Participation in devolved commons management: multiscale socioeconomic factors related to individuals' participation in community-based management of marine protected areas in Indonesia

Management of common-pool natural resources is commonly implemented under institutional models promoting devolved decision-making, such as co-management and community-based management. Although participation of local people is critical to the success of devolved commons management, few studies have empirically investigated how individuals' participation is related to socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales. Here, we evaluated how individual- and community-scale factors were related to levels of individual participation in management of community-based marine protected areas in Indonesia. In addressing this aim, we drew on multiple bodies of literature on human behaviour from economics and social science, including the social-ecological systems framework from the literature on common-pool resources, the theory of planned behaviour from social psychology, and public goods games from behavioural economics. We found three key factors related to level of participation of local people: subjective norms, structural elements of social capital, and nested institutions. There was also suggestive evidence that participation was related to people's cooperative behavioural disposition, which we elicited using a public goods game. These results point to the importance of considering socioeconomic factors that operate at multiple scales when examining individual behaviour. Further, our study highlights the need to consider multiscale mechanisms other than those designed to appeal to self interested concerns, such as regulations and material incentives, which are typically employed in devolved commons management to encourage participation. Increased understanding of the factors related to participation could facilitate better targeting of investments aimed at encouraging cooperative management

Sixteen years of social and ecological dynamics reveal challenges and opportunities for adaptive management in sustaining the commons

Efforts to confront the challenges of environmental change and uncertainty include attempts to adaptively manage social–ecological systems. However, critical questions remain about whether adaptive management can lead to sustainable outcomes for both ecosystems and society. Here, we make a contribution to these efforts by presenting a 16-y analysis of ecological outcomes and perceived livelihood impacts from adaptive coral reef management in Papua New Guinea. The adaptive management system we studied was a customary rotational fisheries closure system (akin to fallow agriculture), which helped to increase the biomass of reef fish and make fish less wary (more catchable) relative to openly fished areas. However, over time the amount of fish in openly fished reefs slowly declined. We found that, overall, resource users tended to have positive perceptions about this system, but there were negative perceptions when fishing was being prohibited. We also highlight some of the key traits of this adaptive management system, including 1) strong social cohesion, whereby leaders played a critical role in knowledge exchange; 2) high levels of compliance, which was facilitated via a “carrot-and-stick” approach that publicly rewarded good behavior and punished deviant behavior; and 3) high levels of participation by community actors

Mosquito Net Use in an Artisanal East African Fishery

Widespread, anecdotal reports of the use of bed nets designed for malaria control (“mosquito nets”) in artisanal fisheries have led to concern from health and natural resource management sectors. However, mosquito net fishing (MNF) may play an important role in the livelihoods of artisanal fishers, an aspect not yet investigated. At a coastal Kenyan site among Giriama fishers, nearly half of homesteads interviewed used mosquito nets as fishing gear, targeting juvenile fish and prawns for subsistence and sale. The majority of mosquito net (MN) fishers here were men, suggesting that the assumption that MNF is a female activity is not valid in this case. However, MN use for fishing at this site is unlikely to impact malaria protection as fishers used old or surplus nets. Respondents perceived both positive aspects of MNF (e.g., food and income) and negative aspects (e.g., impact on fishery). As mosquito nets are widely available, they may enable new entrants to access fisheries. There is a critical need to review current management responses, which predominately focus on banning the practice, and instead promote integrated strategies for sustainable livelihoods

Social–environmental drivers inform strategic management of coral reefs in the Anthropocene

Without drastic efforts to reduce carbon emissions and mitigate globalized stressors, tropical coral reefs are in jeopardy. Strategic conservation and management requires identification of the environmental and socioeconomic factors driving the persistence of scleractinian coral assemblages—the foundation species of coral reef ecosystems. Here, we compiled coral abundance data from 2,584 Indo-Pacific reefs to evaluate the influence of 21 climate, social and environmental drivers on the ecology of reef coral assemblages. Higher abundances of framework-building corals were typically associated with: weaker thermal disturbances and longer intervals for potential recovery; slower human population growth; reduced access by human settlements and markets; and less nearby agriculture. We therefore propose a framework of three management strategies (protect, recover or transform) by considering: (1) if reefs were above or below a proposed threshold of >10% cover of the coral taxa important for structural complexity and carbonate production; and (2) reef exposure to severe thermal stress during the 2014–2017 global coral bleaching event. Our findings can guide urgent management efforts for coral reefs, by identifying key threats across multiple scales and strategic policy priorities that might sustain a network of functioning reefs in the Indo-Pacific to avoid ecosystem collapse

Migration and coastal resource use in Papua New Guinea \ud

Human migration is a considerable issue for many coastal societies, affecting the ways that people use and manage natural resources. This paper examines reasons for migration in 14 coastal communities in Papua New Guinea (PNG) and compares coastal resource use and socioeconomic conditions between migrants and non-migrants to test the hypothesis that migrants have different levels of coastal resource use than non-migrants. Migrants had lower participation in the fishery, ranked fishing as a less important livelihood strategy, and had lower involvement in village decision-making, but had higher levels of human development. Common property systems such as tenure rights may prevent migrants from accessing marine resources. However, migrants’ marginalization in decision-making processes may \ud become increasingly contested where resources are scarce and migrants desire an increasing say in how they are allocated. The current limited use of coastal resources by migrants may be a latent problem that needs to be considered by resource managers, particularly in areas where rapid socioeconomic change is occurring and tenure institutions are fragile. \u

Social-ecological traps in reef fisheries

[Extract] There is a long history of research on social traps, which are situations where individuals or even whole societies "get started in some direction or some set of relationships that later prove to be unpleasant or lethal and that they see no easy way to back out or to avoid" (Platt, 1973, p. 641). Although the idea of social traps are prevalent in debates about the governance of natural resources (e.g. [Hardin, 1968] and [Costanza, 1987]), they have rarely been discussed using the resilience lens of linked social-ecological systems, which emphasizes feedbacks between social and ecological domains and the potential for phase shifts to alternative, less socially desirable, stable states (e.g. Hughes, 1994). Here, I discuss the idea of 'social-ecological traps' (sensu Steneck, 2009), which refer to situations when feedbacks between social and ecological systems lead toward an undesirable state that may be difficult or impossible to reverse. I synthesize recent research conducted on coral reef social-ecological systems in east Africa as a focal context for this discussion

Using expert opinion to prioritize impacts of climate change on sea turtles’ nesting grounds

Managers and conservationists often need to prioritize which impacts from climate change to deal with\ud from a long list of threats. However, data which allows comparison of the relative impact from climatic\ud threats for decision-making is often unavailable. This is the case for the management of sea turtles in the\ud face of climate change. The terrestrial life stages of sea turtles can be negatively impacted by various\ud climatic processes, such as sea level rise, altered cyclonic activity, and increased sand temperatures.\ud However, no study has systematically investigated the relative impact of each of these climatic processes,\ud making it challenging for managers to prioritize their decisions and resources. To address this we offer\ud a systematic method for eliciting expert knowledge to estimate the relative impact of climatic processes\ud on sea turtles’ terrestrial reproductive phase. For this we used as an example the world’s largest population\ud of green sea turtles and asked 22 scientists and managers to answer a paper based survey with\ud a series of pair-wise comparison matrices that compared the anticipated impacts from each climatic\ud process. Both scientists and managers agreed that increased sand temperature will likely cause the most\ud threat to the reproductive output of the nGBR green turtle population followed by sea level rise, then\ud altered cyclonic activity. The methodology used proved useful to determine the relative impact of the\ud selected climatic processes on sea turtles’ reproductive output and provided valuable information for\ud decision-making. Thus, the methodological approach can potentially be applied to other species and\ud ecosystems of management concern

Poverty, perceptions and planning: why socioeconomics matter in the management of Mexican reefs

This paper examines relationships between socioeconomic factors and perceptions of coastal resources in Mahahual, Mexico. Residents provided open-ended comments to questions regarding coral reefs and fisheries. Socioeconomic characteristics are examined to see if there are differences in perceptions between socioeconomic groups. We found that wealth is the most important socioeconomic variable influencing perceptions of coastal resources. The paper concludes that understanding how socioeconomic factors influence people's values of the environment can help in the development of efficacious conservation strategies that address the root causes of environmental degradation, but emphasizes that interventions must complement the complex livelihood strategies of stakeholders such as fishers.\ud Article Outlin

Socioeconomic factors that lead to overfishing in small-scale coral reef fisheries of Papua New Guinea

The coral reefs of Papua New Guinea are among the most species diverse in the world, support an important artisanal fishery, but lack an effective national conservation programme. Increased commercialization, population growth, promotion of fisheries development projects, and the live reef food fish trade are expected to increase demand for the country's reef fish. This paper examines how socioeconomic factors affect the condition of the artisanal multi-species coral reef fishery in six sites in Papua New Guinea. Catch characteristics such as diversity, trophic level and body size by landing site were examined along a fishing pressure gradient. Both exogenous factors such as markets and endogenous factors such as fishing pressure were related to the condition of fish catch. In general, the trophic level and lengths of fish captured in Papua New Guinea were relatively high, but were reduced on reefs with high fishing effort near fish markets. Fisheries showed signs of depletion above c. 25 fishing trips per km2 per day and the proximity of markets was a better indicator of overfishing than human population size. A cross-scale approach to fisheries management is required in Papua New Guinea to coordinate decentralized local management, limit the intrusion of extractive enterprises, and develop policies that seek to minimize exogenous pressures on marine resources

Co-management of coral reef fisheries: a critical evaluation of the literature

In many parts of the world, inshore marine resources are being increasingly managed through collaborative arrangements between communities, governments, civil society and other groups. However, co-management of fisheries has had a mixture of successes and failures. Theorists and applied researchers have suggested a series of preconditions or factors thought to improve the chances of successful common-pool resource management. These include common property institutional design principles and their contextual conditions. Using a variety of web-based English keyword searches, published literature on community-based management and co-management of coral reefs was systematically reviewed with the view of determining if and how studies were evaluating these management systems as well as the extent to which critical aspects of common property theory were investigated and tested. Based on a screening of 600 and full evaluation of 157 journal articles, four measures of ecological conditions and five measures of contextual condition improvement were examined or could be evaluated with the data presented in 38 papers, which examined 49 co-management projects. Fewer than half of the 49 studies met the inclusion criteria of the analyses for documenting key design principles or contextual conditions. Additionally, most projects did not systematically report on contextual conditions, common property design principles and measures of success. The analysis demonstrates the large theoretical and empirical gaps in the evaluation of these management systems and begs for a more scientific, critical and multivariate approach