And encouraging new evidence suggests that most of the world’s fisheries, including small-scale fisheries, which is usually not industrialized and that millions of people depend for food, can be maintained by community-based co.
“Most of the world’s fisheries are not and never will be managed by strong central governments with hierarchical rules and means to enforce them,” said the Uruguayan Nicolas Gutierrez, PhD of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington (USA ) and author of the paper published by Nature this week.
“Our findings show that many fisheries around the world co-managed by communities are well managed under limited central government structures, provided that fishing communities be involved proactively. Community-based co-management is the only realistic solution for most of the world’s fisheries, and is an effective way to conserve water resources and livelihoods of communities dependent on them, “says the researcher.
Mayors and fishing agreements
With this management system the responsibility of the resources are shared between the government and users. On a smaller scale, this may mean that mayors and fishermen from different nations to agree to avoid fishing in each other’s waters.
Examples of larger scale includes the most valuable fisheries of Chile, a mollusc called “crazy” and also known as abalone from Chile. It began growing in 1988 one local fishermen cooperative along a stretch of coast of 4 km, and which today extends an administration area 700 with 20,000 fishermen along 4,000 km of coastline.
Although there are individual case studies co-managed fisheries, this new work uses data from 130 fisheries in 44 developed and developing, and includes items such as marine and freshwater, and various fishing gears and target species.
The statistical analysis shows that co-management often fails unless it has key elements: the presence of prominent leaders in the community and social cohesion, ensuring clear incentives for fishermen, for example, the amount that can capture or area in which to fish, and protected areas, especially when combined with a regulated harvest within or outside the area and when the proposed protected area is controlled by local communities.
“Our results show that additional resources should be allocated to efforts to identify community leaders and build social capital, not just to impose administrative tactics to exclude users,” said Gutierrez.
The Nobel Ostrom was right
The new study confirms the theories of Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel Prize in Economics in 2009 for defying the conventional wisdom that common property is always given as deficient and should be regulated by central authorities or privatized. According to Ostrom, resource users often develop sophisticated mechanisms for decision making and implementation of rules for handling conflicts of interest.
“Elinor Ostrom was right,” says Omar Defeo, a professor at the University of Uruguay, scientific coordinator of the national fisheries administration and co-author Uruguay. “With community-based co-management, fishers are able to self-organize, maintain their resources and achieve sustainable fisheries.”
After reading the article before posting, Ostrom said the work was “fabulous” and said: “It was very exciting to see the findings on the cohesion of the community based on norms, trust, communication, commitment and respect for leaders as the most important attributes that lead to a fisheries co-management success. ”
For the study met Gutiérrez scientific information, government reports and non-governmental organizations, as well as personal interviews with 130 co-managed fisheries. The eight attributes evaluated, ranging from community empowerment towards sustainable catch up to increases in the abundance of fish and prices of what was caught.
The best fishing
With 40% of the fisheries with positive score at 6, 7 or 8 attributes, and another 25% scored positively in 4 or 5, the co-authors argue that community-based co-management “is a great promise for success and sustainability fisheries around the world. ”
Ray Hilborn, Professor of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington and coauthor of the study, participated in another Science article in 2009 in which it was noted that many major industrial fisheries and fisheries ecosystems are increasingly sustainable.
“This new study illustrates the potential for growth in the world to manage sustainable fisheries and appropriate tools for industrial fisheries in countries with strong central governments are very different from those with small-scale fishing or without such strong central government” said the expert.
This work was supported by the National Science Foundation, Ecology Program Fulbright / OAS (Organization of American States) and the Pew Charitable Trusts.
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