Fundación Chile and the integrated management of the coastal zone

Chile has a very diverse and variable coastal zone, with a series of phenomena that occur unexpectedly and which demand great flexibility from the management models that are implemented. The oceanographic characteristics have provided Chile’s coastal zone with important pelagic fisheries in the country’s north and center and benthonic fisheries in the south. They have also led to the explosive growth of aquaculture in the last ten years, mostly in the canals zone. In the northern and central regions, megaprojects have dominated coastal zone investments and are about to go into the far north. Also a sustained popùlation increase in central and southern coastal areas is expected as a consequence of the saturation of big cities and development in road, transport and communications.The incorporation of Chile into trade blocks such as APEC, NAFTA, and MERCOSUR together with some recently signed bilateral trade treaties will undoubtedly give a push to the port activity. The construction of different corridors throughout the country that will provide access to the Pacific for some regions in Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Argentina will have a similar effect.Alterations in the quality of the environment (Pollution), threats to the coastal zone’s diversity (exhausted resources) and conflicts among users are mentioned among the principal problems affecting coastal zone urging for an integrated management approach for this critical and sensitive area.A coastal zone management plan for Chile, more than creating new regulations, many of which already exist, should be able to set up effective mechanisms among the different sectors involved in the use of the coastal zone, generate mechanisms to resolve differences, provide adequate scientific and technical information for decision making and establish simple and realistic mechanisms for education and citizen participation. The National Management Plan should be essentially FOCUSED, REGIONALIZED, INTEGRATED AND INFORMED. In fact, the basic idea promoted by Fundación Chile and the Navy’s Maritime Territory National Board would be to generate a system supported by one or two central coordinating institutions articulated with regional institutions, which would carry out the above-mentioned objectives. The greatest benefit of a Plan like this one is that Chile’s coastal zone and its resources can be used sustainably with the appropriate mechanisms, but in an informed and integrated way and respect regional and local peculiarities. Some of the major features of this approach are presented and discussed here.     

Managing coastal zone fisheries: A Mediterranean case study

Coastal fisheries are complex ecological and social systems, evolving in time with a shift from commercial towards recreational effort. We describe the coastal fisheries of Mallorca (W Mediterranean) and the management policies implemented to show the challenges faced at regional level to handle the different management tools used to conserve biodiversity and the social fabric in the coastal zone. Our example provides evidence of the complexity of fishing rights and how they can be adapted into practical fisheries management by combining fishing rights, open access recreational fishery, community-based management and biodiversity conservation.     

An institutional analysis of the sustainability of fisheries: Insights from FishBanks simulation game

FishBanks, a well-known fisheries management simulation game, was used to test the effect of institutional settings on the biological and economic performance of fisheries. The game was played by 48 groups of between 20 and 25 undergraduate Environmental Science students in two different time lengths (10 years versus 15 years) and institutional settings (open access versus regulated access through a resource management regime). Sessions run under an institutional regime for resource management performed better than those under open access in terms of fish population, aggregate asset value and income distribution amongst competing companies. Fleet size, a proxy for human pressure on the resource, had a more intense effect than the existence or not of an institutional setting. Results also indicate that once a critical threshold is reached in stock deterioration, institutions may be insufficient to revert change, suggesting ultimate environmental limits to the effectiveness of institutions.     

WTO fisheries subsidies negotiations: implications for fisheries access arrangements and sustainable management

The paper considers the WTO negotiations on fisheries subsidies and the implications that envisaged disciplines will have on coastal developing countries. This is considered in relation to fisheries access agreements in the Central and Western Pacific where several least developed but resource rich island states such as Kiribati and Tuvalu are highly exposed to the risks associated with new WTO fisheries subsidies disciplines that do not consider their particular vulnerabilities. The paper considers some of the issues that coastal developing countries should incorporate into their emerging negotiating positions at the WTO. State-to-Sate fisheries access agreements which are often highly subsidised but where fishing vessel owners pay the equivalent of lump sum tax are paradoxically, the least distortionary and damaging to the environment. Strategies for managing the possible new disciplines are considered.     

Repair and revitalisation of Australia׳s tropical estuaries and coastal wetlands: Opportunities and constraints for the reinstatement of lost function and productivity

Tropical fisheries are in decline around world as a result of diverse anthropogenic threats. These threats are intimately linked to biodiversity and conservation values because of the heavy dependence of both fisheries and high value marine and coastal wetlands on coastal ecosystem health. Consequently, if the widespread degradation of coastal ecosystems can be halted and remediated, there are substantial benefits to fisheries output, ecosystem resilience, food security, livelihoods, recreation and the protection of ecological assets of national and global significance. The extent, intactness and quality of Australia׳s tropical coastal ecosystems has declined markedly since European settlement, due to the cumulative impact of many small encroachments and local barrier construction on the extent and productivity of coastal wetlands, mangroves and seagrass meadows. Additionally, coastal ecosystem dependent biota has been excluded from large areas of critical habitats. Despite these changes, coastal fisheries show no clear declines that could not be explained by changes in effort. This lack of detectable decline is probably partly attributable to the short history of available fisheries catch data. However, it is also likely that it reflects the offsetting of lost natural productivity by greatly increased anthropogenic nutrient loads; a substantial problem as governments are committed to large scale, long term efforts to reduce discharges of nutrients to coastal waters. This possibility underlines the importance of rejuvenating lost coastal productivity. Evaluation of past remediation efforts show that documented success is rare, due to a complex of factors including ineffective prioritisation, a lack of necessary knowledge and resources, and inefficient monitoring and evaluation. Past experiences from Australia׳s tropics and around the world, together with current ecological understanding, suggests some generally desirable characteristics to enhance the likelihood of successful remediation and repair actions.     

Rights based fishing on the high seas: Is it possible?

The high seas fisheries are troubled by overcapacity and lax enforcement of management rules. The idea has emerged that these problems could be dealt with by property rights solutions such as ITQs. Such management tools only emerged after the 200-mile EEZ was established. This made it possible to apply the sovereign state's legislative, enforcement and judiciary apparatus to regulate fisheries. It is argued that without the EEZ such solutions would have been unlikely to emerge, and that a further extension of the EEZ is necessary to apply rights-based regulations to high seas fisheries. The current management regime of high seas fisheries lacks the necessary enforcement apparatus, which makes it necessary to apply trade sanctions, port measures and blacklisting to support regulations of high seas fisheries. It is argued that such measures are likely to be the second best, compared to further extending coastal state jurisdiction. Finally a bioeconomic model is applied to analyze potential gains from cooperation in high seas fisheries.     

Fishery cooperatives and the Pacific Whiting Conservation Cooperative: Lessons and application to non-industrial fisheries in the Western Pacific

The last 20 years have seen a fundamental shift in fishery management from reliance on open access and regulated open access to systems based on individual user rights. In some cases, the allocation of harvest rights to defined harvest or community sectors has served as a catalyst to drive the formation of voluntary agreements among fishermen in creating self-governed systems of catch shares. A number of voluntary cooperatives including the Pacific Whiting Conservation Cooperative – which served as the model for the American Fisheries Act – provide examples of self-governing systems which have successfully achieved management objectives including greater economic performance, equity, and conservation. Cooperative arrangements have functioned to devolve some of the responsibilities of management to the cooperative – allowing fishermen greater operational flexibility in achieving individual or community goals, while reducing the burden of management on formal managing bodies. Analysis of voluntary cooperatives shows that their success is based on the existence of certain core conditions including relatively small homogeneous groups of players, secure sector-allocated and divisible rights, and the ability to form binding contracts among coop members. Cooperatives, however, face a number of internal and external threats that can undermine their success and existence. Whether voluntary or designed through regulation, cooperatives may be a promising approach for addressing challenges in non-industrial fisheries in the United States including the Western Pacific – especially if coupled with user rights based on geography, territory, and culture. However, the sheer geographical size and cultural diversity of regions such as the Western Pacific suggests that no single approach may be appropriate throughout the entire region.     

Time preference of small-scale fishers in open access and traditionally managed reef fisheries

Individuals with high discount rates are likely not partial to conservation because they are unwilling to sacrifice short term benefits for potentially higher gains in the future. Many reef fisheries worldwide are open access, and fishers under open access systems are theorized to discount the future at an infinite rate. In contrast, fishers in a customary managed fishery can be expected to be more long term oriented, and thus possibly have lower discount rates. The present study tests this hypothesis by eliciting the discount rates of fishers in an open access small-scale reef fishery, and compares these rates to those of fishers in a customary managed reef fishery. Results indicate that fishers in both open access and traditionally managed reef fisheries have high annual discount rates that are on average over 200%. Contrary to expectations, fishers under an open access system are not associated with higher discount rates compared to customary management. It also appears that a larger proportion of open access fishers are more long-term oriented than those in the customary managed fishery, which is encouraging for the future conservation and sustainability of open access fisheries resources.     

Unreported fishing, hungry people and political turmoil: the recipe for a food security crisis in Madagascar?

Madagascar, the world's fourth largest island, is one of the world's poorest developing countries, and its people depend heavily on marine resources for subsistence and income. Exports of these resources and foreign fishing access agreements are also important, at least from a large-scale economic perspective. In recent years, concerns have been voiced amongst local fishers and industry groups regarding the growth of the country's fishing effort. Despite these concerns, existing knowledge of the scale, composition and trends of Malagasy fisheries remains poor, and there is negligible information regarding unreported catches and illegal fishing in Madagascar's waters. Small-scale fisheries, which are often substantial in developing countries such as Madagascar, are often unreported or underestimated. Unfortunately, fisheries legislations, management plans and foreign fishing access agreements are often influenced by these incomplete data, leading to serious over-estimations of resource availability. This also appears to be the situation in Madagascar, where the reconstruction of total catches by all Malagasy fisheries sectors conducted here showed that total catches between 1950 and 2008 were twice the volume reported by national fisheries agencies. Most importantly, much of the subsistence sector is missing from official statistics, and signs of decline have already been observed in several stocks, suggesting that current levels of catches are likely to be exceeding sustainable yields. This has profound implications for the economic and ecological sustainability of fisheries, as well as food security in a country where people rely heavily on the ocean for their daily protein needs and livelihoods.     

Supply regimes in fisheries

Supply in fisheries is traditionally known for its backward bending nature, owing to externalities in production. Such a supply regime, however, exist only for pure open access fisheries. Since most fisheries worldwide are neither pure open access, nor optimally managed, rather between the extremes, the traditional understanding of supply regimes in fisheries needs modification. This paper identifies through a case study of the East Baltic cod fishery supply regimes in fisheries, taking alternative fisheries management schemes and mesh size limitations into account. An age-structured Beverton–Holt based bio-economic supply model with mesh sizes is developed. It is found that in the presence of realistic management schemes, the supply curves are close to vertical in the relevant range. Also, the supply curve under open access with mesh size limitations is almost vertical in the relevant range, owing to constant recruitment. The implications are that the effects on supply following from e.g. trade liberalisation and reductions of subsidies are small in several and probably most fisheries worldwide.     

Spatial fisheries management: A framework for multi-objective qualitative assessment

In many circumstances, quantitative assessment of fisheries management options is either impossible due to data deficiencies or impractical given the size of the fishery. Quantitative analysis of spatial management options in particular is complicated, as information on spatial fleet and stock dynamics is often unavailable and spatial models are difficult to construct. In this paper, a qualitative framework is presented that aids in the analysis of alternative spatial management options in coastal fisheries. The framework combines expert opinion and the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to determine which options perform best taking into account the multiple objectives inherent in fisheries management.     

Tangled lines in New Zealand's quota management system: The process of including recreational fisheries

This article uses New Zealand as a case study of processes relating to the inclusion of recreational fisheries in modern fisheries management systems based on Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). The New Zealand case highlights challenges governments often meet when attempting to integrate the recreational sector into fisheries management, including: (a) resistance to restrictions on what has historically been free-of-charge public access to fish for recreational purposes and (b) the fragmented character of the recreational sector, which makes it difficult to have recreational interests attend to their management role and responsibilities.     

Recent developments in Korean fisheries management

Korean fisheries face stock depletion and enforcement problems even after various fisheries management tools have been used for 50 years to manage the fisheries. Because of these problems, self-control management has been introduced into Korean fisheries led by the central government since 2001.This paper analyzes the characteristics of 79 model communities (2002) which have introduced Self-control Management Project (SMP) as their fisheries management system. Based on the characteristics of 79 model communities, we categorize Korean SMPs into 3 types: fishing village community model (I), fishing gear community (aquaculture (II-1) and coastal and offshore fishery (II-2)) and large-scale community (III). This paper also provides alternative policies to alleviate problems in different types of communities and to expand and more firmly establish the SMP in Korean fisheries.     

Small-scale marine fisheries policy in Vietnam

Vietnam's marine fisheries are considered to be small scale and are concentrated in coastal near-shore waters. This has resulted in heavy pressure on near-shore fisheries resources. Near-shore fisheries are considered by fishers and the government to be over-exploited, causing hardship for many coastal communities. This paper reviews and analyzes changes in policy towards small-scale fisheries in Vietnam over the last two decades. The primary issues facing the small-scale fisheries in Vietnam are to restructure the near-shore fisheries and to address over-capacity. Recommended actions include improved fisheries statistics, resources for provincial fisheries staff, and a coordinated and integrated approach involving a mixed strategy of resource management; resource restoration; economic and community development; and new governance arrangements.     

北冰洋公海渔业权益争端的博弈分析——基于环北极国家视角

北冰洋公海尚处于冰封状态,但气候变暖、海冰加速融化使未来公海出现新渔场成为可能,其战略价值因而得到国际关注。当前,环北极国家已率先展开渔业权益争夺。为分析北冰洋公海渔业事务的国际走势,文章基于博弈论思想,构建非对称懦夫博弈模型及古诺模型来模拟和探究环北极国家在渔业利益争夺中的合作或冲突行为,研究得出:现阶段北冰洋公海渔业权益争端主要表现为渔业管理权的争夺,在该博弈中,非北冰洋沿岸国采取退让策略,沿岸国采取进攻策略,可以达到进化稳定均衡;一旦公海具备捕鱼条件,争端将演化为开发模式选择的博弈,此时,北冰洋沿岸国采取合作开发策略可以有效保护公海渔业资源,并实现国家的长期利益。     

Constraints on community participation in salmon fisheries management in Northwest Russia

Salmon fishing used to be the primary source of income in many rural areas of Arkhangelsk oblast in northwest Russia. People who settled in the area received a name Pomory, from Russian po moriu, meaning by sea, because their subsistence activities became marine fishing and hunting and seafaring. Local fisheries have undergone significant changes as post-Soviet Russia embraced the market economy and the state introduced fishing concessions. The current Russian law only allows fishing for salmon through officially registered recreational or commercial fisheries. Both these options are often either unavailable or unaffordable to rural dwellers, which leaves them with limited or no legal access to their traditional salmon fisheries. There has been a growing concern for protecting communities’ fishing rights among wider society in Arkhangelsk oblast. City activists promoted Pomory identity and appealed to the Russian government to grant Pomory an indigenous status to secure their access to fisheries. Although Pomor activism did not reach most of its proclaimed goals, it has contributed to promoting the image of Arkhangelsk oblast as a homeland to Pomor fishing. This image has played an important part in what Arkhangelsk authorities have called socially-oriented fisheries management. Officials have made good attempts to better accommodate rural communities’ access to fishing resources. Yet, these attempts have failed to include fishermen as active participants in the process. This paper looks at constraints on community participation in fisheries management in Russia. It considers both historical and contemporary reasons for the low participation of local community in fisheries management.     

The context of policy design for existing community-based fisheries management systems in the Pacific Islands

Community-based fisheries management is being widely promoted as an alternative to centralized systems based on the familiar bioeconomic models that have manifestly failed to prevent a near catastrophic overexploitation of fish stocks worldwide. The Pacific Island Region probably contains the world’s greatest concentration of still-functioning traditional community-based systems for managing coastal-marine fisheries and other resources.It has been frequently asserted that many such traditional systems provide both a firm foundation for future coastal fisheries management in the Pacific Islands Region, as well as a conceptual framework for managing fisheries elsewhere. Although now seemingly self-evident to fisheries development “experts”, such assertions remain largely unverified.Whereas it is a relatively straightforward task to distil basic “design principles” from a sample of systems, it is far more complex to analyze the multi-sectoral national environment in which they function, especially when their history is taken into account. In other words, it is far less widely appreciated that many contemporary community-based fisheries management systems are the end products of a long process of change and adaptation to external pressures and constraints.In this article I address some of the broader contextual issues that should be appreciated in policymaking with respect to a potential modern role for traditional management systems in general, and in the analysis of a future role for any given system. First, the principal external factors that have caused change in systems are described and exemplified. The recognition of the potential role of existing community-based fisheries systems, and attempts to act on it, is summarized for some Pacific Island nations, with a focus on the complex problem of reconciling customary and statutory legal systems. In the final section I examine three principal national policy alternatives regarding the potential role of existing local fisheries management systems, together with three main criteria for determining whether or not a system can be adapted to fulfill modern requirements.     

Gender,fisheries and development

Although West African fisheries have been the subject of considerable study, little attention has paid to the role of gender in the development process and, more specifically, the work done by women in the overall management of fisheries. Lack of attention to the gender dimension of fisheries management can result in policy interventions missing their target of creating sustainable livelihoods at the community level. There is little doubt that fishing-dependent communities have a vital role to play in the overall development process of many coastal West African States, but without a complete understanding of the complexity of gender roles, the goal of sustainable livelihoods is unlikely to be achieved. In a bid to improve knowledge about gender roles in fishing communities, and to provide policy makers with some guidance as to where interventions might be most useful, a workshop was held in Cotonou, Benin (West Africa) in December 2003. This paper provides a brief introduction to the theory on gender and fisheries development and then goes on to report the findings of the workshop. The most significant conclusion is that policy interventions which help strengthen institutional capacity in coastal artisanal communities would have the greatest over all impact. A move toward collecting gender and fisheries disaggregated data would also help expand existing knowledge about what are often marginal and isolated economic sectors.     

Management of the Kenyan coast

We describe the changes in the management of marine resources in Kenya from traditional management, through the era of marine protected areas and the fisheries sector, towards the initial developments of an integrated coastal area management system, which has only been active since the early 1990s. The first meetings between sectors were held in the mid-1990s where the responsibilities of management were agreed upon and from which a number of memorandums were initiated as part of the integrative process that was lead by the Coast Development Authority. Two integrated coastal management (ICM) pilot projects started in the mid- to late 1990s were undertaken to test the effectiveness of the process in two tourist beaches north of Mombasa and later Diani. These ICM programs primarily focused on infrastructural development and resource access issues and participants needed to be reminded that that the objectives of the ICM process were to improve natural resource management and protect biodiversity. There was also the problem that government and the larger economic interests were involved in policy and planning but the poor and associated communities were often marginalized because they lacked effective formal organizations and finances to represent them. The financial support for projects prior to 2003 was generally less than US $150 000 and this and the poverty of the institutions and difficulties of establishing financial sustainability limited the programs and their problem solving. Nonetheless, there has been sustained progress and lessons learned concerning interactions with stakeholders, zoning of activities, linkages among groups, and improvements in the environment that should form the basis for further integration and solutions.     

The evolution of high-seas fisheries management in the North-east Atlantic

The paper describes the development of high-seas fisheries management in the north-east Atlantic, with reference to the north-east Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) created in 1959. Three distinct phases are identified: the first, characterised by narrow coastal state jurisdiction and the establishment of regional commissions for high-seas fisheries; the second, by the extension of coastal state authority to 200 miles and the reduction in the scope for international management; and the third by the revival of international management following the UN Agreement in 1995. The implications for the past, present and future roles of NEAFC are discussed.