsibility and Resource Management in European Union Fisheries Policy

Ecological, economic, and social sustainability has been prioritized by the European Union in its proposal for a reformed Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), but it is recognized that there is a lack of knowledge concerning the objectives of these three aspects. Addressing the issue of how these objectives are given meaning as policy is being articulated, two Swedish seminars where fisheries’ stakeholders discuss the proposal for a reformed CFP are analyzed. The analysis shows how fish become defined as a specific kind of resource and how their status as a resource is framed as a moral issue. Once morally charged the resource is subjected to valorization through economic modeling. As a result, the potential for sustainability in fisheries becomes conditional upon the creation of new markets.     

Planning For The Development Of Site-Specific Resources: The Example Of Geothermal Energy*

Low temperature geothermal energy requires that precedence for development be given land use characteristics in communities of proposed utilization. A procedure which uses Scottsdale, Arizona as the model involves overlaying maps of user energy density, parcel ownership, parcel size, parcel vacancy, and zoning. An analysis of existing geochemical and geological data and cost/benefit followed and allowed further refinement. Adopting this procedure elsewhere would accelerate direct usage of geothermal energy.     

库布齐沙漠HDPE网和植物纤维网沙障防沙试验效应

在库布齐沙漠流动沙丘区建立HDPE网和植物纤维网工程沙障试验区,采用MetOne 014A/024A型8通道风速仪、8方位集沙仪、风蚀插钎,观测试验沙障影响下的风速、输沙量和地表侵蚀堆积,对比分析不同规格HDPE网、植物纤维网方格沙障和HDPE网前沿高立式阻沙沙障的防风固沙效应。结果表明：（1）一定孔隙度（50%）的方格沙障中心风速垂直变化幅度与变化规律,仅与沙障平面规格和高度（h）密切相关,与试验材料基本无关。相同平面规格的方格沙障,高度（h）大者降风效应显著;相同高度的方格沙障,小规格降风效应较为显著;（2）试验沙障及其防沙体系对风沙流输沙产生明显影响,相近地貌部位,5.0m×5.0m（h=100cm）植物纤维网方格中心输沙量远小于1.0m×1.0m（h=20cm）HDPE网方格和流动沙丘区,大规格高立式沙障固沙效应优于小规格低立式沙障;（3）试验沙障的地表侵蚀堆积状态仅与沙障规格有关,沙障材料的影响不明显。