Browsing by Author "Campbell, Lisa M."

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Beyond Baselines: Rethinking Priorities for Ocean Conservation
(2009) Campbell, Lisa M.; Gray, Noella J.; Hazen, Elliott L.; Shackeroff, Janna M.
"In 1995, Daniel Pauly identified a 'shifting baselines syndrome' (SBS). Pauly was concerned that scientists measure ecosystem change against their personal recollections of the past and, based on this decidedly short-term view, mismanage fish stocks because they tolerate gradual and incremental elimination of species and set inappropriate recovery goals. As a concept, SBS is simple to grasp and its logic is compelling. Much current work in marine historical ecology is rationalized in part as a means of combating SBS, and the term has also resonated outside of the academy with environmental advocacy groups. Although we recognize both conceptual and operational merit in SBS, we believe that the ultimate impact of SBS on ocean management will be limited by some underlying and interrelated problematic assumptions about ecology and human-environment relations, and the prescriptions that these assumptions support. In this paper, we trace both assumptions and prescriptions through key works in the SBS literature and interrogate them via ecological and social science theory and research. We argue that an expanded discussion of SBS is needed, one that engages a broader range of social scientists, ecologists, and resource users, and that explicitly recognizes the value judgments inherent in deciding both what past ecosystems looked like and whether or not and how we might reconstruct them."
Collaborative Event Ethnography: Conservation and Development Trade-offs at the Fourth World Conservation Congress
(2010) Brosius, Peter; Campbell, Lisa M.
"Ideas about conservation have shifted dramatically over the last century. From an early focus on state-run parks and protected areas, to the role of local communities and markets in conservation, to engaging the private sector, what conservation is and how we go about doing it continues to evolve. While there have been many shifts, in this study we are interested in the recent emphasis on the 'global' as the scale at which conservation policies and practices are conceptualised, articulated, and (ideally) implemented."
Environmental Histories and Emerging Fisheries Management of the Upper Zambezi River Floodplains
(2009) Abbott, James G.; Campbell, Lisa M.
"In response to a widespread decline in fisheries, scientists and policy makers have constructed models outlining the biological and social drivers that cause changes in fishing intensity and methods identified with overfishing. The models also address the consequences of overfishing, namely changes in biomass, trophic structure and ecosystem resilience, as well as increased poverty and vulnerability of the fishers, particularly in the developing world. While these models have emerged from marine and coastal fisheries, they have also been used to identify overfishing in floodplain fisheries and to guide management recommendations. In this article, we critique the assumptions of a global overfishing narrative describing the serial depletion of fish species, increased fishing effort and fisher dependence, which are considered valid by various stakeholders in the floodplain fisheries of the Upper Zambezi River. We find that researchers highlight how the inherent variability of the floodplain environment defies the simple diagnoses of overfishing, based on changes in effort and methods or livelihood. However, the views of policy makers and local users on the 'problem of overfishing' are that the fish biomass is declining and intensive fishing methods are to blame, which largely resonate with the narrative. We consider how differing emphasis on parts of the narrative by stakeholders has implications for management, and what such differences tell us about the malleability of narratives."
Geopolitical Genetics: Claiming the Commons through Species Mapping
(2008) Campbell, Lisa M.; Godfrey, Matthew
"Our understanding of sea turtle biology, and particularly of sea turtle migrations and population structures, has been increased by advances in genetic analyses that allow turtles found in various and often widely distributed habitats (e.g. nesting beaches, foraging grounds, migratory corridors) to be matched genetically. This relatively recent technological development has implications for how sea turtles are conceived, both as a resource and an object of conservation. Traditionally, populations have been attached to particular nesting beaches, and less often to identifiable in-water habitats, and conservation efforts were similarly focused on discreet geographic locations. The more complete understanding of population structures, achieved via genetic analysis, takes conservation beyond the beach into territorial and international waters. In this way, genetic analysis encourages the scaling up of sea turtle conservation and contributes to a remapping of conservation territory at sea. The broadening of scale at which sea turtle conservation is promoted is accompanied by the disempowerment of local communities and a simultaneous concentration of authority among the few labs conducting genetic analysis of sea turtle samples. In this paper, we explore the implications of genetic analysis for sea turtle conservation, the scale at which it is undertaken, and the variety of actors with competing interests in it, using case studies from the existing biological literature. We are particularly interested in how the claims of local communities living adjacent to sea turtle nesting beaches and in-water habitats are undermined while those of external actors are strengthened, and how theory from common property and science studies can help us understand this transition and its consequences."
Local Seafood: Rethinking the Direct Marketing Paradigm
(2015) Stoll, Joshua S.; Dubik, Bradford A.; Campbell, Lisa M.
"Faced with strict regulations, rising operational costs, depleted stocks, and competition from less expensive foreign imports, many fishers are pursuing new ways to market and sell their catch. Direct marketing arrangements can increase the ex-vessel value of seafood and profitability of operations for fishers by circumventing dominant wholesale chains of custody and capturing the premium that customers are willing to pay for local seafood. Our analysis goes beyond a paradigm that understands direct marketing arrangements as solely economic tools to consider how these emerging business configurations create a set of conditions that can result in increased bonding and bridging capital among fishers by incentivizing cooperation, communication, and information production and organization. To build our case, we report on the economic value being generated for fishers in a cooperatively owned and operated direct marketing arrangement in eastern North Carolina. Over the course of 2 years, fishers participating in the Walking Fish community-supported fishery received 33% more revenue for their catch compared to the average monthly ex-vessel price of finfish and shellfish landed in the surrounding region, and an additional 14% to 18% more per dollar by way of year-end profit sharing. We argue that these economic benefits create an incentive to participate, resulting in cooperation among fishers and increased communication skills that foster bonding and bridging capital that put fishers in a position to identify and respond to challenges that threaten the social-ecological resilience of the systems within which they operate. We suggest that 'institutional starters' like these can play a critical role in increasing the resilience of social-ecological systems, including fisheries."
Reconciling Local Conservation Practice with Global Discourse: The Trouble with Sea Turtles
(2004) Campbell, Lisa M.
"The traditional wildlife conservation narrative relies on the tragedy of the commons argument to explain wildlife depletion, and proposes guarded, people-free parks and protected areas as a solution to the problem. More recently, a conservation counternarrative proposes community- based conservation and sustainable use of wildlife as means to promote ownership of, and create financial incentives for, conservation by local people. Due to the charismatic nature of sea turtles, their global distribution, their long distance migrations and other biological characteristics, the relevance of the counternarrative for this species is contested. This paper analyses the debate about how best to conserve sea turtles, and specifically how this debate is constructed around issues of ownership at different scales. Case studies of sea turtle conservation in Costa Rica are used to illustrate the specific difficulties in pursuing community-based conservation and sustainable use at the local level, when dealing with a globally valued resource."
Social-Ecological Guilds: Putting People into Marine Historical Ecology
(2011) Shackeroff, Janna M.; Campbell, Lisa M.; Crowder, Larry B.
"Marine historical ecology provides historic insights into past ocean ecosystems that are crucial to effectively confronting the declining health and resilience in marine ecosystems. A more 'peopled' approach to marine historical ecology is necessary, given the heightened emphasis on human dimensions in marine management. This study examined the historical ecology of Hawaiian coral reef ecosystems through oral histories of diverse ocean experts, representing six traditional, local, and scientific knowledge systems. Based on 61 in-depth interviews with these ocean experts, historical trends, abundance, and distribution over 80 years and a 50-mile region for 271 species emerged. Analyzing trends by ecological guild, e.g., herbivores, proved inappropriate to these data; rather, based on qualitative analyses, five distinct trends encompassing nearly all species emerged in what we term "social-ecological guilds." Ocean experts observations of change were surprisingly consistent, regardless of their knowledge system, whereas perceptions of change varied widely. The historical picture was far broader and richer when the contributions of six knowledge systems were incorporated, compared to that of any one alone. Social-ecological guilds also matter critically from a management perspective, because understanding how experts from a multiplicity of perspectives observe, interpret, and respond to ecological change can help managers anticipate responses to management activities and perhaps to design better management strategies."
Studying Sea Turtle Conservation and Learning about the World: Insights from Social Science
(2010) Campbell, Lisa M.
"This special issue of Conservation & Society focuses on sea turtles and their conservation, from vaious social science perspectives. While there are other collections of papers devoted to sea turtle conservation from non-biological perspectives, and some of the individual contributions are by social scientists, the present issue is timely, distinct, and valuable, for two reasons. First, social science has come of age in the sea turtle research and conservation community.... Second, an issue featuring social science research on sea turtles and their conservation is about much more than sea turtles. Sea turtle conservation provides a platform from which researchers can ask questions of interest to a broad audience concerned with the human aspects of wildlife conservation."
Traditional Ecological Knowledge in Conservation Research: Problems and Prospects for their Constructive Engagement
(2007) Shackeroff, Janna M.; Campbell, Lisa M.
"In response to growing interest in accessing traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) for conservation purposes, we discuss some of the complexities involved in doing TEK research. Specifically, we consider the issues of power and politicisation, ethics and situated knowledge. These are standard issues to be considered in any social scientific endeavour and are particularly compelling when dealing with indigenous groups or cross-cultural contexts. We argue that the human context, and the researchers ability to adequately understand and account for it, will largely determine the success or failure of TEK research. To this end, we offer three broad recommendations for conservation researchers hoping to engage TEK. Only through an informed and conscientious approach can TEK be incorporated into mainstream conservation research in a manner beneficial to both conservation and TEK holders."