UC Santa Barbara
UC Santa Barbara Previously Published Works
Title
Design trade-offs in rights-based management of small-scale fisheries.
Permalink
https://escholarship.org/uc/item/80b0b041
Journal
Conservation biology : the journal of the Society for Conservation Biology, 33(2)
ISSN
0888-8892
Authors
Viana, Daniel F
Gelcich, Stefan
Aceves-Bueno, Erendira
et al.
Publication Date
2019-04-01
DOI
10.1111/cobi.13208
Peer reviewed
eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library
University of California
Contributed Paper
Design trade-offs in rights-based management
of small-scale fisheries
Daniel F. Viana ,
1 ∗
Stefan Gelcich,
2
Erendira Aceves-Bueno,
1
Becky Twohey,
3
and Steven D. Gaines
1
1
Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, U.S.A.
2
Center of Applied Ecology and Sustainability (CAPES) and Center for the Study of Multiple-Drivers on Marine Socio-Ecological
Systems, Pontificia Universidad Catolica de Chile, Av Libertador Bernardo O’Higgins 340, 8331150, Santiago, Chile
3
Interdepartmental Graduate Program in Marine Science, University of California, Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, 93106, U.S.A.
Abstract: Small-scale fisheries collectively have a large ecological footprint and are key sources of food
security, especially in developing countries. Many of the data-intensive approaches to fishery management are
infeasible in these fisheries, but a strategy that has emerged to overcome these challenges is the establishment of
territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs). In this approach, exclusive fishing zones are established for groups
of stakeholders, which eliminates the race to fish with other groups. A key challenge, however, is setting the size
of TURFs—too large and the number of stakeholders sharing them impedes collective action, and too small
and the movement of target fish species in and out of the TURFs effectively removes the community’s exclusive
access. We assessed the size of 137 TURFs from across the globe relative to this design challenge by applying
theoretical models that predict their performance. We estimated that roughly two-thirds of these TURFs were
sized ideally to overcome the challenges posed by resource movement and f isher group size. However, for most
of the remaining TURFs, all possible sizes were either too small to overcome the resource-movement challenge
or too large to overcome the collective action challenge. Our results suggest these fisheries, which target mobile
species in densely populated regions, may need additional interventions to be successful.
Keywords: collective action, fish mobility, socioecological systems, territorial use rights for fisheries, TURFs
Dise
˜
no de Compensaciones en la Administraci
´
on Basada en Derechos de las Pesquer
´
ıas de Peque
˜
na Escala
Resumen: Las pesquer
´
ıas de peque
˜
na escala tienen una gran huella ecol
´
ogica de manera colectiva y
son fuentes importantes de seguridad alimenticia, especialmente en los pa
´
ıses en desarrollo. Muchas de las
estrategias cargadas de datos para la administraci
´
on de las pesquer
´
ıas son inviables en este tipo de pesquer
´
ıas,
pero una estrategia que ha emergido para sobrellevar estos retos es el establecimiento de los derechos de uso
territorial para las pesquer
´
ıas (TURFs, en ingl
´
es). Como parte de esta estrategia se establecen zonas exclusivas
de pesca para los grupos de accionistas, lo que elimina la competencia por la pesca con otros grupos. Sin
embargo, un reto importante es el establecimiento del tama
˜
no de los TURFs – si son muy grandes, el n
´
umero
de accionistas que los comparten impide la acci
´
on colectiva; si son muy peque
˜
nos, el movimiento de las
especies diana de peces dentro y fuera de los TURFs le retira efectivamente el acceso exclusivo a la comunidad.
Evaluamos el tama
˜
no de 137 TURFs ubicados en todo el mundo en relaci
´
on con este reto del dise
˜
no aplicando
modelos te
´
oricos que pronosticaron su desempe
˜
no. Estimamos que aproximadamente dos tercios de estos
TURFs ten
´
ıan el tama
˜
no ideal para superar los retos que presentan el movimiento del recurso y el tama
˜
no
del grupo pesquero. Sin embargo, para la mayor
´
ıa de los TURFs restantes todos los tama
˜
nosposibleserano
muy peque
˜
nos para superar el reto del movimiento del recurso, o muy grandes para sobrellevar el reto de la
acci
´
on colectiva. Nuestros resultados sugieren que estas pesquer
´
ıas que se enfocan en especies m
´
oviles dentro
de regiones pobladas densamente pueden requerir de intervenciones adicionales para ser exitosas.
∗
email dviana@bren.ucsb.edu
Article impact statement: Many areas allocated to exclusive fishing rights are designed inappropriately; changes are needed for this tool to
address overfishing.
Paper submitted April 2, 2018; revised manuscript accepted August 15, 2018.
361
Conservation Biology, Volume 33, No. 2, 361–368
C
2018 Society for Conservation Biology
DOI: 10.1111/cobi.13208
362 Fisheries Management
Palabras Clave: acci
´
on colectiva, derechos de uso territorial para las pesquer
´
ıas, movilidad de peces, sistemas
socio-ecol
´
ogicos, TURFs
:
,
,
,
,
,
(territorial use rights for fisheries (TURFs)
,
,
TURFs
,TURFs
,
;
TURFs
,
TURFs
,
137
TURFs
TURFs
,
,
TURFs
,
(
),
(
)
,
,
:
;
:
: (TURFs), , ,
Introduction
Mismanagement of small-scale fisheries is one of the
largest challenges faced by our oceans today. A widely ad-
vocated solution to overfishing in small-scale fisheries is
territorial use rights for fisheries (TURFs). This approach
allocates exclusive rights to a group of fishers to use all
or a part of the resources in a particular area of the sea
(Wilen et al. 2012). National governments from several
countries have turned to such local-level governance in-
stitutions because of the potential benefits this strategy
can provide to small-scale fishing communities (Agrawal
2005; Aceves-Bueno et al. 2017; Nguyen et al. 2017). Such
systems recognize fishers as an integral and indispensable
part of contemporary efforts to conserve environmen-
tal resources, especially when there are weak regula-
tory institutions. Unlike traditional management strate-
gies, TURFs change overharvesting incentives prevalent
in open access systems by allocating exclusive and secure
access to marine resources (Costello 2012). Such rights
motivate more sustainable management actions by TURF
users because they ensure that future benefits from those
actions are secured for TURF owners. The logic is that
once a group of fishers has secure rights to a fishery, they
will act as sole owners and manage the resource to obtain
maximum long-term economic gains (Costello & Kaffine
2008).
In practice, TURFs will only achieve these goals if they
are well-designed. There is a growing body of literature
exploring the design factors that affect the success of
self-organized resource regimes (Agrawal 2001; Ostrom
2009). For TURFs, one of the most basic design challenges
is TURF size, which can affect performance via 2 distinct
modes: collective action and resource dispersal.
Collective action is generally compromised as fisher
group size increases (Olson 1965), suggesting smaller
TURFs with fewer fishers may provide management ben-
efits. This happens because the number of users within
the system can influence many variables that affect self-
organization (Agrawal 2002) and can also affect incen-
tives to free ride (users who enjoy resource benefits
without paying for costs). First, as groups become larger,
the perception of individual contributions tends to de-
crease and transaction costs (communication, enforce-
ment) tend to increase (Poteete & Ostrom 2004). This
leads to greater incentives to free ride and diminishes
the capacity of users to enforce regulations and punish
defectors (Ostrom 2010). Second, as group size increases,
the capacity to devise appropriate and legitimate man-
agement rules diminishes (Olson 1965) because larger
groups tend to have greater heterogeneity of users (social,
cultural, economic) (Poteete & Ostrom 2004) and dimin-
ished communication opportunities (Lopez & Villamayor-
Tomas 2017). Overall, increases in TURF size create larger
groups, which accentuate challenges for collective action
and may dwarf the capacity of self-organizing systems to
achieve optimal outcomes.
By contrast, movement of target species beyond
the boundary of the TURF can create incentives to
overharvest before fish leave the TURF (White & Costello
2011), suggesting larger TURFs may provide management
benefits. Successful resource management depends on
the size of TURFs relative to the natural spatial scales of
dispersal (Janmaat 2005; White & Costello 2011). When
fish swim or drift out of the bounds of a TURF, they
become available to fishers outside the TURF. Boats lining
the boundary of a TURF provide clear visible evidence of
the loss of resources to others, which incentivizes TURF
owners to harvest above sustainable levels rather than let
the fish leave. Resources with high mobility can be more
unpredictable, which affects the ability of users to set
appropriate harvest rules. Overall, TURFs that are small
relative to dispersal scales do not provide the correct
biological incentives to optimally manage the resources.
These opposing effects can pose challenges, especially
in cases where TURF sizes that would be small enough
to avoid collective action problems would not be large
enough to avoid spillover problems created by species
movement (Fig. 1). Thus, for fisheries targeting highly
mobile species in regions with dense coastal human
Conservation Biology
Volume 33, No. 2, 2019
Viana et al. 363
Figure 1. Theoretical relationships between territorial
use rights for fisheries (TURFs) size and resource
outcomes in response to (a) resource mobility and (b)
collective action; (c, e, f) scenarios in which TURFs
across a range of sizes enable successful solutions to
both problems simultaneously; and (d) a scenario in
which there is an inherent trade-off between collective
action and resource mobility problems. No TURF size
in (d) would likely to have a good performance
without other interventions.
populations, TURFs may be ineffective unless additional
interventions are made to overcome either spillover
problems or the collective action problems. We assessed
the prevalence of fisheries facing this challenge by apply-
ing theoretical models to predict the performance of 137
TURFs worldwide. Additionally, we considered possible
solutions to overcome potential management challenges.
Methods
We assembled a global database from peer-reviewed liter-
ature, governmental and nongovernmental reports, mas-
ters and PhD theses, and interviews of local stakeholders
to assess where TURFs were with respect to these con-
ceptual size guidelines (e.g., Auriemma et al. 2014; McCay
et al. 2014). We compiled general data on TURFs from
30 countries (Supporting Information). For 19 of these
countries, we were able to assemble a complete data set
on a total of 137 TURFs where we obtained the requisite
biological and social data to forecast their expected per-
formance, including information on TURF size, primary
species harvested, and group size. We constrained the
number of TURFs from any given country in our database
(maximum of 27 TURFs from Chile) to avoid bias related
to any country-specific design guidelines. For example,
countries, such as Chile, use TURFs only for sedentary
species to address the problems related to mobility. Thus,
including a larger sample from these countries would re-
sult in biased representation of TURFs worldwide. Of the
137 TURFs we used, 113 had information on all aspects
and 24 had incomplete information on 1–2 aspects. For
example, for some TURFs in Vanuatu, there was only
information available on the main species harvested but
not on fisher group size.
To calculate the predicted yield due to adult move-
ment, we used a simple game-theoretic bioeconomic
fisheries model developed by White and Costello (2011).
This model considers the effect of TURF size relative to
the scale of adult fish movement on potential yields. This
2-patch model simulates the behavior of noncooperative
TURFs acting to maximize their yield and computes the
expected Nash equilibrium of this competitive behavior.
It calculates the potential loss in yield due to the dispersal
of adult fish relative to a perfectly designed TURF (i.e.,
with no adult dispersal) that maximizes its yield
(Supporting Information). Absolute yields clearly can
increase with TURF size, but we scaled all evaluations of
TURF performance relative to the maximum sustainable
yield (MSY) for the TURF. We used species home
range as a proxy for movement. This information was
primarily extracted from the peer-reviewed literature.
When data were not available in the literature, we used
either values from species from the same family with
similar characteristics or calculated the estimated home
range from Kramer and Chapman (1999). This method
estimated the home range of coastal species based on the
species’ maximum length. To simplify our model, we did
not consider larval dispersal in our analysis. Uncertainty
on population source–sink dynamics and data limitations
can constrain managers’ ability to properly align
TURF spatial scale with scales of larval dispersal.
Therefore, adult mobility is often the most important
component driving management incentives of TURF
owners.
To estimate predicted yields due to the number of users
in a TURF, we assumed a negative logistic relationship
(Eq. 1 in Supporting Information) to reflect the fact
that groups above a certain size are expected to have
performance similar to open access systems (Supporting
Information). The shape and predicted yield values were
derived from the literature and were context dependent.
Several studies show how collective action outcomes
decrease sharply with groups larger than a few hundred
members (Dunbar 1998; Agrawal & Goyal 2001; Yang
Conservation Biology
Volume 33, No. 2, 2019
364 Fisheries Management
et al. 2013). We conservatively assumed group sizes of
>200 fishers would decrease sharply in performance and
reach yield levels expected in equilibrium open access
fisheries (Costello et al. 2016) with group sizes of 400 or
more fishers. We assumed that TURFs with large groups
will have performance similar to open access systems
to simplify the model. Given that the validity of these
assumed values can be context dependent and that there
is no consensus among scholars on forecasting the ideal
group size to achieve optimal collective action outcomes
(Yang et al. 2013) in specific cases, we also explored the
sensitivity of conclusions to these presumed values.
Our model only considered effects of group size on
TURF success. Collective action problems created by
large group sizes can be overcome through strong lead-
ership (Guti
´
errez et al. 2011) or institutional support
(Poteete & Ostrom 2004) (see Discussion). The objective
of our model was, thus, to identify cases in which such
additional governance interventions are needed.
All TURFs within the database were assigned to 1 of
3 categories according to their predicted performance
with respect to collective action and resource mobility:
optimally sized, resizing needed, and additional support
needed. The optimally sized TURFs were those that had
a predicted performance in or above the 0.75 quantile
of predicted yields from both group size and resource
mobility effects. The TURFs that needed resizing could
potentially have high performance (0.75 quantile) on
both dimensions with an appropriate change in TURF
size. The TURFs that needed additional support could not
achieve high performance simultaneously with respect to
group size and resource mobility solely from changes in
TURF size.
Results
We estimated there were approximately 3700 TURFs
worldwide, from which we gathered detailed informa-
tion on 137. These TURFs had an average size of 367 km
2
(Supporting Information). The number of fishers varied
greatly across TURFs (mean = 1995, median = 180,
minimum = 11, maximum = 32,000). The TURFs were
managed for species that differed greatly in adult mobility
relative to TURF size; average predicted yield ranged from
33% to 100%. The effect of group size on average pre-
dicted yield from TURFs also varied greatly among TURFs;
projected values ranged from 22% to 100% (Supporting
Information).
Adult Mobility
With respect to species mobility, the predicted yield for
137 TURFs worldwide followed the generally expected
trend. Large TURFs had consistently high predicted
yields, whereas small TURFs had a wide range of
predicted outcomes, from very high yields to yields near
20% of MSY (Supporting Information). Although some
TURFs were managed for species with high mobility
relative to TURF size, most TURFs were managed
for relatively sedentary species such as bivalves and
crustaceans. In such cases, TURFs sizes were relatively
small and did not create overharvest incentives. At the
other extreme, several TURFs were managed for species
that have extensive adult movement relative to the size
of the TURF, resulting in low predicted yields relative to
MSY. Countries, such as Brazil and Philippines, in many
cases, manage for highly mobile species such as tunas,
sharks,andsardines.Insuchcases,itiscertainthatthe
species will regularly move outside TURF boundaries
and, thus, create incentives for fishers to overharvest the
resource.
One important characteristic of several TURFs world-
wide was that they were managed for multiple species
that exhibit a wide range of biological characteristics.
Consequently, in the same TURF there were sometimes
species with high and low mobility, leading to different
management incentives within the same area. From our
database, 57% of the TURFs were managed for only
1 species, and the remaining TURFs were managed for
2 species. Based on the examples in our database,
single-species TURFs generally focused on sedentary
resources, whereas multiple-species TURFs commonly
had harvests of both mobile and sedentary species.
By examining only the species mobility aspect of TURF
design, 1 solution for increasing the predicted yield rel-
ative to MSY was to increase TURF size (Supporting In-
formation). Large TURFs had lower predicted yield loss
relative to small TURFs. For small TURFs, the predicted
performance varied greatly, reflecting the wide variability
in the biology of the species being harvested. Thus, many
of the existing TURFs at the small end of the TURF size
spectrum would likely benefit from increasing TURF size.
For example, some TURFs in the Philippines had their
main resource species that migrate long distances along
the coastline. In this case, increasing TURF size to cover
the entire home range of the species would increase the
predicted yield. However, such increases in TURF size
would undoubtedly also increase the number of users
within the TURF, negatively affecting collective action
outcomes.
Group Size
The number of users varied greatly within and across
countries (median = 180 fishers/TURF [Supporting
Information], range 11–32 000). Although many TURFs
had thousands of fishers, 70% of TURFs had fewer than
200 fishers. Therefore, most TURFs had group sizes that
were small enough to facilitate collective action. For the
other one-third of global TURFs, however, group sizes
were sometimes enormous. In areas with high population
Conservation Biology
Volume 33, No. 2, 2019
![Figure 2. Interaction between predicted fisheries yield relative to maximum sustainable yield as functions of adult fish mobility and fisher group size. Different colors represent different TURF categories (optimally sized, both dimensions with predicted yield in the 0.75 quantile; resizing needed, TURF size can be adjusted to achieve high performance [above 0.75 quantile] along both dimensions; additional support needed, high performance on both dimensions cannot be achieved solely with a change in TURF size).](/figures/figure-2-interaction-between-predicted-fisheries-yield-17eho1mb.webp)
