Fish Trader's Gender and Niches in a Declining Coral Reef Fishery: Implications for Sustainability

The state of natural resources is greatly influenced by market access. Consequently, resource trader's incentives, decisions, and willingness to comply with management can influence efforts to achieve sustainability. Trader's impacts will depend on their economic niches, which are influenced by cultural norms, skill, social relationships, profitability, and the spatial scale of markets. Consequently, we examined the potential of traders to influence fisheries' sustainability by evaluating their jobs, gender roles, religion, socioeconomic status, association and perceptions of management systems, and future plans. We studied 142 traders in 19 Kenyan coral reef fisheries landing sites distributed among four gear management systems

Demographic variability and scales of agreement and disagreement over resource management restrictions

Conflicts over the imposition of restrictions in common-pool resources management institutions are expected to arise from variations in human values, perceptions of justice, and the disparate demographic scales of benefits and costs. We hypothesized and tested a series of propositions about how the demographic scale and context of common restrictions would influence coral reef fisheries of 4 African countries. We surveyed the preferences and perceived benefits of 1849 people in 89 fish landing sites for 6 common restrictions of increasing severity. Variability in perceived benefits within and between neighboring communities was evaluated to determine how perceptions changed with the severity of the proposed benefit/cost restriction scale, perceived benefits, disparities between beneficiaries, and national context. Within-community variability declined strongly (r² > 0.90) as perceived benefit increased but was either weak or not significantly associated with the neighbor-community's variation. Within-community variation was less than between-community variation and differed by nation. There was generally broader scale agreement on the benefits of weaker restrictions of minimum sizes of fish and allowable fishing gear and more disagreement on stronger restrictions on species, time, and space use. Reduced variability was strongly associated with less perceived disparity in the benefits received by local versus government beneficiaries. These findings indicate potential conflicts between neighboring communities for most, but particularly the strongest, restrictions. Consequently, the broadscale management benefits of strong restrictions will need to address between-community compliance and justice procedures. Demographic variability requires coordinating governance and management to account for restriction-specific variability in the perceptions of management benefits

Connecting Marine Ecosystem Services to Human Well-being: Insights from Participatory Well-being Assessment in Kenya

The linkage between ecosystems and human well-being is a focus of the conceptualization of ``ecosystem services{''} as promoted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, the actual nature of connections between ecosystems and the well-being of individuals remains complex and poorly understood. We conducted a series of qualitative focus groups with five different stakeholder groups connected to a small-scale Kenyan coastal fishery to understand (1) how well-being is understood within the community, and what is important for well-being, (2) how people's well-being has been affected by changes over the recent past, and (3) people's hopes and aspirations for their future fishery. Our results show that people conceive well-being in a diversity of ways, but that these can clearly map onto the MA framework. In particular, our research unpacks the ``freedoms and choices{''} element of the framework and argues for greater recognition of these aspects of well-being in fisheries management in Kenya through, for example, more participatory governance processes

Heterogeneity in fishers' and managers' preferences towards management restrictions and benefits in Kenya

Increasing the chances that resource users engage in and comply with management regulations is a continual problem for many conservation initiatives globally. This is particularly common when resource users perceive more personal costs than benefits from specific management actions. Analysis of interviews with managers and fishers from 22 landing sites along the coast of Kenya indicated how key stakeholders perceived the scale of benefits and costs from different management strategies. Potential underlying causes of divergent perceptions towards different management tools were evaluated, including marine protected areas, no-take fisheries closures, gear use, minimum size of fish caught and species restrictions. The analysis identified three distinct opinion groups: (1) a group of nine landing sites that scaled their preference for most management restrictions neutral to low, with exceptions for minimum sizes of captured fish and gear restrictions; (2) a group of eight landing sites that scaled their preference for the above and species restrictions and closed season higher, and were more neutral about closures and marine protected areas; and (3) a group containing four landing sites and the managers' offices that rated their preference for the above and closed areas and marine protected areas as high. Logistic regression was used to examine whether these groups differed in wealth, education, age, perceptions of disparity in benefits, dependence on fishing and distance to government marine protected areas. The most frequent significant factor was the resource users' perceived disparity between the benefits of the management to themselves and their communities, with the benefits to the government. Consequently, efforts to reduce this real or perceived disparity are likely to increase adoption and compliance rates. Most widespread positively-viewed restrictions, such as gear use and minimum size of fish, should be promoted at the national level while other restrictions may be more appropriately implemented at the community level

Winners and losers in marine conservation: fishers' displacement and livelihood benefits from marine reserves

Marine reserves can create both benefits and costs to fishers. This article explores the perceptions of fishers in Kenya and Seychelles about displacement, spillover, and overall impacts of local marine reserves on their livelihoods. We test whether these perceptions are different among fishers from different geographic and socioeconomic conditions. Sixty-six percent of fishers had been displaced from marine reserves or coastal development and 90% believed they had caught fishes that spilled over from marine reserves. Poorer fishers in Kenya were both displaced from, and also felt like they benefited from, marine reserves. This highlights how people's experiences with marine reserves, both positive and negative, are affected by a range of social considerations that may not be incorporated in typical evaluations of ecological and economic marine reserve success

Perceived benefits of fisheries management restrictions in Madagascar

Perceptions of the benefits of fisheries management restrictions were evaluated in coastal Madagascar to identify restrictions that are likely to be self- and community enforced. The survey focused on 24 Malagasy fishing villages adjacent to coral reefs. Resource users' perceptions of the benefits of restrictions were generally high and widespread, but some less positive perceptions were found in three villages located near marine protected areas. Perceptions of the benefits of gear restrictions had widespread support; closed areas, seasons, and minimum sizes of fish were less common; and restrictions on species were supported infrequently. We therefore advocate a management implementation approach that uses these scales of perceived benefits and prioritizes support for the most widely accepted restrictions most broadly, with the less accepted restrictions matched to specific supportive locations. At the village level, socioeconomic and wealth variables were not clearly associated with perceived benefits, which we suggest results from a stronger influence of village history than socioeconomic conditions. At the individual fisher level, however, there was evidence that experienced people involved in decision-making, having livelihood alternatives, and having permanent housing had more opinions and frequently were more supportive of management restrictions. Incorporating this information into forums and management plans is expected to increase the rate of adoption and compliance with needed fisheries restrictions

Evaluating taboo trade-offs in ecosystems services and human well-being

Managing ecosystems for multiple ecosystem services and balancing the well-being of diverse stakeholders involves different kinds of trade-offs. Often trade-offs involve noneconomic and difficult-to-evaluate values, such as cultural identity, employment, the well-being of poor people, or particular species or ecosystem structures. Although trade-offs need to be considered for successful environmental management, they are often overlooked in favor of win-wins. Management and policy decisions demand approaches that can explicitly acknowledge and evaluate diverse trade-offs. We identified a diversity of apparent trade-offs in a small-scale tropical fishery when ecological simulations were integrated with participatory assessments of social–ecological system structure and stakeholders’ well-being. Despite an apparent win-win between conservation and profitability at the aggregate scale, food production, employment, and well-being of marginalized stakeholders were differentially influenced by management decisions leading to trade-offs. Some of these trade-offs were suggested to be “taboo” trade-offs between morally incommensurable values, such as between profits and the well-being of marginalized women. These were not previously recognized as management issues. Stakeholders explored and deliberated over trade-offs supported by an interactive “toy model” representing key system trade-offs, alongside qualitative narrative scenarios of the future. The concept of taboo trade-offs suggests that psychological bias and social sensitivity may exclude key issues from decision making, which can result in policies that are difficult to implement. Our participatory modeling and scenarios approach has the potential to increase awareness of such trade-offs, promote discussion of what is acceptable, and potentially identify and reduce obstacles to management compliance

What Happens after Conservation and Management Donors Leave? A Before and After Study of Coral Reef Ecology and Stakeholder Perceptions of Management Benefits

<div><p>The coral reefs of Tanga, Tanzania were recognized as a national conservation priority in the early 1970s, but the lack of a management response led to damage by dynamite, beach seines, and high numbers of fishers until the mid 1990s. Subsequently, an Irish Aid funded IUCN Eastern Africa program operated from 1994 to mid 2007 to implement increased management aimed at reducing these impacts. The main effects of this management were to establish collaborative management areas, reduce dynamite and seine net fishing, and establish small community fisheries closures beginning in 1996. The ecology of the coral reefs was studied just prior to the initiation of this management in 1996, during, 2004, and a few years after the project ended in 2010. The perceptions of resource users towards management options were evaluated in 2010. The ecological studies indicated that the biomass of fish rose continuously during this period from 260 to 770 kg/ha but the small closures were no different from the non-closure areas. The benthic community studies indicate stability in the coral cover and community composition and an increase in coralline algae and topographic complexity over time. The lack of change in the coral community suggests resilience to various disturbances including fisheries management and the warm temperature anomaly of 1998. These results indicate that some aspects of the management program had been ecologically successful even after the donor program ended. Moreover, the increased compliance with seine net use and dynamite restrictions were the most likely factors causing this increase in fish biomass and not the closures. Resource users interviewed in 2010 were supportive of gear restrictions but there was considerable between-community disagreement over the value of specific restrictions. The social-ecological results suggest that increased compliance with gear restrictions is largely responsible for the improvements in reef ecology and is a high priority for future management programs.</p></div

The collaborative management areas (CMAs), year of establishment, the reefs within the CMAs and the year of closure of reefs within the CMA in the Tanga Region (a), and the physical characteristics of the study sites (b).

<p>The study sites and the villages adjacent to these sties are shown in bold.</p