Louisa Evans

Assessing the impact of fisheries co-management interventions in developing countries: A meta-analysis

Co-management is now established as a mainstream approach to small-scale fisheries management across the developing world. A comprehensive review of 204 potential cases reveals a lack of impact assessments of fisheries co-management. This study reports on a meta-analysis of the impact of fisheries co-management in developing countries in 90 sites across 29 case-studies. The top five most frequently measured process indicators are participation, influence, rule compliance, control over resources, and conflict. The top five most frequently measured outcome indicators are access to resources, resource well-being, fishery yield, household well-being, and household income. To deal with the diversity of the 52 indicators measured and the different ways these data are collected and analysed, we apply a coding system to capture change over time. The results of the meta-analysis suggest that, overall fisheries co-management delivers benefits to end-users through improvements in key process and outcome indicators. However, the dataset as a whole is constituted primarily of data from the Philippines. When we exclude this body of work, few generalisations can be made about the impact of fisheries co-management. The lack of comparative data suitable for impact assessment and the difficulties in comparing data and generalising across countries and regions reiterates calls in other fields for more systematic approaches to understanding and evaluating governance frameworks.

From barriers to limits to climate change adaptation: path dependency and the speed of change

Research on the barriers and limits to climate change adaptation identifies many factors, but describes few processes whereby adaptation is constrained or may indeed fail to avoid catastrophic losses. It often assumes that barriers are by and large distinct from limits to adaptation. We respond to recent calls for comparative studies that are able to further knowledge about the underlying drivers of barriers and limits to adaptation. We compare six cases from across Australia, including those in alpine areas, rivers, reefs, wetlands, small inland communities, and islands, with the aim of identifying common underlying drivers of barriers and limits to adaptation. We find that the path-dependent nature of the institutions that govern natural resources and public goods is a deep driver of barriers and limits to adaptation. Path-dependent institutions are resistant to change. When this resistance causes the changes necessary for adaptation to be slower than changes in climate, then it becomes a limit to adaptation.

Critical research needs for managing coral reef marine protected areas: Perspectives of academics and managers

Marine protected areas (MPAs) are a primary policy instrument for managing and protecting coral reefs. Successful MPAs ultimately depend on knowledge-based decision making, where scientific research is integrated into management actions. Fourteen coral reef MPA managers and sixteen academics from eleven research, state and federal government institutions each outlined at least five pertinent research needs for improving the management of MPAs situated in Australian coral reefs. From this list of 173 key questions, we asked members of each group to rank questions in order of urgency, redundancy and importance, which allowed us to explore the extent of perceptional mismatch and overlap among the two groups. Our results suggest the mismatch among MPA managers and academics is small, with no significant difference among the groups in terms of their respective research interests, or the type of questions they pose. However, managers prioritised spatial management and monitoring as research themes, whilst academics identified climate change, resilience, spatial management, fishing and connectivity as the most important topics. Ranking of the posed questions by the two groups was also similar, although managers were less confident about the achievability of the posed research questions and whether questions represented a knowledge gap. We conclude that improved collaboration and knowledge transfer among management and academic groups can be used to achieve similar objectives and enhance the knowledge-based management of MPAs.

Interplay of multiple goods, ecosystem services, and property rights in large social-ecological marine protected areas

Protected areas are a cornerstone of biodiversity conservation, and increasingly, conservation science is integrating ecological and social considerations in park management. Indeed, both social and ecological factors need to be considered to understand processes that lead to changes in environmental conditions. Here, we use a social-ecological systems lens to examine changes in governance through time in an extensive regional protected area network, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. We studied the peer-reviewed and nonpeer-reviewed literature to develop an understanding of governance of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park and its management changes through time. In particular, we examined how interacting and changing property rights, as designated by the evolving marine protected area network and other institutional changes (e.g., fisheries management), defined multiple goods and ecosystem services and altered who could benefit from them. The rezoning of the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park in 2004 substantially altered the types and distribution of property rights and associated benefits from ecosystem goods and services. Initially, common-pool resources were enjoyed as common and private benefits at the expense of public goods (overexploited fisheries and reduced biodiversity and ecosystem health). The rezoning redefined the available goods and benefits and who could benefit, prioritizing public goods and benefits (i.e., biodiversity conservation), and inducing private costs (through reduced fishing). We also found that the original conceptualization of the step-wise progression of property rights from user to owner oversimplifies property rights based on its division into operational and collective-choice rule-making levels. Instead, we suggest that a diversity of available management tools implemented simultaneously can result in interactions that are seldom fully captured by the original conceptualization of the bundling of property rights. Understanding the complexities associated with overlapping property rights and multiple goods and ecosystem services, particularly within large-scale systems, can help elucidate the source and nature of some of the governance challenges that large protected areas are facing.

A Framework for Understanding Climate Change Impacts on Coral Reef Social-Ecological Systems

Abstract Corals and coral-associated species are highly vulnerable to the emerging effects of global climate change. The widespread degradation of coral reefs, which will be accelerated by climate change, jeopardizes the goods and services that tropical nations derive from reef ecosystems. However, climate change impacts to reef social–ecological systems can also be bi-directional. For example, some climate impacts, such as storms and sea level rise, can directly impact societies, with repercussions for how they interact with the environment. This study identifies the multiple impact pathways within coral reef social–ecological systems arising from four key climatic drivers: increased sea surface temperature, severe tropical storms, sea level rise and ocean acidification. We develop a novel framework for investigating climate change impacts in social–ecological systems, which helps to highlight the diverse impacts that must be considered in order to develop a more complete understanding of the impacts of climate change, as well as developing appropriate management actions to mitigate climate change impacts on coral reef and people.

Understanding leadership in the environmental sciences

Leadership is often assumed, intuitively, to be an important driver of sustainable development. To understand how leadership is conceptualized and analyzed in the environmental sciences and to discover what this research says about leadership outcomes, we conducted a review of environmental leadership research over the last 10 years. We found that much of the environmental leadership literature focuses on a few key individuals and desirable leadership competencies. The literature also reports that leadership is one of the most important of a number of factors contributing to effective environmental governance. Only a subset of the literature highlights interacting sources of leadership, disaggregates leadership outcomes, or evaluates leadership processes in detail. We argue that the literature on environmental leadership is highly normative. Leadership is typically depicted as an unequivocal good, and its importance is often asserted rather than tested. We trace how leadership studies in the management sciences are evolving and argue that, taking into account the state of the art in environmental leadership research, more critical approaches to leadership research in environmental science can be developed.

Diagnosis and the management constituency of small-scale fisheries

Diagnosis and adaptive management can help improve the ability of small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the developing world to better cope with and adapt to both external drivers and internal sources of uncertainty. This paper presents a framework for diagnosis and adaptive management and discusses ways of implementing the first two phases of learning: diagnosis and mobilising an appropriate management constituency. The discussion addresses key issues and suggests suitable approaches and tools as well as numerous sources of further information. Diagnosis of a SSF defines the system to be managed, outlines the scope of the management problem in terms of threats and opportunities, and aims to construct realistic and desired future projections for the fishery. These steps can clarify objectives and lead to development of indicators necessary for adaptive management. Before management, however, it is important to mobilize a management constituency to enact change. Ways of identifying stakeholders and understanding both enabling and obstructive interactions and management structures are outlined. These preliminary learning phases for adaptive SSF management are expected to work best if legitimised by collaborative discussion among fishery stakeholders drawing on multiple knowledge systems and participatory approaches to assessment.

Key aspects of the biology, fisheries and management of Coral grouper

Coral grouper (genus Plectropomus), or coral trout, are members of the grouper family (Epinephelidae) and are one of the largest and most conspicuous predatory fishes on Indo-Pacific coral reefs. They are highly-prized food fishes that are targeted by subsistence, artisanal, commercial and recreational fisheries throughout their geographic range. Plectropomus have broadly similar diets and habitat requirements to other tropical groupers, but typically have faster growth and higher natural mortality rates. Although these characteristics are expected to increase population turnover and reduce innate vulnerability to environmental and anthropogenic impacts relative to other groupers, many Plectropomus populations are in decline due to the combined effects of overfishing and habitat degradation. In many locations, stock depletion from uncontrolled fishing, particularly at spawning aggregation sites, has resulted in local fishery collapse. Therefore, improved management of wild populations is urgently required to ensure conservation and sustainable fisheries of Plectropomus. Where possible, a combination of no-take marine reserves, market-based management approaches, and allocation or resurrection of property rights systems are recommended to complement conventional fishery management actions that limit catch and effort. Additional investment in aquaculture propagation is also needed to reduce fishing pressure on wild stocks and support management initiatives. This global synthesis of information pertaining to the biology, fisheries and management of Plectropomus will assist in guiding future management actions that are attempting to address a range of stressors including fishing, reef habitat degradation, and the escalating effects of climate change.

Structural and Psycho-Social Limits to Climate Change Adaptation in the Great Barrier Reef Region.

Adaptation, as a strategy to respond to climate change, has limits: there are conditions under which adaptation strategies fail to alleviate impacts from climate change. Research has primarily focused on identifying absolute bio-physical limits. This paper contributes empirical insight to an emerging literature on the social limits to adaptation. Such limits arise from the ways in which societies perceive, experience and respond to climate change. Using qualitative data from multi-stakeholder workshops and key-informant interviews with representatives of the fisheries and tourism sectors of the Great Barrier Reef region, we identify psycho-social and structural limits associated with key adaptation strategies, and examine how these are perceived as more or less absolute across levels of organisation. We find that actors experience social limits to adaptation when: i) the effort of pursuing a strategy exceeds the benefits of desired adaptation outcomes; ii) the particular strategy does not address the actual source of vulnerability, and; iii) the benefits derived from adaptation are undermined by external factors. We also find that social limits are not necessarily more absolute at higher levels of organisation: respondents perceived considerable opportunities to address some psycho-social limits at the national-international interface, while they considered some social limits at the local and regional levels to be effectively absolute.

Approaches and frameworks for management and research in small-scale fisheries.

[Extract] There is general agreement that commonly adopted approaches to managing small-scale fisheries (SSFs) in developing countries have been less effective than they need to be to ensure sustainability (Garcia and Grainger, 1997; Mahon, 1997; Cochrane, 2000; Welcomme, 2001; FAO, 2003; Bene et al., 2004; Cochrane and Doulman, 2005). Given the importance of SSFs in the social and economic fabric of many least developed countries, it is essential that new management approaches are developed and adopted. This is complicated because SSFs present particular challenges to managers in terms of their diversity and complexity (Berkes et al., 2001; Berkes, 2003; Jentoft, 2006, 2007).