Small-scale fisheries in ecologically sensitive areas: opportunities and challenges for sustainability in diverse institutional arrangements in Latin America

CINTI, A.; ORENSANZ,J.M.; PARMA, A.M.; ABURTO, J.; CASTREJÓN, M.

Alberta

Conferencia; 15th Biennial Global Conference International Association for the Study of the Commons; 2015

International Association for the Study of the Commons

Many Latin American small-scale fisheries (SSFs) operate within ecologically sensitive areas. Reconciling conservation with resource use is socially and politically challenging and often conflictive, due to the large number of people involved and the significance of fishing for their livelihoods. Diverse institutional arrangements have been independently designed and implemented in several Latin-American countries to accommodate SSFs and conservation. Examples include Reservas Extrativistas Marinhas (RESEXs) in Brazil; various forms of multiple use marine protected areas in Mexico, Ecuador, Colombia, Chile and Argentina; combinations of TURFs (Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries) and Marine Reserves in Chile, among others. In all these settings, the need to attend to conservation has created opportunities, but also presents challenges for SSFs management. On the positive side, attention to SSFs management has generally increased, bringing into focus the need to regulate access and the damaging ecological side-effects of some fishing gear, promoting the establishment of participatory bodies and enhanced institutions, increasing incentives for fishers to organize, improving monitoring and enforcement, and creating opportunities for the diversification of livelihoods. Added challenges include conflicts in objectives, overlapping mandates of intervening government agencies leading to dilution of responsibility and inaction, interagency conflicts, social costs due to exclusion, and unresolved conflicts among users. We compare and discuss various institutional arrangements for the management of SSFs operating in ecologically sensitive areas, which differ in origin, objectives, design and implementation. This approach, we hope, may inform the quest for solutions that accommodate priorities in social-ecological systems.