Ratana Chuenpagdee

Where are cultural and social in ecosystem services? A framework for constructive engagement

A focus on ecosystem services (ES) is seen as a means for improving decisionmaking. In the research to date, the valuation of the material contributions of ecosystems to human well-being has been emphasized, with less attention to important cultural ES and nonmaterial values. This gap persists because there is no commonly accepted framework for eliciting less tangible values, characterizing their changes, and including them alongside other services in decisionmaking. Here, we develop such a framework for ES research and practice, addressing three challenges: (1) Nonmaterial values are ill suited to characterization using monetary methods; (2) it is difficult to unequivocally link particular changes in socioecological systems to particular changes in cultural benefits; and (3) cultural benefits are associated with many services, not just cultural ES. There is no magic bullet, but our framework may facilitate fuller and more socially acceptable integrations of ES information into planning and management.

Progressing Toward Comanagement Through Participatory Research

Comanagement, while widely recognized as an important tool for sustainable resource management, is not easily achieved without a process of trial and error. This article reports on participatory research as a means to progress toward comanagement, using a case study of coastal resource management in San Felipe, Yucatán, México. Research methods included geographical information system (GIS) mapping, surveys, interviews, and a community workshop. The results show strong interest from various community groups in the protection of important habitats and in the management of the coastal resources. Through this participatory research, community members, scientists, and government officials entered into a dialogue, suggesting potential for a future comanagement regime.

If science is not the answer, what is? An alternative governance model for the world's fisheries

Worldwide, management of fisheries has repeatedly failed, despite substantial investment in scientific research, primarily in the natural sciences. We argue that the way in which ecosystems are viewed and the lack of explicit consideration of three key elements – corporate responsibility, social justice, and ethics –have contributed to this dismal history. Here, we turn classical ecosystem thinking on its head, proposing an alternative image of an “inverted trophic pyramid” that places humans at the bottom. The inverted pyramid encapsulates ecosystem-based management and the interdependent relationship between humans and the ecosystem. It requires business incentives, ethics, and a balance of power to prevent the pyramid from toppling and to avert a crisis.

Global in scope and regionally rich: an IndiSeas workshop helps shape the future of marine ecosystem indicators

This report summarizes the outcomes of an IndiSeas workshop aimed at using ecosystem indicators to evaluate the status of the world’s exploited marine ecosystems in support of an ecosystem approach to fisheries, and global policy drivers such as the 2020 targets of the Convention on Biological Diversity. Key issues covered relate to the selection and integration of multi-disciplinary indicators, including climate, biodiversity and human dimension indicators, and to the development of data- and model-based methods to test the performance of ecosystem indicators in providing support for fisheries management. To enhance the robustness of our cross-system comparison, unprecedented effort was put in gathering regional experts from developed and developing countries, working together on multi-institutional survey datasets, and using the most up-to-date ecosystem models.

Coastal Ecosystems and Tsunami Protection after the December 2004 Indian Ocean Tsunami

An exploratory study was conducted on the role of coastal ecosystems in protecting communities from the December 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, focusing on mangrove forests on the Andaman coast of Thailand and how well villages were undertaking environmental conservation. Remote sensing analysis identified predisaster mangrove change and postdisaster structural damage and landscape changes. Field data from five sites (20 villages), gathered via the VIEWS™ data collection system, validated and supplemented this analysis. Key informants at several of these villages were also interviewed. A preliminary comparison of villages that otherwise faced similar tsunami exposure suggests that the presence of healthy mangroves did afford substantial protection. Village performance in mangrove conservation and management efforts, and thus the presence of healthy forests, is influenced by both social capital and the design of external aid delivery programs.

Interactive Governance for Small-Scale Fisheries

international recognition, given their role in poverty alleviation and food security globally, particularly in the south. Small-scale fisheries are also the sector that employs more than 90 percent of the people within the fisheries industry, with the overwhelming majority living in Asia and Africa. Small-scale fisheries contribute to ecosystem stewardship, often with fishing communities initiating and participating in conservation participates. Still small-scale fishing people are typically marginalized and vulnerable, for instance due to their exposure to climate variability and change, as well as to globalization. Addressing issues affecting small-scale fisheries requires large-scale, concerted efforts from all actors, including research communities. In-depth, systematic studies of small-scale fisheries, conducted across regions in different contexts, presented in this volume, offer a solid platform on which more sustainable and socially just fisheries governance systems can be built. The new book on small-scale fisheries is ‘too big to ignore’

Human-ecological dimensions of disaster resiliency in Thailand: social capital and aid delivery

This study focuses on the human-ecological dimension of disaster resilience after the 2004 tsunami. The paper examines how concepts of social capital and external aid delivery influence community performance in conservation of mangrove ecosystems. Experiences are reported through the words of local informants in six villages in Thailand. Findings indicate that social capital represents a potential for collective action, but design of aid programmes may prevent such action. Programmes that emphasised bottom-up aid delivery mobilised local social capital and directed it toward obtaining resources that fit local needs and capabilities. Alternatively, top-down aid programmes provided significant resources, but oppressed mobilisation of social capital. Implications are that disaster stricken communities should be treated as active participants, rather than the more common perspective that views them as vulnerable and in a state of helplessness.

Community Perspectives Toward a Marine Reserve: A Case Study of San Felipe, Yucatán, México

San Felipe marine reserve, in Yucatán, México, is unique, and particularly suited for a case study because the local community created it without a mandate from higher levels of government. This article presents the results of a survey of local interest groups using the method of paired comparisons and rank correlation analysis, to reveal local judgments about the severity of damages to coastal habitats and the level of impacts of activities that cause the damages. The results show that fishers differ significantly from other interest groups in their rankings of the severity of damages to habitats and of impacting activities. These findings suggest that despite the overlapping interests in protecting the resources and the critical habitats, the different perspectives of local interest groups about the severity of damages must be considered in the management of San Felipe marine reserve.

Coastal Management Using Public Judgments, Importance Scales, and Predetermined Schedule

A predetermined schedule of sanctions and regulations that reflect both scientific knowledge of resources and the preference and judgments of resource users in the community may provide a useful guide for management decisions involving complex coastal resource systems. Such a schedule can be implemented by constructing scales reflecting public judgments of the relative importance of adverse impacts on resources, or of activities causing such impacts. The importance scales can then be used to assess existing regulations and current management priorities and to serve as a guide for revisions and changes to current practice, for the design of new policy, for rationalizing regulatory controls, and for determining damage awards and other deterrence sanctions. The resulting evolution of a schedule can improve the consistency of resource use with community preferences by, for example, prescribing more severe restrictions on what are widely agreed to be more serious harms and lesser controls on less important ones. The application of this approach is demonstrated using Ban Don Bay, Thailand.

Participatory issues in fisheries governance in Europe

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe the fisheries governance system in the European Union (EU) and review fishers’ participation in the decision‐making process in the EU.Design/methodology/approach – The study was based on a variety of sources, such as review of the literature, including scientific articles and reports, and data collected by the Coastal Transects Analysis Model (CTAM) online decision support tool.Findings – The review reveals major improvements in involving fishers in the decision‐making process in Europe, but participation and empowerment are still generally lacking.Social implications – The lack of fisher participation in the decision‐making process leads to limited acceptance of management measures which in turn results in management objectives not being met, with negative effects on environmental, economic and social sustainability.Originality/value – The paper provides a review of participation in the EU decision‐making process. The results could give management bodies...