Stakeholders’ participation in the fisheries management decision-making process: Fishers’ perceptions of participation

Public participation is a key ingredient of good governance and there are many advantages of involving stakeholders in the decision-making process. The European Commission identified the lack of stakeholder involvement as one of the major weaknesses of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). As such, the 2002 Reform of the CFP aimed to improve its system of governance by increasing the involvement of stakeholders in decision-making. Over the last decade, Scottish inshore waters have seen an increase in management measures focused on involving fishers, delegating responsibilities and decentralizing management. The present document investigates commercial inshore fishers’ perceptions of participation in the decision-making process and attitudes towards a new management regime – the Inshore Fisheries Groups (IFGs) – which aims to increase participation in and decentralization of inshore fisheries management. A survey was conducted, through face-to-face interviews, and ordered logistic and multiple regression models created to identify which characteristics influence fishers’ perceptions and attitudes. The present analysis concluded that, 5 years subsequent to the reform of the CFP, the majority of inshore fishers perceive themselves not to be consulted or involved in the decision-making process. However, and despite the fact that fishers are not completely certain of the potential of the IFGs to increase their participation in the management process, they have an overall positive attitude towards their implementation.     

中国参与PICES科学活动发展历程及展望

北太平洋海洋科学组织(PICES)是国际海洋交流与合作的重要平台,1992年PICES成立以来,中国海洋领域科学家积极参与PICES发起的各项科学活动,促使中国海洋人才的科研能力和国际交往能力得到有效提升。文章回顾了中国参与PICES科学活动历经的3个重要发展阶段,从初期参与到深入参与再到目前的全面参与阶段,总结了各阶段PICES中国工作取得的进展与可喜成绩;阐述了参与PICES科学活动对中国海洋科学发展的积极推动作用;对未来PICES中国工作的重点方向提出了建章立制、统筹协调、群策群力、发挥所长和加大宣传力度等展望。     

Equity implications of marketing ecosystem services in protected areas and rural communities: Case studies from Meso-America

This paper investigates the equity implications of marketing ecosystem services in protected areas and rural communities. We use a three-tiered equity framework to analyse four distinct efforts to commercialise watershed recharge and carbon dioxide fixation by forests in Meso-America. We show that project development and participation are strongly mediated by organisational networks, as well as existing rights of access over land and forest resources. We demonstrate that procedural fairness diverges strongly when initiatives are implemented in protected areas or in rural communities. While in the former reserve managers and intermediaries concentrate all decision-making power, initiatives working with rural communities are able to integrate more significantly service providers in management decisions. Marketing ecosystem services in protected areas contributes to reduce expenditure rates for protected area management, but also results in less equitable outcomes, as rural communities and forest resource users become excluded from receiving sustained development benefits. When ecosystem services are commercialised by rural farmers, payments do not cover opportunity costs but act as a significant incentive for participation in most cases. Ecosystem service providers also benefit from complementary project activities, such as forest management training and agricultural extension support. We argue that limited economic impact and existing inequities in decision-making and outcomes can be explained by problems of institutional design, in particular the inability of markets and payments for ecosystem services to account for context-related factors, such as property rights.     

浅析湿地公园的社区参与

湿地公园承担着保护生态思想的传播责任,而湿地公园的建设、保护和管理需要社会共同的关注和参与。社区作为生态旅游文化的营销终端,可通过监督、宣传等参与活动与湿地公园形成互动,对城市、湿地公园和社区居民部具有十分重要的积极作用。本文列举了国外湿地公园的群众参与情况,提出构建社区参与机制的原则,以供有关部门和单位借鉴。     

Thirteen plus one: a comparison of global climate policy architectures

We critically review the Kyoto Protocol and thirteen alternative policy architectures for addressing the threat of global climate change. We employ six criteria to evaluate the policy proposals: environmental outcome, dynamic efficiency, cost-effectiveness, equity, flexibility in the presence of new information, and incentives for participation and compliance. The Kyoto Protocol does not fare well on a number of criteria, but none of the alternative proposals fare well along all six dimensions. We identify several major themes among the alternative proposals: Kyoto is “too little, too fast”; developing countries (DCs) should play a more substantial role and receive incentives to participate; implementation should focus on market-based approaches, especially those with price mechanisms; and participation and compliance incentives are inadequately addressed by most proposals. Our investigation reveals tensions among several of the evaluative criteria, such as between environmental outcome and efficiency, and between cost-effectiveness and incentives for participation and compliance.     

Japan’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Jishu-bosai-soshiki</Emphasis> community activities: analysis of its role in participatory community disaster risk management

Jishu-bosai-soshiki, or Jishubo for short, with a literal meaning of “autonomous organization for disaster reduction”, is a neighborhood association for disaster preparedness and rescue activity. In this paper, the role of Jishubo in the context of participatory disaster management in Japan is discussed. Although the formation of Jishubo is not legally mandated, local governments exercise a great deal of persuasion on the inhabitants of their community to organize and participate in disaster management activities. Therefore, participants in Jishubo activities tend to be guided and mobilized with a soft touch by local governments rather than being truly self-motivated, with the objective of reducing disaster risks in their residential areas. There have been several studies on community participatory management conducted in a number of countries, including New Zealand, the USA and Europe, which will serve as a reference in our study. However interesting, the cultural comparison of the “Western” and “Japanese” approaches to community disaster management, is beyond the scope of this paper, the aim of which is to determine a case of community disaster management in Japan. This paper addresses the background behind the development of Jishubo and discusses the uniqueness and limits of this softly mobilized participatory movement in Japan. Based on a case study in Kishiwada City, Osaka, the motivations driving people to participate in disaster management activities organized for Jishubo members is examined. In conclusion, we derive some policy implications and suggest possible approaches for improving the effectiveness of Jishubo and increasing the motivation of people to participate. We also propose that the roles of administrative bodies in Japan, such as non-profit organizations, be better incorporated into community’s participatory disaster reduction activities.     

Fulfilling the promise of participation by not resuscitating the deficit model

'Participation with publics' has been embraced in both government and academic literatures as a necessary but currently unrealized means of governing socio-environmental challenges. This near-universal embrace carries global significance. Long-standing efforts in the context of disaster risk reduction (DRR) provide an opportunity to consider how experts have positioned participation such that it can only fail to empower publics. Using interviews with risk managers, we demonstrate that they impose boundaries on participation via application of a deficit model (DM). Despite continuous calls to make governance more participatory, we explore how the boundaries imposed on participation persist because of how experts are expected to do risk management, and how experts understand their occupations. As a result, meaningful publics-experts interactions are bounded into impossibility. Following demonstration of the DM as the essence of how experts conceive experts-publics interactions, using experts' own suggestions for improving risk reduction, we suggest relationship building as a way of reinvigorating participation. We explore how disaster risk reduction grounded in relationships could overcome existing boundaries, offering an easily-applied reconceptualization for differentiating meaningful from superficial participation, as well as a viable alternative to prevailing participatory methods. Given the intransigence of countless socio-environmental challenges and the need for improved interactions amongst experts-publics, the findings offer a novel pathway that may open an avenue to realizing the promise of participation.     

‘The Hare and the Tortoise’: Lessons from Baltic Sea and Mediterranean Sea governance

Commonly, the Baltic Sea is pictured as a proactive region with a long-standing tradition for cooperation and surrounded by the “greenest” EU countries. In contrast, southern countries often suffer from the “Mediterranean Syndrome” in which the heterogenous socio political situation is given as the “proof” that cooperation would not work. The Marine Strategy Framework Directive adopted by European Union in 2008 is an important step towards ecosystem-based marine management and provides a legal document suggesting marine regions as a scale for cooperation. In this paper, we aim to explore stakeholders׳ perspectives on key factors for good governance at the regional sea level covering the Eastern Baltic States and the south of France. We targeted a broad panel of professionals from different sectors with a political, economic or societal importance in the respective seas. We suggest that Baltic and Mediterranean stakeholders are going through very different stages of governance adjustment fitting the purpose of ecosystem-based marine management. Baltic institutions are well established, which in some way prevents structural analysis of whether the current governance model is the most appropriate reaching GES. In the Mediterranean, the EU strategies faces institutional challenges, which is leading stakeholders to think “out of the box” about what is really needed for implementing ecosystem-based marine management for this sea. It is suggested that a golden opportunity exists at present in the Mediterranean to create a regional platform of cooperation, not only to fit the MSFD implementation, but also to improve governance of the Mediterranean Sea and its environmental status.