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Conference Paper Paving the Way Towards Co-Management through Participatory Research: A Case Study with Artisanal Fisheries in Uruguay(2013) Trimble, Micaela; Lázaro, Marila; Berkes, Fikret"In Uruguay, both artisanal fishers and the State agency in charge of fisheries management (DINARA) have shown interest in seeking co-management arrangements, leaving behind the top-down regime, still prevalent today. Our research is based on a case study in Piriápolis (coastal Río de la Plata), in which a participatory research process among fishery stakeholders (fishers, DINARA, University scientists, NGOs) was facilitated to investigate its contributions to the emergence of co-management. Our findings show that participatory research had an impact on the various faces of co-management: (1) power sharing: power was actually shared during the research process, (2) institution building: a multi-stakeholder group (POPA), with a common vision and goals, was created, (3) trust building: trust among participants increased, (4) process: the process of group formation was considered important by participants, (5) learning: stakeholders learned skills for participation, among others, (6) problem solving: two problem-solving exercises were conducted (POPA started with the problem of sea lion impact on the fishery but ended up addressing the competition from imported pangasius), (7) governance: a diversity of stakeholders of the initial problem identified by fishers participated in the process. These impacts on co-management are indeed useful criteria for evaluating the outcomes of participatory research as a knowledge co-production approach in which resource users participate of the entire research, and whose final aim is community empowerment. When evaluating the process of participatory research, our case study contributed to identifying several criteria that can facilitate co-management, such as: participation of all stakeholder groups of the selected problem/topic; participants' representativeness; involvement of all stakeholder groups in every research stage; independent facilitation; collective decision-making through deliberative and consensus-building processes; and appropriate information management. This research provides empirical evidence to support the claim that participatory research is a strategy to facilitate and improve co-management."Conference Paper 'One Hand Can't Clap': Combining Scientific and Local Knowledge for Improved Caribbean Fisheries Management(2004) Grant, Sandra; Berkes, Fikret"Migratory marine resources pose a challenge to common property theory. A given fish stock (e.g. a tuna species) may be used by coastal and offshore fisheries, by small and large-scale harvesters, and more than one nation. The movement of the stock makes it difficult to develop shared values and mutually agreeable rules among the users who can monitor one anothers behaviour and impose sanctions. Migratory resources pose cross-boundary issues. It may be necessary to have commercial fishery quotas enforced by government authorities, as community-based solutions would not be effective. In the case of resources fished by several nation states, international institutions are needed. Such resources pose cooperation and enforcement problems that cannot be solved at the local or national levels. "A case in point is the migratory pelagic fish caught by the fishers of Gouyave, Grenada, West Indies. The International Commission for Conservation of Atlantic Tuna (ICCAT) reported that Atlantic Blue Marlin (Makaira nigricans), Atlantic White Marlin (apturus albidus), and Atlantic Swordfish (Xiphias gladius) fish stocks are overexploited. The ICCAT adopted management measures to rebuild these stocks, which requires countries throughout the region to reduce landing levels to those in 1996. Stock assessments and management strategies were based solely on scientific assessment. "The new regulations impact livelihoods in the fishing community of Gouyave. Fishers, stakeholders, and community members disagree with the proposed plan to reduce landings of these species. Based on their local knowledge and technological experimentation, they argue they have information to contribute to the assessment of the status of the pelagic fishery that would be important for management planning. They argue that the government should take a more holistic approach to managing large pelagic species, and that ICCATs objective of rebuilding stocks cannot be achieved without causing much economic hardship on the community. Stakeholders note that to ensure sustainability of the fishery and the community, management strategies could include: (1) maintaining economic viability of the fishery; (2) monitoring the bait fishery; (3) maintaining proper quality control to ensure fish export; and (4) considering alternative livelihood options. "Much could be done to improve Caribbean fisheries planning and decision-making by creating opportunities for management that are participatory and cross-scale. In our case study, there are three levels of management: community (Gouvaye), the nation state (Grenada) and regional/international (ICCAT). While the national and regional levels are well coordinated, the community level of management, and the knowledge held by fishers, is rarely taken into account. Decision-making can be improved by creating a platform that facilitates adaptive learning, and sharing of scientific and local knowledge amongst the stakeholders. This grounded platform needs to be created first at the national level through participatory processes, and then used as a means to inform decisions at regional and international levels."Journal Article Drama of the Commons in Small-Scale Shrimp Aquaculture in Northwestern, Sri Lanka(2015) Galappaththi, Eranga Kokila; Berkes, Fikret"Aquaculture, and shrimp aquaculture in particular, can have major social and environmental impacts. However, aquaculture remains an understudied area in commons research. Can aspects of commons theory be applied to solve problems of aquaculture? We examined three coastal community-based shrimp aquaculture operations in northwestern Sri Lanka using a case study approach. These shrimp farms were individually owned by small producers and managed under local-level rules designed by cooperatives (samithis). The common-pool resource of major interest was water for aquaculture ponds, obtained from an interconnected common water body. We evaluated the shrimp farming social-ecological system by using Ostrom’s design principles for collective action. Key elements of the system were: clearly defined boundaries; collaboratively designed crop calendar, bottom-up approach involving community associations, multi-level governance, and farmers-and-government collaborative structures. Together, these elements resolved the excludability and subtractability problems of commons by establishing boundary and membership rules and collective choice rules."Working Paper Fisheries and the Prisoner's Dilemma Game: Conditions for the Evolution of Cooperation among Users of Common Property Resources(1987) Berkes, Fikret; Kence, Aykut"Recent studies using Prisoner's Dilemma framework have led to a theory of cooperation based on repeated encounters and the development of reciprocity. The theory is applicable to a diversity of disciplines and has implications fort he use of common property resources such as fisheries, i.e. what are the conditions under which the users of a fishery resource will cooperate to avoid, what some consider, the inevitable 'tragedy of the commons'? The Prisoner's Dilemma approach helps formalize some of the recent theoretical developments on conditions of successful common property use. In particular, it offers insights regarding the importance of probability of encounter among users, development of reciprocal relations among them, the number of users in an area and the degree of crowding, heterogeneity of user groups, the importance of local residency, and the supply-demand characteristics of the resource."Journal Article Resource Degradation, Marginalization, and Poverty in Small-Scale Fisheries: Threats to Social-Ecological Resilience in India and Brazil(2014) Nayak, Prateep K.; Oliveira, Luiz E.; Berkes, Fikret"In this study we examine poverty in local fisheries using a social-ecological resilience lens. In assessing why 'fishery may rhyme with poverty', Christophe Béné suggests a typology of impoverishment processes, which includes economic exclusion, social marginalization, class exploitation, and political disempowerment as key mechanisms that accelerate poverty. We extend his analysis by exploring these four mechanisms further and by intertwining them with processes of environmental change and degradation. Our goal is to understand poverty in local fisheries as a process rooted in social and institutional factors as influenced by ecological dynamics. We argue that understanding poverty will require a focus on the social-ecological system (SES) as a whole, and addressing poverty will mean rebuilding not only collapsed stocks but the entire social-ecological system, including restoring relationships between resources and people. Information from two cases, the Chilika Lagoon on the Bay of Bengal in India, and the Paraty region on the southeastern coast of Brazil, is used to understand how fishery social-ecological systems come under pressure from drivers at multiple levels, resulting in a range of impacts and pushing the system to a breaking point or collapse. We analyze elements of what it takes for the whole system to break down or collapse and push fishers into poverty and marginalization. The Chilika SES has already broken down, and the Paraty SES is under pressure from multiple drivers of change. The two cases help contrast key dynamics in the social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental spheres, for lessons on system collapse and recovery. Rebuilding fisheries may be examined as a process of building and strengthening resilience. The challenge is to make the fishery social-ecological system more resilient, with more flexibility and options, not only within fishing activities but also within a range of other sectors."Journal Article Can Small-Scale Commercial and Subsistence Fisheries Co-Exist? Lessons from an Indigenous Community in Northern Manitoba, Canada(2016) Islam, Durdana; Berkes, Fikret"Subsistence (or food) fisheries are under-studied, and the interaction between subsistence and commercial fisheries have not been studied systematically. Addressing this gap is the main contribution of the present paper, which focuses on how to deal with the challenge of overlapping commercial and subsistence fisheries. The study was conducted in Norway House Cree Nation, with qualitative data collection and questionnaire surveys. Commercial fishing in Norway House takes place during spring/summer and fall seasons, whereas subsistence fishing takes place throughout the year. Commercial fishing mostly occurs in the open waters of Lake Winnipeg; subsistence fishing in rivers adjacent to the reserve and in smaller lakes inland. How do fishers and the community deal with overlaps and potential conflicts between the two kinds of fisheries? The main mechanism is the separation of the two temporally and spatially. In the remaining overlap areas, conflict resolution relies on monitoring of net ownership and informal communication. The first mechanism is regulatory but really de facto co-management in the way it is implemented. The second is consistent with Cree cultural values of respect, reciprocity and tolerance."Conference Paper Can Cross-Scale Linkages Increase the Resilience of Social-Ecological Systems?(2003) Berkes, Fikret"Resilience thinking helps commons researchers to look beyond institutional forms, and ask instead questions regarding the adaptive capacity of social groups and their institutions to deal with stresses as a result of social, political and environmental change. One way to approach this question is to look for informative case studies of change in social-ecological systems and to investigate how societies deal with change. From these cases, one can gain insights and construct principles regarding capacity building to adapt to change and, in turn, to shape change. "A number of examples exist to indicate that cross-scale linkages, both horizontal (across space) and vertical (across levels of organization), speed up learning and communication, thereby improving the ability of a society to buffer change, speed up self-organization, and increase the capacity for learning and adaptation (Lee 1993; Young 1999). This paper will deal with two cases, one involving aboriginal co-management in the Canadian North, and the other, cross-scale management of ocean fisheries."Journal Article An Investigation of Cree Indian Domestic Fisheries in Northern Quebec(1979) Berkes, Fikret"Domestic or subsistence fisheries of the eastern James Bay Cree. were studied, mainly in Fort George, by direct observation. These fisheries were characterized by large numbers of participants, low catches per day and per fisherman, but high catches per length of net used, as compared to commercial fisheries. Most stocks appear lightly utilized, but in the vicinity of larger settlements there is evidence that some stocks are overfished. The total catch may be increased by distributing the fishing effort more evenly over a larger area. Fish resource base of the region appears suitable for supporting local economic development with respect to recreational fisheries and native-run commercial fisheries for the local market, as well as maintaining the domestic fishery."Conference Paper How to Keep Commons as Commons in the Long Run: Formation and Distortions of Property Regimes in Chilika Lagoon, India(2008) Nayak, Prateep Kumar; Berkes, Fikret"The paper tries to understand how a regime of de jure ownership of customary fishers is gradually changing into a state of de facto control of non-fishers and outsiders in the Chilika lagoon, a Ramsar site on the eastern coast of India. The paper brings into analysis the historical and current distortions in the access regime of the lagoon. The focus of this analysis is on two processes: one, the shift from a position of legal rights and entitlements to denial of access for customary fishers, and two, from a state of no or thin access to claim of legal rights by the non-fishers. While tracking this changing nature of property regimes in Chilika Lagoon the paper makes two important conclusions. One, commons is not fixed in its own distinct category; rather there often remains a threat that commons can change into other types of property regimes. Two, the immediate challenge is to identify drivers that may cause these changes and even the bigger challenge is how to keep commons as commons in the long run."Journal Article Can Partnerships and Community-Based Conservation Reverse the Decline of Coral Reef Social-Ecological Systems?(2014) Frey, James Barclay; Berkes, Fikret"The marine aquarium trade has played an important role in shaping the ecological state of coral reefs in Indonesia and much of the Asia-Pacific. The use of cyanide by ornamental fishers in Buleleng District, Bali, in the 1980s and 1990s has resulted in a precipitous decline in the ecological health of reefs. Cyanide-free harvesting techniques were introduced after 2000, along with reef restoration measures. This paper examines social and ecological processes in the fishing village of Les, Bali, in ending the use of cyanide and the resulting ecological restoration. An emphasis on conservation-development (with livelihood objectives) was important in securing interest and cooperation across stakeholder groups. Adaptive approaches to governance and knowledge co-production were also important. The strategy used at Les is now being exported to other communities across Indonesia, and provides a promising example of a marine resources-based conservation-development initiative that may be implemented at other, similar communities."