Part I. Latin-American rights-based fisheries targeting sedentary resources.

J. M. ORENSANZ; A. CINTI; A. M. PARMA; L. BUROTTO; S. ESPINOSA-GUERRERO; E. SOSA-CORDERO ; C. SEPÚLVEDA; V. TORAL-GRANDA

Rights-based management in Latin American fisheries

FAO/UN

Lugar: ROMA; Año: 2013; p. 12 - 75

The assessment and management of fisheries targeting sea bed resources pose many specific problems, largely related to the sedentary nature of benthic organisms (Orensanz and Jamieson, 1998). In this context, sedentary means that the spatial scale of individual movements is small as compared with the operating scale of the fishing process. As perceived by fishers, the spatial structure of the target populations is persistent in time (resources are viscous). Invertebrates that crawl over the sea bed, such as crab and lobsters, are sedentary by those standards. The sedentary nature of the resources favours harvesting strategies and tenure systems that emphasize the spatial dimension. More localized forms of governance and exclusivity of access to delimited territories offer a suitable alternative to the classical command-and-control approach, by creating incentives for fishers to protect their local resources and to participate in their management (monitoring, assessment, decision-making and enforcement). Fisheries targeting benthic resources range from coastal gathering along the seashore to sophisticated offshore industrial operations. Here, that diversity is illustrated with a selection of fisheries from Latin America. Most of them are small-scale fisheries (sometimes called S fisheries [Orensanz et al., 2005]), but one (the Patagonian scallop offshore fishery) is fully industrial. Selected cases of Latin American small-scale fisheries have been reviewed before by Castilla and Defeo (2001), Defeo and Castilla (2005) and Orensanz et al. (2005). These fisheries often target one or a few species, and their products are generally destined to affluent consumers, frequently exported. In that sense, they differ radically from the usual cliché of the artisanal fishery (multispecific and subsistence-oriented). The fisheries considered span a diversity of forms of access and tenure, from limited entry combined with a total allowable catch (TAC) to territorial use privileges and rights, and include both formal and informal management systems. After introducing a selection of illustrative cases, several transversal issues across systems are discussed and the following questions addressed: (i) how the different access regimes may affect the incentives for stewardship, conservation, sustained profitability and equitable distribution of benefits; and (ii) the implementation requirements of the tenure systems regarding scientific/technical support, enforcement and administration.