Browsing by Author "Weaver, Amy Hudson"

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Cooperative and Noncooperative Strategies for Small-scale Fisheries’ Self-governance in the Globalization Era: Implications for Conservation
(2013) Basurto, Xavier; Bennett, Abigail; Weaver, Amy Hudson; Rodriguez-Van Dyck, Salvador; Aceves-Bueno, Juan-Salvador
"Fishing cooperatives (co-ops) and patron-client relationships are the most common cooperative and noncooperative strategies for self-governance for small-scale fisheries around the world. We studied what drives fishers to choose between these two self-governance arrangements in 12 communities in the Gulf of California, Mexico. The communities depend on similar fishing resources, are located in contiguous portions of the coast, fish roughly the same species, have similar socioeconomic characteristics, and sell to similar markets, yet half of the fisheries are organized around co-ops and the other half work through patron-client arrangements. Using participant observation, in-depth interviews of key informants between 1995-2008, and a survey of 55% of the fisheries in the study area, we found that the presence of high transaction costs of commercialization, the desire to acquire fishing licenses, and the existence of traditions of successful collective action among fishing groups within each community strongly influence fishers’ choices regarding membership in fishing co-ops. We also examined the implications of our findings for conservation of fishing resources. Given that the emergence of co-ops was associated with high transaction costs of commercialization, we hypothesize that cooperative strategies are more likely than patron-client strategies to emerge in communities in isolated locations. In an era of globalization, in which the rate of development and urbanization will increase in coastal areas, patron-client strategies are likely to become more prevalent among fisheries, but such self-governance strategies are thought to be less conducive to conservation behaviors."
The Role of NGOs in Mexican Small-Scale Fisheries: From Environmental Conservation to Multi-Scale Governance
(2013) Espinosa-Romero, María José; Rodriguez, Laura; Weaver, Amy Hudson; Villanueva, Cristina; Torre, Jorge
"Multi-scale governance has been widely recommended for effective marine resource management. This approach suggests critical collective decision-making and actions, coupling governance and ecological scales, co-production of knowledge, among other elements. Here, we examine what elements of multi-scale governance are present in Mexican fisheries management and the contribution of NGOs in promoting and implementing this scaling approach to smallscale fisheries management (SSF). We selected three ongoing SSF management processes for our analysis: 1) the establishment of fishing refugia in the Punta San Cosme to Punta Coyote Corridor; 2) implementation of catch shares in the Gulf curvina fishery; and 3) the development of the Fisheries Management Plan (FMP) for the swimming crab fishery. Through case study analysis we show that NGOs in the Gulf of California have moved beyond an environmental agenda and can significantly contribute to fisheries management processes by promoting and improving institutional scales representation, collective and cooperative management, coproduction of knowledge, information sharing, social learning as well as by fortifying the linkages between governance and ecological scales. We observed in all case studies that successful stakeholder collaboration for multi-scale governance will be more feasible to achieve when shared visions and clear procedures are present in management processes. Finally, this work provides a framework to evaluate attributes of multi-scale governance, which can applied to management processes elsewhere."