Kathleen Schwerdtner Máñez

Allies, not aliens: increasing the role of local communities in marine protected area implementation

Various management approaches have been proposed to address the alarming depletion of marine coastal resources. Prominent among them are community-based management and the establishment of marine protected areas (MPAs). The overall poor performance of MPAs can be traced to a failure to effectively include local communities in the design and implementation of relevant measures. Recent efforts have incorporated aspects of community-based management into a hybrid form of management, which ideally builds upon existing local management practices. A key challenge lies in the development of appropriate frameworks that allow for the successful participation of local communities in management. A review of studies on MPA design and community-based marine resource management and fieldwork observations provides suggestions on how to address current socioeconomic shortcomings in MPA design and implementation, successfully involving local communities in order to provide a better local basis for effective larger MPA networks. A combination of MPA tools as the formal frame and community-based natural resource management as the adaptive core that recognizes local communities as allies, not aliens, is needed to develop successful conservation approaches.

The future of the oceans past: Towards a global marine historical research initiative

Historical research is playing an increasingly important role in marine sciences. Historical data are also used in policy making and marine resource management, and have helped to address the issue of shifting baselines for numerous species and ecosystems. Although many important research questions still remain unanswered, tremendous developments in conceptual and methodological approaches are expected to contribute to a comprehensive understanding of the global history of human interactions with life in the seas. Based on our experiences and knowledge from the “History of Marine Animal Populations” project, this paper identifies the emerging research topics for future historical marine research. It elaborates on concepts and tools which are expected to play a major role in answering these questions, and identifies geographical regions which deserve future attention from marine environmental historians and historical ecologists.

To cope or to sustain? Eroding long-term sustainability in an Indonesian coral reef fishery

Small-scale fisheries in coral reef areas support the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide. Anthropogenic impacts such as overfishing and climate change increasingly threaten both the reef ecosystem and the livelihood security of the people that depend on the reefs. Adaptive management strategies are needed to adequately deal with these threats, but they require an understanding of the underlying drivers, which often originate and act on multiple levels. Using a social-ecological system approach, the coral reef fishery of the Spermonde Archipelago in South Sulawesi/Indonesia is assessed to identify key drivers and strategic leverage points for management. Under the influence of international markets and technological changes, several export-oriented fisheries have developed in the area that led to distinct subsequent peaks in fishing activity in a pattern of sequential marine resource exploitation. In response to stressors such as seasonality and overfishing of individual locations or species, a number of coping strategies have developed locally. These include extensive borrowing from fishing patrons, diversification of fishing methods, fishing migrations, and the crafting of local institutions to regulate fishing activity. However, the coping strategies hinder, and even decrease, the capacity of the system to adapt to future stressors and undermine the sustainability of the fishery. Potential strategies that target different levels of the fishery system in order to strengthen adaptive management are identified.

Fish Is Women’s Business Too: Looking at Marine Resource Use Through a Gender Lens

The majority of studies in fisheries history have turned a blind eye on the role of women. This is mainly a result of the roles that most societies have traditionally allocated to men and women, with fisheries usually perceived as a male domain. However, women have always had a major influence on fishing practices and fish trade: as harvesters and collectors of marine resources, as processors and traders, and as central actors in informal networks that are especially relevant for small-scale fisheries. This chapter analyses gendered processes in fisheries, by shedding light on the manifold roles of women, in order to complement and challenge the results of historical fisheries research. It reviews studies on fisheries, gender and history, and provides a systematic overview on important aspects pertaining to women’s role in fisheries. It also contains a case study on giant clam collection and trade in Indonesia which illuminates how women have influenced and sustained fisheries in practise, and through time.

Perspectives on Oceans Past: A Handbook of Marine Environmental History

Marine environmental history analyses the changing relationships between human societies and marine natural resources over time. This is the first book which deals in a systematic way with the theoretical backgrounds of this discipline. Major theories and methods are introduced by leading scholars of the field. The book seeks to encapsulate some of the major novelties of this fascinating new discipline and its contribution to the management, conservation and restoration of marine and coastal ecosystems as well as the cultural heritages of coastal communities in different parts of the world.

Of Seascapes and People: Multiple Perspectives on Oceans Past

Human interactions with the sea date back millennia. But until a few decades ago historical information did play a negligible role in the analysis, conservation and management of marine ecosystems. Similarly, marine issues hardly played a role in historical research. This changed from the late 1990s on with marine sciences taking a historical turn, while historians began to become involved with the sea in a new, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary manner. Also driven by the increasing public awareness of marine resource depletion, marine environmental history developed as an own discipline with distinct topics and methods. This development has greatly promoted the systematic research of historical marine resource exploitation.