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Now showing 1 - 10 of 12
  • 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."
  • Conference Paper
    Resilience and the Co-Evolution of Ecosystems and Institutions
    (1995) Folke, Carl; Berkes, Fikret
    "Resilience is the ability of a system to cope with change without collapsing. It is the capacity to absorb external perturbations, by actively adapting to an ever changing environment. Reduction in resilience means that vulnerability increases, with the risk that the whole system flips from one equilibrium state to another. Such flips are often a consequence of the misuse of the environment and the inertia of institutions to change. Smaller unpredictable perturbations that previously could be handled turn into major crises when extreme events intersect with internally generated vulnerability due to loss of resilience. To avoid such situations there is a need for institutions with the ability to respond to and manage environmental feedbacks, institutions that can cope with unpredictable perturbations before they accumulate and challenge the existence of the whole social-ecological system. This implies that it is not enough to only understand the institution in question. The dynamics of the ecosystems that form the biophysical precondition for the existence of the institution need to be taken into account as well. This study focuses on the linked social-ecological system, and its dynamic interrelationships. We regard it as one system with its social and ecological components co-evolving over time. It is in this context that we study traditional and newly-emergent social-ecological systems. We are analyzing 1) how the local social system has adapted to and developed a knowledge system for dealing with the dynamics of the ecosystem(s) including the resources and services that it generates, 2) specifically, how the local system maintains ecosystem resilience in the face of perturbations, and 3) those combinations of property rights arrangements, institutions, and knowledge systems which accomplish the above successfully. Examples will be presented from the Cree Indians of the Canadian eastern subartic and their resource management, and pastoral herders and rangeland management in semi-arid Africa."
  • Conference Paper
    Community-Based Management and Sustainable Development
    (1989) Berkes, Fikret; Kislalioglu, Mina
    "Should a fishery be managed by limiting the number of licenses? Should it be managed by harvest quotas? How should the resource be allocated? How can conflicts among groups of fishermen be settled? What is the role of territorial use rights (TURFS)? How and on what basis can decisions be made about such management measures as mesh sizes and closed seasons? Research in the area of management interventions does not fall clearly into the realm of any one discipline: biology, oceanography, economics, political science, geography, planning, sociology, anthropology."
  • Journal Article
    From Community-Based Resource Management to Complex Systems: The Scale Issue and Marine Commons
    (2006) Berkes, Fikret
    "Most research in the area of common and common-pool resources in the past two or three decades sought the simplicity of community-based resource management cases to develop theory. This was done mainly because of the relative ease of observing processes of self- governance in simple cases, but it raises questions related to scale. To what extent can the findings of small-scale, community-based commons be scaled up to generalize about regional and global commons? Even though some of the principles from community-based studies are likely to be relevant across scale, new and different principles may also come into play at different levels. The study of cross-level institutions such as institutions of co-management, provides ways to approach scale-related questions and deal with linkages in complex adaptive systems. Looking beyond self-governance, community-based resource management needs to deal with multiple levels of governance and external drivers of change, as illustrated in this paper with examples of marine commons."
  • Conference Paper
    Current Approaches to Co-Management in Manitoba
    (1991) Haugh, Allison; Berkes, Fikret
    "Cooperative management, as a regime for sharing resource management authority between government agencies, interest groups and user communities has been introduced in Manitoba on a number of occasions and in a variety of settings. It is important to note at the outset that co-management does not have a single prescription: it can denote stronger forms of community involvement (i.e. formal joint management of resources, or even self-management of resources by the communities themselves), or it can mean weaker forms of local involvement (i.e. consultative management through an advisory board). This study explores the current status of co-management in Manitoba, with an emphasis on the level of community involvement in such management strategies. While the term "co-management" tends to be used primarily in the area of wildlife and fisheries management, the following examples demonstrate that co-management can also apply to other resource-based industries, such as forestry and wild rice harvesting. The rationale for such agreements, and the issues or problems particular to each setting are explored."
  • 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
    Innovating through Commons Use: Community-based Enterprises
    (2010) Berkes, Fikret; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J.
    "Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions. Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on 'Innovating through commons use: community based enterprises', at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham, England."
  • Conference Paper
    Co-Management: The Evolution in Theory and Practice of the Joint Administration of Living Resources
    (1991) Berkes, Fikret; George, Peter; Preston, Richard J.
    "The joint administration or cooperative management (comanagement) of living resources is the potential solution to the contentious divergence between two alternative systems: centralized, state-level versus local-level and community-based systems of resource management. But co-management does not have a simple prescription. There are 'levels' of co-management, from informing and consultation, through degrees of power-sharing between the central government and local resource users." "Studies in the James Bay area indicate that the capability of local-level management or self-management is important not only from a fish and wildlife management point of view. It is also important to the social and economic health of many native communities. Because of the continuing importance of living resources, the economic development of native communities is linked to their ability to manage their own resources. This, in turn, is linked to larger questions of self-government."
  • Conference Paper
    Comparative Analysis of Mountain Landuse Sustainability: Case Studies from India and Canada
    (1998) Gardner, James S.; Sinclair, A. John; Berkes, Fikret
    "Mountain people typically have lived on the economic margins of society, making a living as woodcutters, herders, gatherers, and small-scale agriculturalists. Yet, for many societies, mountains are at the center of the universe. A number of mountains in Asia, such as Mount Kailas in Tibet, take on the character of the sacred mountain 'which stands as a cosmic axis around which the universe is organized in Hindu and Buddhist cosmology' (Bernbaum 1996). In our Indian study area (Figure 1), the mountains around the source of the Beas River are of great cultural and historical significance, as a site and inspiration of the Great Indian epics. "This suggests that the study of sustainability requires a broad approach, taking into account social and cultural matters, as well as the ecological and economic. We started the project with a special interest in the management of forested mountain environments, and in the use of participatory or people-oriented approaches to resource management. We adopted a view of sustainable development which explicitly included three elements: (1) the environmental imperative of living within ecological means, (2) the economic imperative of meeting basic material needs, and (3) the social imperative of meeting basic human and cultural needs. Such an approach to sustainable development is concerned with much more than maximizing resource yields. It covers a broad range of environmental values as well as economic and social needs, and opens up the scope of decision-making not only to a wider range of natural and social sciences but also to a range of stakeholders' interests affected by resource management decisions. "Under the overall goal of studying policy development for the sustainable use of forested mountain ecosystems, the objectives of this study were four-fold. We deal with each in turn and expand on the policy implications. 1) To develop integrated methodologies best suited for the comparative study of land resource management policies in forested mountain ecosystems; 2) To study the successes and failures of mountain environment resource management policies and their social, economic, and historical context as revealed in case studies; 3) To evaluate and develop criteria for assessing and monitoring sustainability in mountain environments and in particular, for examining relevant cross-cultural dimensions of SD in these ecosystems; and 4) To communicate policy implications of the study to the appropriate agencies and people concerned with resource management and sustainable development, and to interact with policy-makers."
  • Conference Paper
    Framework for the Study of Indigenous Knowledge: Linking Social and Ecological Systems
    (1995) Berkes, Fikret; Folke, Carl
    "A considerable amount of evidence has accumulated to indicate that ecologically sensible indigenous practices have indeed existed in diverse ecosystems. Based on these findings, there is potential for improvement of resource management in environments such as northern coastal ecosystems, arid and semi-arid land ecosystems, mountain ecosystems, tropical forest ecosystems, subarctic ecosystems and island ecosystems. As compared to the rather narrow set of prescriptions of Western scientific resource management systems, some of which may inadvertently act to reduce ecosystem resilience, indigenous management is often associated with a diversity of property rights regimes and common-property institutions and locally-adapted practices, and it may operate under systems of knowledge substantially different from Western knowledge systems. "The framework we propose distinguishes seven sets of variables which can be used to describe social and ecological system characteristics and linkages in any indigenous resource use case study: (1) ecosystem, (2) resource users and technology, (3) local knowledge, (4) property rights, (5) institutions, (6) pattern of interactions, and (7) outcomes. Our framework borrows from that of Oakerson for the analysis of common-property management, and that of Ostrom for institutional analysis. "The key concept in our framework is resilience, to emphasize the importance of conditions in which disturbances (perturbations) can flip a system from one equilibrium state to another. We use Holling's definition of resilience, the magnitude of disturbance that can be absorbed before a system changes its structure by changing the variables and processes that control behavior. We hypothesize that: (1) maintaining resilience is important for both resources and social institutions, and therefore the well-being of social and ecological systems is closely linked; (2) successful traditional knowledge systems will allow perturbations to enter an ecosystem on a scale which does not threaten its structure and functional performance, and the services it provides; and (3) there will be evidence of co-evolution in such traditional systems, making the local community and their institutions "in tune" over time with the natural processes of the particular ecosystem."