Paying the price to solve fisheries conflicts in Brazil's Marine Protected Areas

TL;DR: In this paper, a contingent valuation method (Willingness to Pay) was used to ascertain if tourists would accept compensating fishers for not disturbing the sharks during a specific period of the year, by adding a symbolic increase in the taxes they already pay to either visit the island or to visit the no-take part of the MPA.

Abstract: Ecosystems services (ES) provide food and recreation to humans, but are fast being degraded. Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been proposed as a way to protect some of these ES, but decisions regarding what gets protection and what gets consumed can be a source of conflicts. One such example is the Fernando de Noronha MPA (Brazil), where there is a conflict between shark-directed tourism and fishers who would like to access the no-take part of the MPA during part of the year. A contingent valuation method (Willingness to Pay) was used to ascertain if tourists would accept compensating fishers for not disturbing the sharks during a specific period of the year, by adding a symbolic increase in the taxes they already pay to either visit the island or to visit the no-take part of the MPA. Tourists were open to this alternative (67–71%), regardless of the fee being paid. However, there was a slight tendency to reject the fee when the tourists saw sharks during their stay, suggesting that a closer contact with these animals triggered a less sympathetic attitude towards fishers, probably because they start seeing fishers as wrongdoers, even if this is the worst choice for conservation. Although such a hypothetical payment was easily accepted by the majority of the tourists and could represent an affordable solution to conflicts, convincing those who reject such social compensation, especially if based on an irrational choice, would be an important step for sharks and for the MPA as a whole.

Summary

1. Introduction

• All over the world, tropical areas are increasingly being used for their ecosystem services (ESs) [1], sometimes to the point of exhaustion or at least for conflicting and unsustainable uses [2].
• MPAs protect ecosystems that provide direct and indirect ESs [7], depending on the degree and effectiveness of protection of these areas.
• Tropical MPAs, when in a good conservation state, can be a more reliable provider of fish than unprotected neighboring areas, working as a source to the latter through the spillover effect [10].
• Therefore, the sustainable maintenance of livelihoods through fisheries and of shark diving tourism demands the establishment of a middle ground in the use of ecosystems.
• From the late 1980s on, natives and locals saw an opportunity to ally nature protection to land-rights by creating new categories of protection that allowed human presence [22,23].

2.2. Contingent valuation method to estimate Willingness-to-Pay (WTP)

• It was tested if tourists were hypothetically willing to pay to keep fishers away from beaches that are now entirely protected.
• For that, a contingent valuation estimate of willingness to pay (WTP) was used [29].
• If a tourist was approached at the beach, he or she was interviewed regarding their willingness to compensate fishers through an increase in the park access fee.
• After giving this information, interviewees were asked if they would pay a fixed amount from one of two options to compensate fishers for not fishing, thereby abstaining from interference with sharks (Table 1).
• A Mann-Whitey test was run to compare the Likert Scale on how important it was for the interviewee to see sharks.

3. Results

• The average number of entrance tickets to the no-take area sold to Brazilian and foreign tourists in 2014 and 2015 reached slightly over 70,000 people per year, with a monthly peak in October of over 6,700.
• The total revenue generated by recreational activities is thus the sum of entrance tickets to the no-take area plus the scuba diving trips, which reached BRL 21 million a year1.
• In both cases, the rejection tended to be higher for the highest payment option, although this figure was not statistically significant (chi-square, p >0.1) (Table 3) The binary logistic regression analyses identified those tourists who would be more willing to pay to compensate fishers for a period without fishing, i.e. which would keep the park as a notake area.
• Both factors affected the WTP negatively, although the effects were small and non-linear.
• Specifically, every additional day a person stayed on the island reduced the chances of accepting the payment by 0.85 times, whereas having seen a shark during the stay reduced the chance of paying by 0.50 times (Table 4).

4. Discussion

• In many instances they have not been able to stop deterioration of marine environments, sometimes due to exclusion of important, but overlooked stakeholders, who are mostly artisanal fishers [24].
• Here a conflict between shark directed tourism and fisheries was investigated by assessing the potential of using an economic tool to solve or ameliorate such conflict.
• In fact, contrary to previous studies that used similar WtP choice models [39,40], tourists here were not sensitive to the price being offered, probably because they thought the suggested increases were intentionally arbitrary, but enough to cover the additional expenses brought about by a PES.
• Fishers may simply reject financial compensation if they insist on having their original access and withdrawal rights granted [44].
• Other studies have shown that they can play an important role, depending on the issue approached (e.g., climate change and use of fossil fuels) [49,50].

Figures

Table 2: Survey respondents’ characteristics. The Park Fee interview was administered to tourists on beaches, whereas the Island Fee interview was administered to tourists at the airport, when leaving the island (conversion rate in 2016: USD PPP 1 = BRL 1.995).

Table 4. Logit model results for respondent decision to pay.

Figure 1. The Marine Protected Area of Fernando de Noronha, an oceanic archipelago off the northern coastline of Brazil. The MPA is divided into two areas, according to the Brazilian conservation code: an Environmental Protected Area (from Portuguese Área de Proteção Ambiental - APA) where some uses are allowed and residency is permitted, and a no-take area (Parque Nacional Marinho - PARNAMAR) where consumptive use is not allowed (e.g.: fisheries) and visitation is controlled. The numbered lines represent different depth contours. The thick black line represent the limits of the no-take zone, whereas the sustainable use zone includes part of the land and the area not limited by the black line. Note that the notake zone follows the 50 m deep contour line.

Table 3: Simple referendum results for the Willingness to Pay for an extra amount on the daily island fee or on the total park fee (conversion rate in 2016: USD PPP 1 = BRL 1.995).

Table 1. Real prices (BRL) paid by tourists and options offered to compensate fishers for their economic losses when they cannot catch sardine outside the no-take zone (conversion rate in 2016: USD PPP 1 = BRL 1.995). A tourist would be presented either Option 1 or 2. The number inside parentheses corresponds to the number of interviews done for each option.

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the contributions in this paper?

In this paper, a contingent valuation method ( Willingness to Pay ) was used to ascertain if tourists would accept compensating fishers for not disturbing the sharks during a specific period of the year, by adding a symbolic increase in the taxes they already pay to either visit the island or to visit the no-take part of the MPA.