Fisheries Management Institutions Research Articles

Evaluating a science-based decision support tool used to prioritize brook charr conservation project proposals in the eastern United States

Declines in brook charr (Salvelinus fon- tinalis) throughout its historic eastern United States of America (U.S.) range prompted the formation of the Eastern Brook Trout (Charr) Joint Venture (Joint Venture) whose mandate is to restore these charr by working cooperatively at a range-wide, regional- scale. Joint Venture habitat projects in the U.S. are initiated by local community-based organizations, assisted by fisheries management institutions, and funded through the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. In order to assist with ranking these community-based proposals for available funding, the Joint Venture designed a quantitative scoring method as a decision support tool that addressed range-wide threats that were documented to limit brook charr production. These threats include habitat modification (e.g.,

Effectiveness of participatory planning for community management of fisheries in Bangladesh

This study provides statistical evidence that support for community-based management of resources was more effective when initiated through a process known as participatory action plan development (PAPD). Thirty-six sites were studied where community management of fisheries was facilitated by NGOs. All involved community participation and establishing local fisheries management institutions. However, communities were able to take up more conservation-related interventions and faced fewer conflicts in the 18 sites where a PAPD was the basis for collective action and institution development. This indicates the value and effectiveness of adopting good practice in participatory planning, such as PAPD, which helps diverse stakeholders find common problems and solutions for natural resource management.

Generating Value in Habitat-Dependent Fisheries: The Importance of Fishery Management Institutions

<i>This paper models dynamic producer and consumer benefits from improving habitat that supports the North Carolina blue crab fishery. It embeds two fishery management institutions—open access and partial rationalization—in a multispecies, two-patch spatial bioeconomic model with endogenous output price and estuarine eutrophication. Producer benefits from improved environmental quality are higher for the rationalized fishery than for open access. Consumer benefits are larger than producer benefits and are comparable across institutions. However, the total benefits from improving environmental quality are small relative to the benefits from rationalizing the fishery and leaving environmental quality the same.</i> (JEL Q22)

Black Box Production of Paper Fish: An Examination of Knowledge Construction and Validation in Fisheries Management Institutions

In this paper I examine the relationship of institutional structures of governance to the production, acceptance and legitimization of knowledge by various stakeholder groups participating in fisheries management arenas. I focus first on the New England groundfishery where the stock assessments of federal scientists have come under intense criticism by fishermen. As a counterpoint, I examine knowledge production for management purposes in two fisheries where cooperative management institutions have emerged: the Puget Sound region of Washington and the Kuskokwim River watershed of Alaska. Knowledge is produced and legitimated differently by the different stakeholders in the management process. The findings highlight the critical importance of two-way communication, in which stakeholder groups both listen and are listened to, in creating a legitimated and more robust knowledge base with which management decisions can be made.

Opportunities and barriers for industry-led fisheries research

Collaborative research initiatives between New Zealand's fisheries management agencies and commercial fisher organisations are commonplace. This can be attributed to a combination of fisheries management institutions and processes that on the one hand create incentives for commercial fishers to take increasing responsibility for fisheries research and on the other hand provide for governance structures that ensure the transparency and integrity of industry-led research. Nevertheless the full potential of collaborative research initiatives has yet to be realised. Collaborative research has been an indirect outcome of New Zealand's rights-based fisheries management framework and until recently there has been little effort to explicitly provide for it in Government policy. The financial and management capacity of commercial fisher organisations must also be developed if collaborative research is to become a core function of these organisations. High expectations have been created for collaborative research and failure to address key issues will undermine the potential and hence legitimacy of collaborative research involving commercial fishers and other fisheries stakeholders.

ECONOMIC PERSPECTIVES ON NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES MANAGEMENT

Contemporary conventional wisdom holds that fishery management in the US has not conserved many of our fishery resources. Many observers cite the New England groundfish fishery as a clear case of mismanagement that has resulted in over exploitation. We present evidence that management institutions have failed to improve economic performance and conserve resources in New England fisheries. In our view, the prospects for successful management are not good unless some fundamental changes are made. We identify two major obstacles to effective conservation and management and conclude with recommendations for reforming our fishery management institutions.

Change without redistribution: an institutional perspective on South Africa's new fisheries policy

In 1994 the new South African government started a policy process in the fisheries sector. It was acknowledged that although the fisheries resources were reasonably well managed, the distribution of wealth and power within the fisheries was extremely uneven in favour of a few white-owned companies. A large national commission (FPDC) with members from all stakeholders worked out recommendations that later were turned into a White Paper and eventually into a new fisheries act. South Africa's new fisheries policy is based on a modified ITQ system, which to a large degree accommodates existing owners. New entrants have been offered a small part of the available resources and some state support in a transitional period — a result falling far short of the expectations of the formerly dispossessed groups. Our key concern is to explain why institutions, in this case fisheries management institutions, change so slowly, even in a “revolutionary” context. The evident paradox in the case of South Africa is that the state, which was supposed to represent “the solution” in terms of a new and more equitable fisheries policy has turned into being “the problem”.

Living with uncertainty in fisheries: analytical methods, management priorities and the Canadian groundfishery experience

Uncertainties in fisheries arise in three principal forms: random fluctuations, uncertainty in parameter estimates and states of nature, and structural uncertainty that reflects a basic lack of knowledge about the nature of the fishery system. The first two of these have been addressed quantitatively through a variety of analytical tools, reviewed briefly in this paper. On the other hand, structural uncertainty poses a greater challenge; having proven rather immune to analytical treatment, it appears to be best addressed through the design of fishery management itself, to ensure that such management is robust, adaptive and precautionary. The paper discusses the nature of these three management characteristics, and illustrates their importance through an analysis of Atlantic Canada's groundfish fishery and its collapse in the early 1990s. The groundfishery is also used as a case study for exploring the extent to which fishery institutions provide a framework for `living with uncertainty'; specifically, an analysis is provided of fishery management and conservation institutions (notably the Fisheries Resource Conservation Council) that have been established in response to the groundfish collapse.