Employing a role playing game and debriefing approach to validate practices and identify variations in response dynamics

To supplement data collected via interviews, participant observation and mapping in two communities where three monitoring interventions had been introduced, a Role Playing Game and debriefing were used to identify variations in fishing and landing practices in proximate communities and to validate responses to three interventions to monitor fishing activity in a tuna fishery in Indonesia. The Role Playing Game was used to simulate the daily routines of fishers and the introduction of three interventions. Debriefing was used to reflect on the internal and external validity of the RPG and to speculate on the impact of the interventions with the players. • An application of Role Playing Game and debriefing to validate case study findings about changes in social practices resulting from interventions is described.• Supplementing qualitative research methods with the Role Playing Game and debriefing showcases similarities and variations in social practices and responses to interventions.• Using the Role Playing Game and debriefing to simulate interventions allows for reflection on implications of interventions with those not (yet) targeted by an intervention.</p

Fisher responses to private monitoring interventions in an Indonesian tuna handline fishery

Information is central to the assessment and regulation of fisheries, yet underreporting remains a persistent problem, especially in the small-scale and developing country fisheries. Private actors, using a variety of enumeration approaches and technologies, have started to supplement government enumeration programs to meet a range of reporting obligations. This paper introduces a social practices approach to understand the response of fishers to private enumeration interventions. We base our analysis on the introduction of landing enumeration, fisher logbooks and Spot Trace devices by the Indonesian NGO, Masyarakat dan Perikanan Indonesia (MDPI) in a Fair Trade USA certified handline tuna fishery in Eastern Indonesia. The results show how a social practices approach offers a grounded understanding of responses to monitoring interventions that extends beyond conventional analyses of fishery-dependent data collection. The paper concludes that understanding data collection as a set of socially mediated practices that intervene in established fishing and landing practices can help to improve the design of fisheries data collection.</p

Responses of Indonesian tuna processing companies to enhanced public and private traceability

Seafood is increasingly subject to traceability requirements set by importing countries and global buyers. These demands place significant pressure on value chain actors to change seafood production and trade practices to align to the standardized norms around legality and food safety. While processing companies are recognized as critical players in facilitating access to global markets there is currently a lack of understanding about how they respond to traceability demands. To address this gap, this paper employs a social practices perspective to analyse how and why the actual practices performed by tuna processing companies in Indonesia change in response to BRC certification and the EU IUU regulation catch certification requirements. The results demonstrate that responses are determined by the performance and embeddedness of existing social practices that make up tuna value chains. Furthermore, our findings showcase short term adaptive responses for practices within the direct control of processing companies while practices beyond the control of processing companies, for example those performed by middlemen and government officials, were more rigid and required new social and material arrangements to be developed. With traceability demands likely to expand, conceptualizing value chains as sets of interrelated social practices offers a novel way to understand the uptake of traceability demands.</p

Fisher and Trader Responses to Traceability Interventions in Indonesia

Calls for increased traceability of seafood have been frustrated by a poor understanding of the social dynamics shaping the flow of fish and information in global value chains. Contrasting with utilitarian and regulatory approaches, this article proposes a social practices intervention framework to understand the effect of traceability interventions ensuing from the EU IUU regulation and Fair Trade USA seafood certification program on fishers and traders operating in remote tuna landing sites in Indonesia. The framework demonstrates how the success or failure of traceability interventions depends on both alignments with (1) the performance of “targeted” and (2) “non-targeted” value chain practices as well as (3) “non-targeted” practices adjacent to the value chain. We conclude that the social practices intervention framework can provide improved insight and guidance on the uptake of traceability and other market-based governance approaches across a range of locally embedded fisheries landing sites.</p

Private provision of public information in tuna fisheries

Private enumeration of landings data and traceability is an emerging phenomena in developing world tuna fisheries. The general goal of these systems is to facilitate compliance with mandatory market requirements such as the European Union’s Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fisheries regulation, as well as support aspirations for voluntary requirements such as the Marine Stewardship Council. The long-term success of these systems appears to be dependent on their ability to complement and extend government data and information systems. Developing and maintaining the credibility of these voluntary private enumeration and traceability systems requires strong market incentives as well as strong state support and assurance. If this credibility can be maintained private fisheries information systems may provide a promising basis for innovative stock assessment and management approaches relevant for complex developing world fisheries such as tuna