Abstract
To halt degradation of benthic resources in Chile, management areas (MAs) were set up under the Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) framework in the late 1990s. Integrated into the global market, MAs have since expanded along the Chilean coast, involving thousands of small-scale artisanal fishers. This paper analyses how economic criteria relates to social and ecological performance of Chilean MAs, by applying TURFs, commons and co-management theory to two cases: MAs Peñuelas and Chigualoco. To collect and analyse data Participatory Rural Appraisal tools, interviews and official statistics and reports were used. Our results show that MAs’ economic benefits are connected to fluctuations on the global market. Adapting to changing world market prices then becomes paramount. TURFs’ main goal is ecological conservation, but achieving this seems to depend on meeting fishers’ livelihoods; failure to do so likely results in failure to meet conservation objectives. A serious weakness of the Chilean TURFs system is that it does not pay enough attention to fishers’ livelihoods or to the global market context. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship between good economic benefits and social sustainability. But irrespective of economic performance, fisher organizations have been empowered and gained increased resource control with the TURFs system. At policy level, a differentiated and more flexible system could be more suitable for existing heterogeneous MAs and their particular economic, social and ecological challenges. For improved economic sustainability and resource conservation, a system with multiple-species managing MAs could be promoted as well. Finally, to enhance theory of commons, co-management and TURFs, we argue for greater acknowledgement of TURFs’ social benefits in addition to economic assessments. More attention should also be paid to global market conditions of which MAs are dependent and in which they are embedded: macrostructures that are seldom considered in the analyses.
Highlights
Seventy percent of aquatic and coastal systems worldwide are fully or overexploited (FAO 2007), making it urgent to find sustainable alternatives that pay attention to needs of resource users managing coastal resources
Artisanal fishers in Chilean management areas (MAs) under the Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) system take care of resources as collectives, which means deciding together when to harvest and taking the responsibility to negotiate the price of the harvest
Irrespective of whether the poor economic benefits of MAs are a failure of the TURF policy, of ecological conditions, or of market mechanisms, the current situation presents a major challenge to moving towards ecological sustainability
Summary
Seventy percent of aquatic and coastal systems worldwide are fully or overexploited (FAO 2007), making it urgent to find sustainable alternatives that pay attention to needs of resource users managing coastal resources. The commoditization of the high value shellfish loco (Concholepas concholepas), the economically most important gastropod for the global market created a ‘resource crisis’. This led authorities, fishers and scientists to adopt under the co-management framework called Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) after more than a decade of failed regulatory measures to halt degradation of benthic resources during the 1980s. MAs are renewed every four years subject to compliance with a series of regulations and demands (Meltzoff et al 2002; Orenzans et al 2005; González et al 2006; San Martin et al 2010) Since their implementation in the late 1990s, management areas (MA) have expanded along the Chilean coast, involving thousands of small-scale artisanal fishers. We use TURFs’ institutional designer Christy (1992), Ostrom’s (1999, 2000) CPR theory and co-management theorist Berkes et al (2001) to undertake this analysis, which involves the examination of two MA case studies. Christy (1992:2) in his classic work state that TURFs should be 1) “sufficient in size ... so that use outside of the territory does not significantly diminish the value of use within”. Ostrom (1999) and Berkes et al (2001) are of the view that 2) transformation and monitoring and enforcement costs incurred by appropriators in institutional governance and management of commons should not exceed benefits from participating in and complying with community-based management, on which we draw
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