Melanie G. Wiber

Role of participatory governance and community - based management in integrated coastal and ocean management in Canada

There is compelling evidence that participatory governance is crucial for contending with complex problems of managing for multiple values and outcomes to achieve ecological sustainability and economic development. Canadas Oceans Act, and federal oceans policy provide a strong basis for the participatory governance and community-based management of coastal and large ocean resources. The implementation of the Oceans Act and oceans policy has resulted in some steps toward participatory governance but has not adequately provided the mechanisms for a strong role for communities in integrated coastal and ocean management (ICOM). In order to strengthen and develop community participation in ICOM, nine initiatives are recommended: (1) shifting paradigms, (2) overcoming ‘turf protection,’ (3) ensuring compatibility of goals, (4) ensuring sufficiency of information, (5) dealing with internal community stratification, (6) creating cross-scale linkages, (7) creating a participatory policy environment, (8) building community capacity, and (9) monitoring and assessment of local-level initiatives.

Transformative learning for better resource management: the role of critical reflection

Since 1992, integrated management has been promoted as the solution to challenges facing governments and civil society around the world when managing natural resources. It was argued that integrated management could lead to sustainable development if new participatory approaches to social learning could be developed. Since that time, social learning theory has been an important component of resource management literature. This paper argues that until social learning theory leans more heavily on group processes of transformative learning, sustainable development will elude us. Further, a process of systematic, critical reflection is key to transformative learning, as we illustrate using a five-year research project into the role of communities in integrated management in the Canadian Maritimes. Our experience shows how critical reflection processes can strengthen participatory research to further inform the practice of integrated management. We conclude by observing that room must be made for critical reflection and for true social learning in all integrated management institutions, whether community-based or government-initiated.

After Marshall: Implementation of Aboriginal Fishing Rights in Atlantic Canada

Abstract Both the Canadian Constitution and several Supreme Court decisions have guaranteed Canada’s First Nations special rights to natural resources including lands, waters, and fisheries. In acting on these rights, however, aboriginal peoples of Canada not been successful in arguing that their activities should be guided by the objectives, rules and protocols established by their First Nation, and not by those of the post-colonial Government of Canada. More recently, the 1999 Marshall decision of the Supreme Court of Canada recognized the Treaty Right of the Mi’kmaq, Maliseet and Passamaquoddy peoples to rely on natural resources for a ‘moderate livelihood’ and a ‘communal level of benefit’. While this decision was met with uncertainly and some hostility by the non-native population, it did result in the government offering new program support to First Nations communities engaged in the commercial fishery in the Canadian Maritimes. This paper assesses those programs and provides an analysis of what First Nation communities have lost and gained in the process

Dynamics of the Peasant Household Economy: Labor Recruitment and Allocation in an Upland Philippine Community

Research on traditional agricultural household production has burgeoned in the decades since the work of A. V. Chayanov has been published in the West. Unfortunately, much of this research has focused on the role of domestic labor sources in rural household production levels and has ignored the importance of nondomestic labor as well as other factors which affect production decisions. This paper provides a quantitative assessment of the importance of domestic and of nondomestic labor sources in subsistence and commercial production in forty-two households in an upland Philippine community. Further, the paper focuses on several other factors affecting peasant production levels, which must also be better understood if anthropologists are to make a significant contribution to the development of traditional agricultural economic systems.

Syncopated rhythms? Temporal patterns in natural resource management

In natural resource management, law and temporality have interesting dimensions that are complicated by perceptions of and relations with environment. This paper examines the relationship between legal pluralism, temporality and oceans management. Oceans are managed at multiple levels with multiple chronometers. International standards encourage policy reform at a rapid pace, introducing in quick succession and over a short time-frame concepts such as privatization, community-based management, integrated management, evidence-based management, ecosystem-based management, spatial management and adaptive management for sustainability. There is often a temporal dissonance between these and national regulation, which tends to follow such policy directions more slowly. Meanwhile, the development of new institutions at the local level to facilitate management of localized resources is occurring at a glacial pace, with many barriers and roadblocks along the way. The lack of synchronization in regulatory chronometers is only enhanced by temporal challenges in scientific methodology, which complicate the science-to-policy nexus. This paper uses a case study from the Canadian Maritimes inshore fishery to examine scalar issues, sustainability shortfalls and the stratifying effects of these interesting temporal challenges.

Who is Governing Food Systems? Power and Legal Pluralism in Lobster Traceability

This paper uses a recent lobster traceability project in the Canadian Maritimes to examine the emerging governance institutions in our global food systems. Given the central importance of lobster to family-based, independent fishing enterprises, this lobster traceability project was a unique opportunity to investigate the people, organizations and governance institutions that are impacting lobster fisheries enterprises and management. This case study illustrates the many “jurisgenerative institutions” (Anderson 1998) at various scales that are currently involved in governing lobster as it enters our food systems, and also traces some of the impacts of those multiple institutions on each other, and on the fishing enterprise. We conclude that legal pluralism is an important constituent in global food security and food governance, and that this characteristic of our emerging food governance institutions requires more careful study.

Caught in the Cross-Hairs: Liberalizing Trade (Post-M.A.I.) and Privatizing the Right to Fish: Implications for Canada’s Native Fisheries

AbstractThis paper asks questions about the interaction between international law and the law of nations and localities. In particular, it explores the potential impact on property rights of a proposed rule-based, international agreement on the liberalization of global investment. While such investment agreements already exist in bilateral or multilateral form, a truly international level of rule-making for investors will have a tremendous impact on the property control options of governments, corporations and individuals. An illustration is provided by an agreement known as the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI), which until October 1998 was under negotiation among the 29 member countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). Subsequent attempts at similar agreements are still proceeding, among the members of the OECD, the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and smaller blocks of regional cooperating nation states. The paper shows how such agreements and their attendant...

Undulating women and erect men: Visual imagery of gender and progress in illustrations of human evolution

One branch of Western visual representation where the female nude is to be found has been under‐represented in the recent feminist analysis of gender and art. This paper deals with representations of gender attributes and roles found in educational and quasi‐educational illustrations. It examines several illustrations in the field of paleo‐anthropology to show how gender and racial stereotypes and evolutionary “progress” are common themes in a genre of visual imagery designed as much to reinforce as to educate. The paper demonstrates how these themes are interrelated through prevalent Western logical constructs of “woman is to nature as man is to culture.” It also shows how a subtle, negative shift has occurred in such illustrations in recent years in response to the “Woman the Gatherer” debate; this shift involves a significant “eroticization” of the female images. The paper concludes that educational illustration is a field particularly relevant to feminist critiques of Western, racial and cultural ster...

Actions towards the joint production of knowledge: the risk of salmon aquaculture on American Lobster

Abstract Joint production of knowledge (JPK) is said to facilitate proactive mitigation of risks in marine resource management. However, lack of consensus on who should be involved, when it is happening and the exact mechanisms of sharing knowledge has precluded the development of an effective implementation framework. Here, we explore one approach to building a post-normal science, one that both includes local ecological knowledge and bridges scientific silos. We first identify several actions of knowledge production and then provide an Atlantic Canadian case study, drawn from an assessment of the impact of aquaculture on American lobster, to illustrate necessary actions on the road to JPK. Key actions include theorizing relationships, agreeing on key concepts, specifying, and interpreting required data, identifying principles and making evaluations. We fill a lacuna in the JPK literature by: first, defining knowledge as the result of a set of actions; second, using knowledge generating actions to explore how different knowledge sets come together to contribute to JPK; and third, identifying how knowledge actions can facilitate or inhibit JPK. We conclude that this list of the essential actions of knowledge production is necessary to the successful development of alternative approaches to risk.

Whose audit is it? Harnessing the power of audit culture in conditions of legal pluralism

This paper is a preliminary exploration of the relationship between audit culture and legal pluralism. Audits that employ a range of indicators are increasingly the tool of choice for managing a range of human endeavors, including natural resource exploitation. This is true at many different scales of governance. But audit culture has also increasingly come under attack as failing to live up to the claims of enhancing transparency and accountability. Who is harnessing the power of indicators and performance audits? Who benefits from these measurements? How is governance impacted by the audit approach? We address these questions in the specific context of legal pluralism generated by multiple levels of regulation affecting fishing enterprises. In seeking to develop a ‘report card’ approach to assessing Canadian fisheries as part of Project 1.1 of the Canadian Fisheries Research Network, we have explored the failure to effectively incorporate social, governance and cultural indicators in many global examples. There is also a lack of attention to power dynamics and of the institutional resistance to performance indicators that measure the governors rather than the governed. Finally, this paper asks how the normative drive of audits can or will interact with legal pluralism. The case studies suggest the need for careful thought on the interactions of legal pluralism and the audit.