An interdisciplinary evaluation of community-based TURF-reserves.
TL;DR: It is found that, overall, reserves have not yet achieved their stated goals of increasing the density of lobster and other benthic invertebrates, nor increasing lobster catches, and these reserves may provide a foundation for establishing additional, larger marine reserves needed to effectively conserve mobile species.
Abstract: Coastal marine ecosystems provide livelihoods for small-scale fishers and coastal communities around the world. Small-scale fisheries face great challenges since they are difficult to monitor, enforce, and manage, which may lead to overexploitation. Combining territorial use rights for fisheries (TURF) with no-take marine reserves to create TURF-reserves can improve the performance of small-scale fisheries by buffering fisheries from environmental variability and management errors, while ensuring that fishers reap the benefits of conservation investments. Since 2012, 18 old and new community-based Mexican TURF-reserves gained legal recognition thanks to a regulation passed in 2012; their effectiveness has not been formally evaluated. We combine causal inference techniques and the Social-Ecological Systems framework to provide a holistic evaluation of community-based TURF-reserves in three coastal communities in Mexico. We find that, overall, reserves have not yet achieved their stated goals of increasing the density of lobster and other benthic invertebrates, nor increasing lobster catches. A lack of clear ecological and socioeconomic effects likely results from a combination of factors. First, some of these reserves might be too young for the effects to show (reserves were 6-10 years old). Second, the reserves are not large enough to protect mobile species, like lobster. Third, variable and extreme oceanographic conditions have impacted harvested populations. Fourth, local fisheries are already well managed, and while reserves may protect populations within its boundaries, it is unlikely that reserves might have a detectable effect in catches. However, even small reserves are expected to provide benefits for sedentary invertebrates over longer time frames, with continued protection. These reserves may provide a foundation for establishing additional, larger marine reserves needed to effectively conserve mobile species.
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01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, a survey of small-scale fishermen in 11 marine protected areas from six countries in the Mediterranean Sea was conducted to evaluate their perceptions of ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance.
Abstract: Local support is important for the longevity of conservation initiatives. The literature suggests that perceptions of ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance will influence levels of local support for conservation. This paper examines these relationships using data from a survey of small‐scale fishermen in 11 marine protected areas from six countries in the Mediterranean Sea. The survey queried small‐scale fishermen regarding perceptions and support for conservation. We constructed composite scores for three categories of perceptions—ecological effectiveness, social impacts, and good governance—and tested the relationship with levels of support using ordinal regression models. While all three factors were positively correlated with support for conservation, perceptions of good governance and social impacts were stronger predictors of increasing support. These findings suggest that employing good governance processes and managing social impacts may be more important than ecological effectiveness for maintaining local support for conservation.
43 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors discuss and analyze key characteristics of Tonga's Special Management Area (SMA) program, including both the mechanisms that have motivated its successful national expansion and its ability to configure no-take reserves in areas that are considered to have high value to resource users.
Abstract: The expansion of coastal marine protected areas can suffer from two key drawbacks: (a) the difficulty of incentivizing local communities to manage areas for conservation when their livelihoods also depend on resource use; and (b) that many protected areas get situated residually, or in locations with limited value for either biodiversity conservation or livelihoods Here, we discuss and analyze key characteristics of Tonga's Special Management Area (SMA) program, including both the mechanisms that have motivated its successful national expansion and its ability to configure no-take reserves in areas that are considered to have high value to resource users Granting communities exclusive access zones in exchange for implementing no-take reserves has encouraged conservation actions while fostering long-term relationships with resources Ensuring no-take reserves occurred within the boundaries of exclusive access zones enabled communities to protect areas of greater extractive values than they would have otherwise We conclude that the success of this program offers a way forward for achieving targets in the global expansion marine protected areas
13 citations
Cites methods from "An interdisciplinary evaluation of ..."
...As with TURF systems established elsewhere (Villaseñor-Derbez et al., 2019), many communities have also developed a sense of pride and ownership over their SMAs and FHRs as well as the program as a whole, and encouraged a sense of belonging and the development of long-term connections with ‘their’ reefs....
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...As with TURF systems established elsewhere (Villaseñor-Derbez et al., 2019), many communities have also developed a sense of pride and ownership over their SMAs and FHRs as well as the program as a whole, and encouraged a sense of belonging and the development of long-term connections with ‘their’…...
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TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined fishers' involvement in ecological monitoring of a marine protected area network in Baja California Sur, Mexico, organized since 2012 by the Mexican non-governmental organization Niparaja.
Abstract: One strategy for ecological monitoring of protected areas involves data collection by local resource users instead of external scientists. Growing support for such programs comes from their potential to both reduce costs and influence how resource users perceive and support protected areas, but their effects on participants are only beginning to be understood. We contribute to this growing research area through an in-depth study of how participants, their close kin, and their peers perceived the individual and community-wide effects of an ecological monitoring program. We examined the case of fishers’ involvement in ecological monitoring of a marine protected area network in Baja California Sur, Mexico, organized since 2012 by the Mexican non-governmental organization Niparaja. Based on in-depth interviews and participant observation in 2016 and 2017, we found that the most salient effect of the program was personal growth. Participants described becoming “more than a fisher” through newly gained civic and environmental awareness, ecological knowledge, and self-confidence in public speaking skills. Respondents also identified health risks from diving and emotional burdens on participants’ families. Overall, other resource users in their communities seem to be supportive through reputational benefits of participants. These effects overlap with but seem more extensive than those documented in other citizen science programs. Environmentality provides a suitable explanation of the processes at play, where the act of monitoring is far more than data collection, intertwining participants’ fortunes (for better or worse) with the political fate of the protected area network itself.
10 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors used statistical matching to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation of dual management systems on coral reef fishes in Tonga, with communities having both full no-take areas and areas of exclusive fishing rights.
Abstract: Combining no-take marine reserves with exclusive access by communities to unreserved waters could provide the required incentives for community management to achieve positive impacts. However, few protected areas have been critically evaluated for their impact, which involves applying counterfactual thinking to predict conditions within protected areas if management had never occurred. Here, we use statistical matching to conduct a rigorous impact evaluation of dual management systems on coral reef fishes in Tonga, with communities having both full no-take areas and areas of exclusive fishing rights. No-take areas generally had positive impacts on the species richness, biomass, density, and size of target reef fish, while exclusive access areas were similar to predicted counterfactual conditions. The latter is likely because overall fishing pressure in exclusive access areas might not actually change, although more fish could be exploited by communities with access rights. Our findings suggest that dual management is effective at incentivizing effective community-based no-take areas for biodiversity conservation and resource management.
8 citations
Cites background from "An interdisciplinary evaluation of ..."
...…use rights for fisheries (TURFs) or locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), are fisheries management tools by which communities or groups of fishers are given distributed or inherited access rights to a portion of the ocean (Gelcich et al., 2012; Jupiter et al., 2014; Villaseñor-Derbez et al., 2019)....
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...Importantly, access restrictions and no-take marine reserves are not mutually exclusive (Jupiter et al., 2014; Villaseñor-Derbez et al., 2019)....
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...Access restrictions, such as found within territorial use rights for fisheries (TURFs) or locally managed marine areas (LMMAs), are fisheries management tools by which communities or groups of fishers are given distributed or inherited access rights to a portion of the ocean (Gelcich et al., 2012; Jupiter et al., 2014; Villaseñor-Derbez et al., 2019)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors theoretically and empirically explore a model of short-term area-based conservation that prioritizes adaptive co-management: temporary areas closed to fishing, designed by the fishers they affect, approved by the government, and adapted every five years.
Abstract: Marine area-based conservation measures including no-take zones (areas with no fishing allowed) are often designed through lengthy processes that aim to optimize for ecological and social objectives. Their (semi) permanence generates high stakes in what seems like a one-shot game. In this paper, we theoretically and empirically explore a model of short-term area-based conservation that prioritizes adaptive co-management: temporary areas closed to fishing, designed by the fishers they affect, approved by the government, and adapted every five years. In this model, no-take zones are adapted through learning and trust-building between fishers and government fisheries scientists. We use integrated social-ecological theory and a case study of a network of such fisheries closures (“fishing refugia”) in northwest Mexico to hypothesize a feedback loop between trust, design, and ecological outcomes. We argue that, with temporary and adaptive area-based management, social and ecological outcomes can be mutually reinforcing as long as initial designs are ecologically ‘good enough’ and supported in the social-ecological context. This type of adaptive management also has the potential to adapt to climate change and other social-ecological changes. This feedback loop also predicts the dangerous possibility that low trust among stakeholders may lead to poor design, lack of ecological benefits, eroding confidence in the tool’s capacity, shrinking size, and even lower likelihood of social-ecological benefits. In our case, however, this did not occur, despite poor ecological design of some areas, likely due to buffering by social network effects and alternative benefits. We discuss both the potential and the danger of temporary area-based conservation measures as a learning tool for adaptive co-management and commoning.
6 citations
References
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Journal Article•
TL;DR: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing; permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and permission notice are preserved on all copies.
Abstract: Copyright (©) 1999–2012 R Foundation for Statistical Computing. Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of this manual provided the copyright notice and this permission notice are preserved on all copies. Permission is granted to copy and distribute modified versions of this manual under the conditions for verbatim copying, provided that the entire resulting derived work is distributed under the terms of a permission notice identical to this one. Permission is granted to copy and distribute translations of this manual into another language, under the above conditions for modified versions, except that this permission notice may be stated in a translation approved by the R Core Team.
272,030 citations
TL;DR: A general framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES.
Abstract: A major problem worldwide is the potential loss of fisheries, forests, and water resources Understanding of the processes that lead to improvements in or deterioration of natural resources is limited, because scientific disciplines use different concepts and languages to describe and explain complex social-ecological systems (SESs) Without a common framework to organize findings, isolated knowledge does not cumulate Until recently, accepted theory has assumed that resource users will never self-organize to maintain their resources and that governments must impose solutions Research in multiple disciplines, however, has found that some government policies accelerate resource destruction, whereas some resource users have invested their time and energy to achieve sustainability A general framework is used to identify 10 subsystem variables that affect the likelihood of self-organization in efforts to achieve a sustainable SES
5,442 citations
State Street Corporation1, University of California, Santa Barbara2, University of Hawaii at Manoa3, Stanford University4, Arizona State University5, Wildlife Conservation Society6, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill7, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration8, Environmental Defense Fund9, Ocean Conservancy10, The Nature Conservancy11, University of Maine12, University of British Columbia13
TL;DR: This article developed an ecosystem-specific, multiscale spatial model to synthesize 17 global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change for 20 marine ecosystems and found that no area is unaffected by human influence and that a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple drivers.
Abstract: The management and conservation of the world's oceans require synthesis of spatial data on the distribution and intensity of human activities and the overlap of their impacts on marine ecosystems. We developed an ecosystem-specific, multiscale spatial model to synthesize 17 global data sets of anthropogenic drivers of ecological change for 20 marine ecosystems. Our analysis indicates that no area is unaffected by human influence and that a large fraction (41%) is strongly affected by multiple drivers. However, large areas of relatively little human impact remain, particularly near the poles. The analytical process and resulting maps provide flexible tools for regional and global efforts to allocate conservation resources; to implement ecosystem-based management; and to inform marine spatial planning, education, and basic research.
5,365 citations
Dalhousie University1, University of Wyoming2, Plymouth Marine Laboratory3, Stockholm University4, Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences5, University of California, Santa Barbara6, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute7, Scripps Institution of Oceanography8, Stanford University9, University of California, Davis10, University of British Columbia11
TL;DR: The authors analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales, concluding that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations.
Abstract: Human-dominated marine ecosystems are experiencing accelerating loss of populations and species, with largely unknown consequences. We analyzed local experiments, long-term regional time series, and global fisheries data to test how biodiversity loss affects marine ecosystem services across temporal and spatial scales. Overall, rates of resource collapse increased and recovery potential, stability, and water quality decreased exponentially with declining diversity. Restoration of biodiversity, in contrast, increased productivity fourfold and decreased variability by 21%, on average. We conclude that marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean's capacity to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations. Yet available data suggest that at this point, these trends are still reversible.
3,672 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the effect of the increase in the minimum wage in New Jersey and Pennsylvania was investigated. And the authors found that restaurants that were initially paying $5.00 per hour or more (and were therefore largely unaffected by the new law) had the same employment growth as stores in Pennsylvania, while stores that had to increase their wages increased their employment.
Abstract: On April 1, 1992 New Jersey's minimum wage rose from $4.25 to $5.05 per hour. To evaluate the impact of the new law we surveyed over 400 fast food restaurants in New Jersey and Pennsylvania before and after the rise in the minimum. Comparisons of the changes in wages, employment, and prices at stores in New Jersey relative to stores in Pennsylvania (where the minimum remained constant at $4.25 per hour) provide simple robust estimates of the effect of the increased minimum wage. Our empirical findings challenge the conventional notion that a rise in the minimum causes employment to decline. Relative to stores in Pennsylvania, fast food restaurants in New Jersey increased employment by 2.5 employees per store. We also compare employment changes at stores in New Jersey that were initially paying $5.00 per hour or more (and were therefore largely unaffected by the new law) to the employment changes at lower-wage stores, where the new law raised wages by 10-15 percent. Stores that were unaffected by the minimum wage had the same employment growth as stores in Pennsylvania, while stores that had to increase their wages increased their employment. Finally, we evaluate theoretical models that might explain these results.
2,942 citations