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Fisheries policy that is comprehensible and agreeable to fishers is a cornerstone of democratic and inclusive governance of living marine resources. However, policy designers struggle to systematically include diverse perspectives and they may not understand the breadth and depth of fishers’ knowledge about fisheries management and conservation. Failing to anticipate how reforms to management plans are received can spur policy rejection, distrust, and foster noncompliance. Knowing fishers’ knowledge of, inclination toward, and vulnerability to proposed changes can help fishery managers design and implement inclusive and forward-thinking fishery management plans. In a representative survey of Greenland’s inshore halibut fishers, we asked about current and proposed changes to the management of fisheries. From a response pool of experienced fishers, we found little to no knowledge about individual transferable quota programs, little to no inclination for or against these proposed changes, and a wide range of levels of vulnerability in the face of potentially curtailed access to fishery resources. Results suggest that fishers and fishery decision makers must increase the exchange of technical knowledge in understandable terms for Greenland’s fisheries policy to achieve sustainability outcomes and to secure small-scale fisheries livelihoods. We recommend that policy makers increase outreach efforts to show fishers “under the hood”, provide clear and accessible information, and seek suggestions and comments from fishers regarding proposed changes to the status quo. We further suggest that analysts conduct a transparent management strategy evaluation to model potential outcomes arising from any revised fishery management plan, fishing communities, and in turn, for Greenland’s entire small-scale fishing segment.
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Defining the economic scope for ecosystem-based fishery management
The emergence of ecosystem-based fisheries management (EBFM) has broadened the policy scope of fisheries management by accounting for the biological and ecological connectivity of fisheries. Less attention, however, has been given to the economic connectivity of fisheries. If fishers consider multiple fisheries when deciding where, when, and how much to fish, then management changes in one fishery can generate spillover impacts in other fisheries. Catch-share programs are a popular fisheries management framework that may be particularly prone to generating spillovers given that they typically change fishers’ incentives and their subsequent actions. We use data from Alaska fisheries to examine spillovers from each of the main catch-share programs in Alaska. We evaluate changes in participation—a traditional indicator in fisheries economics—in both the catch-share and non–catch-share fisheries. Using network analysis, we also investigate whether catch-share programs change the economic connectivity of fisheries, which can have implications for the socioeconomic resilience and robustness of the ecosystem, and empirically identify the set of fisheries impacted by each Alaska catch-share program. We find that cross-fishery participation spillovers and changes in economic connectivity coincide with some, but not all, catch-share programs. Our findings suggest that economic connectivity and the potential for cross-fishery spillovers deserve serious consideration, especially when designing and evaluating EBFM policies.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1734999
- PAR ID:
- 10171715
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
- Volume:
- 116
- Issue:
- 10
- ISSN:
- 0027-8424
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4188 to 4193
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1816545116
