OMRN National Conference, October 2007, Ottawa

Coastal Communities and Oceans Management

Fikret BerkesNatural Resources Institute

University of Manitoba

Editor’s Note: Graphics from published papers and photos that appeared in the original presentation have been removed from this document. See cited sources and ther author for further details.

The issue• Communities are connected to global

markets and other processes more than ever before

• This makes them vulnerable to pressures and incentives that originate at higher levels of political and economic organization

• Reduces their resilience and adaptability to deal with change

• How do coastal communities respond to global change?

Networks and institutional interplay -- key to understanding the ability of communities to respond to global change

• Institutional interplay: institutions interacting horizontally (across the same level) and/or vertically (across levels of organization) IDGEC/Oran Young

• Networks: the web of horizontal and vertical links

Definitions

• Global change: the mix of economic, social environmental change

• Globalization: rapid, systemic change and the collapse of space and time scales (Global Env Change special issue, 2006)

• Community-based resource management: governance that starts from the ground up but deals with cross-scale interactions.

Exploring networks, institutional interplay, scale issues, resilience, adaptation

• Illustration: “roving bandits” as a special case of the ‘tragedy of the commons” in the globalized world

• The sea urchin case and the LRFT case

• Followed by a brief survey of our ongoing work of Canadian and international examples re: institutional interplay

Roving bandits

Resource exploiters and buyers who have no attachment to place and who opportunistically seek resources, take advantage of market opportunities from around the world and deplete stocks as they move.

• Marine Resilience Working Group

• Publication: Berkes et al. 2006. Science 311: 1557-1558.

Roving bandits

in Zanzibar --

processing sea

cucumbers for

Japanese buyers

probably for the

Chinese market

Roving bandits as a special case of the Tragedy of the Commons

• To understand roving bandits, one first has to refer to the Tragedy of the Commons

• The phenomenon whereby a freely accessible (or open-access) resource is competitively harvested and depleted

• Harvesters have no incentive to conserve because whatever they do not take will be harvested by others

Dynamics of roving banditry intensifies negative incentives

• Re: resources that suddenly gain in value in markets created by the global trade

• Profit margins tend to be high and competitive pressures intense

• Incentives – not sustainable use -- but to deplete resources as rapidly as possible

• Roving bandits move on to yet other stocks when the current one collapses

Roving bandits and sea urchins in the NW Atlantic

• Green sea urchin (Strongylocentrotus droebachiensis) proliferated following the loss of its fish predators in the mid-1980s

• An unregulated harvest began in Maine in 1987; Nova Scotia and New Brunswick in 1989

• Stocks rapidly depleted; peak harvest occurred in the Atlantic seaboard in 1993 before stock collapse

North Atlantic sea urchin fishery in context

• Commercial sea urchin harvest began largely for export to Japanese sushi markets

• after Japan’s own resources declined• N Atlantic (Maine, NS, NB) was one of a

series of areas exploited • Global harvest peaked in about 1990 with

the expansion of the fishery to new regions• but declined after that because there were

no frontiers left to exploit.

Global sea urchin harvests

Initiation year of major fishery by area:• Japan, 1945• Korea, 1960• Washington and Oregon, 1971• Baja, 1972; California, 1973• Chile, 1975• Alaska and BC, 1980; Russia, 1982• Maine, 1987• Nova Scotia & New Brunswick, 1989

Source: Berkes et al. 2006. Science 311; 1557-1558.Data from: Andrew et al. 2002. Oceanogr Mar Biol Annu Rev 40: 343.

Original graphic here from:

Roving bandits driving sequential exploitation

Common characteristics of sequential exploitation:

• Spatial expansion of harvests and sequential depletion of stocks by waves of exploitation

• Boom-and-bust pattern • Spatial expansion masking regional depletions• Shift in the species exploited, from the most

valuable and easy to harvest, to the next (Harold Innis, staples theory)

Globalization and sequential exploitation

• What’s new, different from historical cases?

• A new dynamic in the globalized world: new markets can develop so rapidly that the speed of exploitation overwhelms the ability to respond

• Local institutions are caught by surprise; unable to constrain harvesting.

Solutions? Difficult…

• Market signals unlikely to produce sustainability

• MPAs too small & too far apart• Global and regional agencies are too

clumsy to monitor at the relevant scale • … or react in a timely fashion: eg CITES

votes every two years for App’dix I and II• Local institutions: community-based control

mechanisms overwhelmed by surprise

Adaptive learning?

• Learning from experience: eg did NS & NB learn from Maine? Did North Atlantic learn from the Pacific Northwest?

• Roving banditry keeps repeating itself, with little evidence of learning

• In part because the usual adaptive management does not work

• Need to learn from the experience of others

Addressing roving bandits: Live Reef Fish Trade (LRFT)

• LRFT supplies luxury seafood restaurants• Spreading away from Hong Kong in the

1970s, to reach 19 exporting nations by 2000• 10 of these showing boom-and-bust pattern,

and “fishing down the price list”• But several Pacific island nations introducing

trial fisheries and LRFT mgmt plans • Coordinated by the Secretariat of the Pacific

Community (SPC), a regional agency.

LRFT case: Scales et al. 2006. Science 313: 612-3

     Original graphic here from:

Solutions: the LRFT case

• Scales et al. show policy change to address issues at multiple levels have begun for LRFT

• But no significant change to market drivers other than a flexibility to substitute species & locations

• The majority of the 22 SPC member nations do not have legislation to regulate LRFT

• Action to date has instead concentrated on harvesting restraints at the island level, and not multi-level action

What does “multi-level action” look like,

with horizontal and vertical connections?

Brief examples

• from the Canadian Arctic

• Large pelagic species in the Caribbean ICCAT

• UNDP Equator Initiative set of projects on integrated conservation-development

Armitage, Soc.Nat.Res. 2005; Breaking Ice, Chapter 11

Original graphic here from:

UNDP Equator Initiative: an international competition best practices for conservation & development integration. Successful entrepreneurship based on on local biodiversity.

• Surprisingly large number of partners (horizontal linkages) and kinds of partnerships

• Reaching global markets linked to crossing multiple institutional levels (vertical linkages)

• “Successful” projects well networkedSource: Berkes 2007. PNAS.

UNDP Equator Initiative cases and number of partners (horizontal linkages)

 Medicinal Plants Conservation Centre, India 11Arapaima conservation, Guyana 16Honey Care Africa Ltd., Kakamega, Kenya 8Honey Care Africa Ltd., Kwale, Kenya 6Cananeia Oyster Producers Cooperative, Brazil14TIDE Port Honduras marine reserve, Belize 13Pred Nai mangrove rehabilitation,Thailand 20Casa Matsiguenka indigenous ecotourism, Peru 7Nuevo San Juan forest management, Mexico 22Torra Conservancy, Namibia 8

UNDP Equator Initiative cases and number of levels of organization in partnerships (vertical linkages)

Medicinal Plants Conservation Centre, India 6Arapaima conservation, Guyana 4Honey Care Africa Ltd., Kakamega 5Honey Care Africa Ltd., Kwale 5Cananeia Oyster Producers Cooperative, Brazil 4 TIDE Port Honduras marine reserve, Belize 4Pred Nai mangrove rehabilitation,Thailand 5Casa Matsiguenka indigenous ecotourism, Peru 3*Nuevo San Juan forest management, Mexico 5Torra Conservancy, Namibia 4

* There was an international NGO level until 2003

Conclusions

• Effective responses are coming from the community level for globalization-related problems such as roving bandits

• Such effective responses require many horizontal and vertical linkages

• Community-NGO-government agency partnerships common; international as well

• These partnerships and networks make adaptation and resilience possible

Implications for Oceans Act, Canada’s Oceans Strategy, Oceans Action Plan

(1) Empowering the local level, building conserving feedback to create stewardship incentives by

• Establishing property rights at the local level

• Using local & traditional knowledge of fishers

• Building community-based monitoring

Implications for Oceans Act, Canada’s Oceans Strategy, Oceans Action Plan

(2) Building resilience and adaptive capacity at the local level

• Fostering co-management regimes that can learn from experience, that is

• Adaptive co-management, combining elements of adaptive management and co-management

• New book, Adaptive Co-Management, UBC Press, Oct 2007, D Armitage et al., editors.

Implications for Oceans Act, Canada’s Oceans Strategy, Oceans Action Plan

(3) Building multi-level governance institutions (from local to international) that can learn and innovate.

• Capacity-building and institution-building at various levels

• Fostering horizontal linkages by geographic areas and sectors

• Fostering vertical linkages across levels

Implications for Oceans Act, Canada’s Oceans Strategy, Oceans Action Plan

(4) We need to identify and package knowledge from existing experiences in a form that will be relevant and useful to decision-makers.