Effects of Marine Protected Areas on small-scale fisheries governance.

ALEXANDRE SCHIAVETTI; JAIME ABURTO; VALÉRIA PENCHEL; ANA CINTI; JOSÉ MARÍA ORENSANZ; LUISA RAMÍREZ; DANIELA ALARCON; FRANCISCO FERNÁNDEZ; ANA PARMA; MAURICIO CASTREJÓN; STUART FULTON; LUCIANA LOTO; MARIO RUEDA

Lima

Congreso; III Congreso de Áreas Protegidas de Latinoamérica y el Caribe; 2019

UICN

Many Latin American (LA) small-scale fisheries (SSFs) operate within ecologically sensitive areas, where reconciling conservation with resource use is often socially and politically challenging. In several LA countries, diverse formats of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) have been independently designed and implemented to accommodate SSFs (among other uses) and conservation. Examples include Extractive Reserves in Brazil, Biosphere Reserves in Mexico, Marine Reserves and Mangrove Exploitation Areas in Ecuador, Integrated Regional Management Districts and National Parks in Colombia, Multiple-use MPAs in Chile and Natural Protected Areas in Argentina, among others. In all these settings, the need to attend to conservation has created opportunities, but also presents challenges for SSFs governance. MPAs may positively or negatively affect fisheries in a number of aspects, including how access and resource use are defined, the level of resources and environmental stewardship achieved, the effort devoted to and the effectiveness of enforcement and monitoring programs, the decision making arrangements reached, socioeconomic effects, among others. We hypothesize that the sign -positive or negative- of these effects is associated with the approach to governance of MPAs (e.g. top down, bottom up, mixed). We analyze a collection of case studies (provided above) of SSFs from LA, all of which operate inside MPAs that differ in governance approach, design, and implementation. We provide insights on the following questions: 1. How do the diverse formats of MPAs affect relevant aspects of SSF governance? and 2. Are those effects associated with the approach to governance of MPAs?. We highlight that conservation tools can deliver several benefits for SSFs governance in the study region. With exceptions, those benefits tend to be present in higher proportion in mixed to bottom-up MPAs. This analysis provides lessons of practical and theoretical relevance on the joint governance of MPAs and SSFs in the LA region.