Restoration heralds’ new management challenges for coral reefs

Abstract

The allocation and management of spatially-bound property rights is a central policy instrument used in the management of natural resources in high-income, especially western nations. In such nations the establishment of strong property rights regimes is considered to be one of the main factors attributing to the advancement of western nations during the last two centuries. Such rights feature attributes including exclusivity, transferability and enforceability for rights-holders. The design of these packages of rights are tied to specific types of assets or land and sea uses. Therefore, as uses change, the specifics of the package of rights often change in response. The activity of coral reef restoration is expanding rapidly in response to the continued loss of coral cover, health and condition of the world’s coral reefs. Therefore by definition, as this activity increases globally the management regimes used to govern coral reefs will in many cases need to adapt to this increasing activity. It is therefore expected that increasing calls to strengthen rights-regimes will begin to occur as many reef restoration activities, despite mostly occurring in low-income nations, are led from or by entities from high-income and mostly western nations who are accustomed to strong rights-based management. However, management approaches in many low-income nations that host coral reefs are often based on more customary and traditional management instruments. Therefore, communities hosting increased reef restoration activities need to consider very carefully how best to manage these activities as they increase in order to avoid unwanted and unintended consequences of the imposition of governance and management instruments widely used in the western world.