Can "barefoot ecologists" provide scientific/technical support and contribute to improve management in SS-fisheries?

MACHO, G.; NAYA, I.; FREIRE, J.; PARMA, A.M.; ORENSANZ, J.M.; PRINCE, J.

Bangkok

Congreso; World Small-scale Fisheries Congress; 2010

There is consensus about two requirements for the successful management of small-scale fisheries (SSFs): (i) participation of the local community in the decision-making process, and (ii) availability of trusted information organized to assess the status of the fishery. Fishing communities may benefit from somebody acting as a "social catalyst" to assist them as they enter co-management arrangements, and in the development of monitoring programs and management plans. Deficient technical support is weakening the management of SSFs in both developing and developed countries, and in subsistence as well as cash-oriented fisheries. The classical format of technical support developed for industrial fisheries, which requires professional scientists and managers and sophisticated formal approaches, is too expensive and impossible to implement in each and every SSF. The demand for technical advice may be more realistically satisfied by a different kind of professional profile, akin to the "barefoot ecologist" predicated by Prince (2003), with a social twist. We find it suggestive that convergent cases have evolved independently in different parts of the world, under a diversity of institutional arrangements -some originated from top-down, others from bottom-up. We will discuss the role of "barefoot ecologists" in fostering the transition from primary management (ensure sustainability and minimize risks) to tertiary management (build capital and optimize benefits) in the conceptual framework developed by Cochrane et al. (2010). The "barefoot ecologists", as we envision them, are inserted within the communities, equipped with resource-assessment and social-science skills, and networked with the scientific/management community.