The effectiveness of community-based governance of small-scale fisheries, Ngazidja island, Comoros (original) (raw)
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Marine Policy, 2016
Management of small-scale fisheries in developing countries is a challenging endeavor with debates over which actors are most effective. This study identifies and describes the roles of community, government, and other actors in management of small-scale fisheries in the Comoros (Western Indian Ocean). Actor roles in management as well as social perceptions and ecological indicators of management performance were investigated through stakeholder interviews and ecological surveys at 20 sites, including sites within and outside a Marine Protected Area. The weak boundaries and memberships observed in the fisheries coincided with an open access situation at a few sites, but the majority of sites maintained fisher buy-in and effective management through community engagement, horizontal networks of multicommunity partnerships, and state support. This study also found that third party actors such as nongovernmental organizations initiated effective management by providing environmental education, building capacity, and facilitating communication among stakeholders and community members. Further investigation of how to facilitate adoption of appropriate actor roles and foster relationships among actors is recommended to ensure effective and enduring management.
Community Based Fisheries Management: Institutional Options for Empowering Fisher Communities
2007
This report sheds light on the diversity of approaches adopted by the various project partners, along with lessons learned during the Community Based Fisheries Management Project (CBFM-2). CBFM 2 was the second phase of an action research project designed to establish whether the sustainable management of publicly owned and private water bodies can be carried out by community groups consisting largely of poor fishers. The first phase implemented by the Department of Fisheries, with the assistance of the WorldFish Center and supported by the Ford Foundation, demonstrated that the approach was possible in a limited number of water bodies. The second phase, with assistance from the DFID-UK, involved a much greater range of water bodies (target 120, final number 116) with a range of partners -- the Department of Fisheries (DoF), the implementing NGOs, Banchte Shekha, BRAC, CARITAS, CNRS, CRED, GHARONI, Proshika, SDC, SHISUK, and the specialist NGOs, BELA for legal assistance and FemCom ...
The discourse on solutions to address small-scale fisheries concerns in the Pacific tends to focus heavily on community-based forms of co-management. Decentralizing governance to the community level permits responsiveness and specificity to local dynamics, not possible through hierarchical governance. It also allows for proper recognition of the (often legally backed) customary rights of local resource owners, common throughout the Pacific. Partnerships between communities and governments, NGOs or research organizations draw together knowledge, expertise and institutions to develop and implement co-management arrangements. In exploring Solomon Islands as a case study we find that interactions between community-based, co-management (a form of co-governance), and self-governance (particularly customary institutions) are fundamental for contextualizing and ‘fitting’ management to the community level – and that this helps to account for the exceptionally high social and ecological diversity and complexity of Solomon Islands. Community-based, co-management represents a hybrid of traditional and contemporary, local and higher level images, instruments and actions. Interactions between community-based, co-management and hierarchical governance can bolster and inform local management and governance solutions. This is particularly true (and necessary) for pressures (e.g., population growth and commercial, export-orientated exploitation) that extend beyond the local scale or have not before been encountered by customary institutions. While these relations can increase governability, they can also be contradictory and undermining, particularly when objectives are dynamic and differ across scales. Finding the ‘best mix’ of governance modes and responses is a moving and elusive target. Nonetheless, we conclude that while community-based, co-management is an appropriate and fitting mode for increasing the governability of Pacific small-scale fisheries in some contexts, in its current form it alone is not up to the task of realizing fisheries sustainability objectives. We recommend that small-scale fisheries policy more explicitly seeks, and tests, new forms of governance interactions amidst the diversity and complexity of Pacific small-scale fisheries.
International Journal of the Commons, 2019
Costa Rica is supporting Marine Areas of Responsible Fishing (AMPRs) to enable small-scale fishing communities to apply for exclusive harvesting and management rights within spatially delimited areas under a co-management policy framework. Communities need to self-organize their own fishing association and develop a fishing management plan (POP) to apply. Seven AMPRs have been established in the Gulf of Nicoya, highlighting Costa Rica's efforts to follow the FAO Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines, but all face collective action challenges to develop and achieve common goals and implementation. In this article, we conduct a qualitative comparative analysis by applying the Social-Ecological System Framework (SESF) as a tool to identify the social and ecological conditions influencing collective action and co-management in three AMPRs in the Gulf of Nicoya, and we compare the similarities and differences between them. Our findings show that all three AMPRs face collective action challenges for different reasons. Nonetheless, some commonalities exist. Common drivers have motivated collective action in the creation of the AMPRs, including the desire to restrict certain types of fishing gears due to perceptions of resource scarcity and high dependence on local resources. Variables such as monitoring and sanctioning mechanisms, strong leadership and the economic hetero-geneity of actors positively influence collective action in management. However, there are also variables hindering collective action, such as mistrust among actors, internal conflicts, lack of governmental support and resource unit mobility. Our findings suggest that AMPRs are a promising and potentially effective govern-ance strategy because they can empower marginalized small-scale fishing communities and bring them into national development processes. However, there is an evident need for more state and local community investment into capacity building for self-organization and deliberation processes that can better enable AMPRs to move beyond "paper parks", and towards being a practically useful governance strategy to showcase Costa Rica's commitment to FAO Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines. Adapting the AMPR model to fit the social-ecological context of each community is critical for success, despite the perceived similarity between the AMPRs.
Environmental Practice, 2009
the practice of participatory decision making for promoting community development in fishing communities in Mozambique. This study covers the evolution of institutions and its impact at the household and community level particularly after the structural adjustments of 1987, which promoted new institutions at central and local levels, as well as the practice of participatory decision making. We combined participatory appraisals, focus-group discussions, and participant observation methods with quantitative data from structured surveys of representative samples for data gathered. Assisted by mode-of-regulation model and community power theory, our results demonstrated that since the policy shift in 1990, and particularly after 1994 (when public participation and decision making were introduced), central and local institutions were created, with some communities showing better results than others. By working together and depending on each other as social support networks, as well as by working with the government, people within fishing communities are generating secondary benefits by jointly building social infrastructure and community consensus to better cope with the impacts of adverse social and economic stresses that often occur in coastal regions of Mozambique. Specific stakeholder perspectives are accessed and analyzed for four time periods from 1987 to 2006.
Environmental Management, 2015
Small-scale fisheries are important for preventing poverty, sustaining local economies, and rural livelihoods, but tend to be negatively impacted by traditional forms of management and overexploitation among other factors. Marine Areas for Responsible Fishing (Á reas Marinas de Pesca Responsable, AMPR) have emerged as a new model for the co-management of small-scale fisheries in Costa Rica, one that involves collaboration between fishers, government agencies, and NGOs. The primary objective of this paper is to elucidate some of the key variables that influence collective action among small-scale fishers in Tárcoles, a community in the Gulf of Nicoya. We examined collective action for the formation of a local marketing cooperative and participation in management through the AMPR. We apply the social-ecological framework as a diagnostic and organizational tool in the analysis of several types of qualitative data, including interviews with key informants, informal interviews, legal documents, and gray literature. Findings illustrate the importance of socioeconomic community attributes (e.g., group size, homogeneity, previous cooperation), as well as that of social (e.g., equity) and ecological (e.g., improved stocks) outcomes perceived as favorable by actors. In addition, our work demonstrates the importance of certain kinds of external NGOs for facilitating and sustaining collective action. Keywords Fisheries management Á Collective action Á Co-management Á Small-scale fisheries Á Marine protected areas Á Common-pool resources Á Social-ecological systems
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LOCAL MARINE RESOURCE MANAGEMENT: The Role of Fijian Villagers in Co-Managing a Small-Scale Fishery
This case study presents findings from Gau Island, Fiji, on a local initiative to reinforce community-based management and make it more applicable to contemporary challenges. Local communities are becoming increasingly involved in coastal marine resource management, yet little remains known about the local foundations for long-term success of this involvement or about how resilience of fishing grounds to conservation and user needs can be achieved. Sociological methods were employed to investigate (co-)management measures recently put in place, key stakeholders' roles in addressing these, and their perceptions of them. Findings from the research show that the choice of measures and responsibility for their implementation still rest with a few key individuals only. Perceptions of the communities under study of the implemented management measures were generally positive. However, more information for decision-making and continuous support for empowering the communities in terms of ecological understanding and enforcement of measures are required for strengthening the present local management regime.
Over the past decades there have been gradual shifts in fisheries governance in the Caribbean from one that is “top-down” and centralised to one that is “participatory” and devolved. This shift in governance comes from the recognition of the potential benefits to be gained from greater involvement of stakeholders in the decision-making and management regime. This study examines three approaches to fisheries co-management or participatory management in Antigua and Barbuda, from the perspective of a fisheries manager and a fisherfolk leader. The approaches identified with respect to co-management were: consultative (where government consult but have the final decision), collaborative (where government and stakeholders share decisions) and delegated co-management (where government delegate powers to stakeholders to make decisions). Case studies were used to: 1) identify the most appropriate governance approach based on the nature of the fishery; 2) identify the necessary conditions for successful implementa-tion of a co-management system; and 3) examine the effectiveness and cost efficiency (where possible) of the various approaches. Some of the main lessons learned were: 1) the absence of strong fisherfolk cooperatives or associations makes it difficult for the central management authority to devolve its power; 2) general decline in community structure and institutions of local governance (e.g., village councils) create serious challenges to the implementation of a co-management system; and 3) the size of a community has implications for cost efficiency and effectiveness (in terms of compliance with management decisions), in the implementation of a delegated co-management system.