Abstract
Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURF) are considered to aid to the sustainability of small-scale fisheries, because they remove the perverse incentives, which sustain the tragedy of the commons. Nevertheless, a comprehensive evaluation of the implementation of TURFs is lacking. Chile offers a unique opportunity, because an extensive system for benthic fisheries has been implemented, with at present hundreds of TURFs along the coast. This study analyzes the sustainability of all the TURFs (109) along a stretch of 800 Km of coast, using population, productive, economic, social and institutional indicators. The information was obtained from the technical reports and monitoring each TURF has to prepare for the authority each year, databases the authority has and interviews with artisanal fishermen. Three states of TURFs were identified: unsustainable, poorly sustainable and sustainable. The resources exploited in the analyzed TURFs are the chilean abalon or “loco” (Concholepas concholepas), the key hole limpets “lapa negra” (Fissurella latimarginata), and “lapa rosada” (Fissurella cumingi), the kelps “huiro negro” (Lessonia berteroana), and “huiro palo” (Lessonia trabeculata), the surf clam “Macha” (Mesodesma donacium), the scallop “ostion del norte” (Argopecten purpuratus) and the seaurchin “erizo rojo” (Loxechinus albus). Results show general low performance for population, production and economic indicators, but good performance for social and institutional indicators. Overall the system shows a poor sustainability, which principally means unstable populations, landings and income in most of the TURFs. This result, which differs from most published analyses of the system, is explained mainly by the impossibility to reach a stable fishery through management of so small areas, given the natural variability of the species and the general environment. The good performance of some TURFs cannot be explained by a single factor, which is consistent with the complexity of the system, which makes it little amenable for proper management.
Highlights
Fisheries worldwide are considered to exhibit increasing levels of overexploitation, with tendencies towards global collapse (Pauly, 2009; Watson & Pauly, 2013)
The objective of this study is to evaluate the Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURF) system in Chile after 20 years of operation, analyzing its performance in two regions, comprising ca 500 Km of the Chilean coast, and including the regions in which the system mainly started in the nineties
The result that TURFs show a poor performance in most ambits, with decreasing or heavily fluctuating stocks, captures and income, but better performance regarding social and institutional indicators, could explain why the system is maintained regardless of not being sustainable overall, and not doing what would be expected from a fisheries management perspective: maintain a sustainable production and income for user
Summary
Fisheries worldwide are considered to exhibit increasing levels of overexploitation, with tendencies towards global collapse (Pauly, 2009; Watson & Pauly, 2013). New forms of governance have been implemented, assigning fishing rights and advancing to co-management, which seek to generate the necessary incentives to establish responsible and more sustainable fisheries. In open access fisheries exploitation pressure tends to exceed the productive capacity of the environment (FAO, 1992), ending with the overexploitation of resources (Bennett & Dearden, 2014). This has been considered by Hardin (1968) as an inevitable tragedy in the context of common property and open access, and resources should be converted into private property or strict government regulations should be instituted. Despite this has been a widely used argument in the literature in order to justify property right assignments, regulations and/or management strategies in fisheries and environmental issues (Zamora-Muñoz, 2019), it has been demonstrated by Ostrom (1990) that there are commons which are successfuly managed by local
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