Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) are becoming a widely promoted tool to enhance the sustainability of small-scale fisheries. In 1991, Chile established a national coastal TURF policy that gave legal authority to assign exclusive access rights to artisanal fisher organizations. In 2014, there were several hundred TURFs decreed to fisher organizations in different biophysical and socioeconomic settings. To date, research assessing TURF implementation has generally been based on a few case studies and have had mixed results. Here, we present results from a survey of 535 fishers from 55 different artisanal fisher organizations. The survey consisted of three open-ended questions that explore users' perceptions of the main problems, benefits, and improvements concerning assigned TURFs. We also sampled 55 presidents of artisanal fisher organizations to explore how they perceived the accomplishments of TURFs. Main key problems, as perceived by fishers, include increased costs associated with surveillance and poaching, and the variability and sometimes lack of financial returns. Despite strong price drops in exported species, TURFs have provided incentives for innovation and stewardship, and fishers are generally unwilling to relinquish them. In fact, fishers define TURF benefits in multiple dimensions, which include conservation/ ecological and territorial empowerment. Fisher presidents stress that although expectations of economic benefits have not been fully realized, territorial empowerment is a critical benefit. Through the analysis of fishers' perceptions on solutions to TURFs' problems, we highlight the development of stocking activities, combining TURFs with marine reserves, food traceability, and what we call BIO+ seafood— products that have associated biodiversity benefits.

Fishers' perceptions on the Chilean coastal TURF system after two decades: problems, benefits, and emerging needs

Territorial Use Rights for Fisheries (TURFs): State of the art and the road ahead

Climate change is already producing ecological, social, and economic impacts on fisheries, and these effects are expected to increase in frequency and magnitude in the future. Fisheries governance and regulations can alter socio-ecological resilience to climate change impacts via harvest control rules and incentives driving fisher behavior, yet there are no syntheses or conceptual frameworks for examining how institutions and their regulatory approaches can alter fisheries resilience to climate change. We identify nine key climate resilience criteria for fisheries socio-ecological systems (SES), defining resilience as the ability of the coupled system of interacting social and ecological components (i.e., the SES) to absorb change while avoiding transformation into a different undesirable state. We then evaluate the capacity of four fisheries regulatory systems that vary in their degree of property rights, including open access, limited entry, and two types of rights-based management, to increase or inhibit resilience. Our exploratory assessment of evidence in the literature suggests that these regulatory regimes vary widely in their ability to promote resilient fisheries, with rights-based approaches appearing to offer more resilience benefits in many cases, but detailed characteristics of the regulatory instruments are fundamental.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs13280-016-0850-1.pdf

Fisheries regulatory regimes and resilience to climate change

This manuscript is based on a keynote lecture given by Jane Lubchenco at One Planet, One Ocean: The 2nd International Ocean Research Conference, Barcelona, Spain, November 17–21, 2014.

/pdf/solutions-for-recovering-and-sustaining-the-bounty-of-the-1s4fdn6a58.pdf

Solutions for Recovering and Sustaining the Bounty of the Ocean Combining Fishery Reforms, Rights-Based Fisheries Management, and Marine Reserves

Marine ecosystem services are in global decline, which requires new transformational changes in governance to cope with multiple anthropogenic stressors. We perform a systematic literature review of the biodiversity and ecosystem services outcomes of a governance transformation toward comanagement through the allocation of territorial user rights to artisanal fisher associations (TURFs) in Chile. We synthesize the implications of more than 25 years of establishing a TURF policy over ecosystem services. Results show TURFs sustain biodiversity and all typologies of ecosystem services when they are well enforced. Research on provisioning services is most prevalent, however cultural services have been gaining traction with studies assessing the role of leadership, sanctions, and social capital in determining TURF outcomes. The results suggest that TURFs can play an important role in creating social and ecological enabling conditions for local stewardship. While this is encouraging, there is a bias toward positive results and few studies address negative consequences of TURFs aimed at identifying constraints for further development. The review shows that there has been a continuous transition toward interdisciplinary social–ecological research. Research on TURFs faced with drivers of global change and uncertainty are urgently needed, in order to anticipate unintended outcomes and adapt accordingly.

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K. Vera

Papers

Territorial user rights for artisanal fisheries in Chile : intended and unintended outcomes