Publisher :
Place of publication :
Publication year : 2012
Thematic : Fisheries
Language : English
Note
Fisheries management has failed to stop overfishing. Private individuals and enterprises that use public fishery resources are subject to legal obligations and harvest rules, though these regulations are often poorly enforced. The privilege to fish is commonly perceived as a right to fish, which has serious consequences for the sustainability of target fish species and conservation of marine resources. To mitigate the collective human impact on marine ecosystems, global society must reconcile the ecological, economic, social, cultural, political, legal, and ethical ramifications of competing human demands on scarce natural resources. This Special Feature is the product of an American Association for the Advancement of Science symposium organized by the guest editors. In the collection of papers that follow, biologists, resource managers, policy analysts, economists, lawyers, tribal leaders, and conservationists tackle pressing issues in marine resource management and governance, such as, “Who is responsible for managing and protecting fishery resources? What governance mechanisms can resolve local and global fishery resource conflicts over shared access rights? How can competitive globalized markets and the visible hand of subsidies be reined in to end the race for fish, and instead, support local communities and global society?†The diverse perspectives captured in this Special Feature reflect the complexity of these issues.
In the absence of oceanic fences, wild fish migrate: living fish obey natural laws, while human behavior must be constrained by social laws. Historically, community-based management and customary law supported Aboriginal subsistence fisheries and traditional ways of life. Today, ecosystem-based management (EBM) and science assist centralized governments in regulating industrialized, mixed-stock fisheries, using various input and output controls in management and governance (Sissenwine and Mace 2003). Input controls, such as licenses, gear restrictions, area closures, and limits on days fished, restrict access; output controls limit the fishery by setting the total allowable catch (TAC), and often include catch shares that allocate a portion of the TAC either by sector, gear type, or vessel, or alternatively, to individual fishermen, communities, or fishery associations. While each of these management schemes may have been designed to achieve unique social, economic, and ecological goals, they were often historically constructed to achieve the least socio-political resistance and ecological damage, and the greatest economic return (Bromley 2009).
To date, ethical issues concerning socioeconomic equity and ecological sustainability have seldom been captured in fishery management program design or implementation. How can these various management practices and tools contribute to the sustainable harvest of marine resources today, as an obligation to present and future fishing communities and global society? Fisheries managers must reconcile how to grant rights of access and harvest with attendant responsibilities of marine stewardship. With duties, the erstwhile rights now constitute privileges. The “privilege of utilizing a resource carries with it the obligation†to conserve wild living resources (Holt and Talbot 1978, quoted in Mangel et al. 1996, p. 339). For conservation, fisheries management needs to shift from rights-based fishing to dedicated access privileges. Dedicated access privileges combine aspects of both input and output controls by providing secure access privileges to a portion of the allowable catch, fishing effort, or fishing grounds. The articles in this Special Feature explore these complex issues of fishing to articulate the privilege to fish, where responsible management of marine resources is an ecological norm, and marine conservation, a societal value.
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Keywords : Colombia
Encoded by : Pauline Carmel Joy Eje
