Sustainability in small-scale fisheries: insights from South America

PARMA, A.M.; ORENSANZ, J.M.

Nantucket y Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts, USA

Taller; Workshop and discussion on bay scallop biology and management; 2009

Environmental Defense Fund y y Maria Mitchell Association

The assessment and management approaches commonly used for industrial fisheries are remarkably similar worldwide. The dominant paradigm has emphasized the estimation of stock size using data-rich methods as a means for setting global or regional quotas in top-down, centralized systems. The fact that this paradigm does not work for small-scale fisheries is now well-recognized, as the latter are, generally, data-poor, geographically heterogeneous and institutionally weak. This has prompted a search for alternatives. On the one side, assessment scientists have begun to investigate stock-assessment methods and harvesting strategies for data-limited situations. On the other, social scientists have advocated comanagement to involve fishers in monitoring, decision-making and enforcement, provided that incentives are in place to promote a genuine interest in the long-term health of the resources. Clearly the management framework has to attend to both the resource and the people. It is less clear what kind of institutions and management strategies will be most effective, under what conditions, and at what scales. Co-management experience in small-scale fisheries comes mostly from tropical reef fisheries, in which local communities have been engaged in establishing marine protected areas.These fisheries differ sharply from the small-scale, export-oriented shellfisheries which predominate along the temperate coasts of Latin America.Yet, even within this cohesive subset, fisheries are so diverse that blanket solutions are unrealistic.In our talk we will illustrate a variety of approaches by contrasting some commercial fisheries from Chile and Argentina.Although none of them is fully successful, progress has been achieved by introducing some radical changes in the assessment and management institutions, or by accommodating informal but effective components of a traditional management system. Major lessons do not pertain to the specific tactics, but rather to some general principles: solutions need to be tailored to the specific nature of the resources and social dynamics, and institutions need to be established to provide regular feedback at the local and larger scales, not only about resource status but also about how humans respond to management interventions.