Territorial User Rights for Fisheries as Ancillary Instruments for Marine Coastal Conservation in Chile

Territorial user rights for fisheries have been advocated as a way to achieve sustainable resource management. However, few researchers have empirically assessed their potential as ancillary marine conservation instruments by comparing them to no‐take marine protected areas. In kelp (Lessonia trabeculata) forests of central Chile, we compared species richness, density, and biomass of macroinvertebrates and reef fishes among territorial‐user‐right areas with low‐level and high‐level enforcement, no‐take marine protected areas, and open‐access areas in 42 100‐m subtidal transects. We also assessed structural complexity of the kelp forest and substratum composition. Multivariate randomized permutation tests indicated macroinvertebrate and reef fish communities associated with the different access regimes differed significantly. Substratum composition and structural complexity of kelp forest did not differ among access regimes. Univariate analyses showed species richness, biomass, and density of macroinvertebrates and reef fishes were greater in highly enforced territorial‐user‐right areas and no‐take marine protected areas than in open‐access areas. Densities of macroinvertebrates and reef fishes of economic importance were not significantly different between highly enforced territorial‐user‐right and no‐take marine protected areas. Densities of economically important macroinvertebrates in areas with low‐level enforcement were significantly lower than those in areas with high‐level enforcement and no‐take marine protected areas but were significantly higher than in areas with open access. Territorial‐user‐right areas could be important ancillary conservation instruments if they are well enforced. Derechos de Usuario Territoriales para Pesquerías como Instrumentos Accesorios para la Conservación Marina Costera en Chile     

Financing Marine Protected Areas Through Visitor Fees: Insights from Tourists Willingness to Pay in Chile

Tourism is a financing mechanism considered by many donor-funded marine conservation initiatives. Here we assess the potential role of visitor entry fees, in generating the necessary revenue to manage a marine protected area (MPA), established through a Global Environmental Facility Grant, in a temperate region of Chile. We assess tourists’ willingness to pay (WTP) for an entry fee associated to management and protection of the MPA. Results show 97 % of respondents were willing to pay an entrance fee. WTP predictors included the type of tourist, tourists’ sensitivity to crowding, education, and understanding of ecological benefits of the MPA. Nature-based tourists state median WTP values of US$ 4.38 and Sun-sea-sand tourists US$ 3.77. Overall, entry fees could account for 10–13 % of MPA running costs. In Chile, where funding for conservation runs among the weakest in the world, visitor entry fees are no panacea in the short term and other mechanisms, including direct state/government support, should be considered.     

A participatory decision making framework for artisanal fisheries collaborative governance: Insights from management committees in Chile

Fisheries management is increasingly transitioning towards collaborative governance. Collaborative systems depend on stakeholders’ capacity to design and implement legitimate and scientifically robust management plans within collective action arenas. Here we propose that collaborative governance outcomes, in fisheries management, will benefit from using structured participatory decision making frameworks that enhance deliberative thinking among stakeholders. We tested our approach in the artisanal fishery of Chile, an important producer of marine resources. Recently in 2013, Chile made important changes to fisheries policies by creating multi-sectorial management committees to manage de facto open access fishing areas. We applied a structured decision making framework to inform the restructuring of a management plan within a committee. As a result, we identified goals,objectives and indicators, including social, economic, biological and ecological dimensions; we explored tradeoffs, assessing the relative importance of the objectives; finally, we created scenarios and prioritized alternatives, reflecting on the interplay between self-regulation and government control. Members of the management committee were able to rationalize the different steps of the framework and identify ways forward which highlighted the importance of self-regulation in comparison to central authorities’ control. We concluded that structured decision making promotes spaces for rational analysis of alternatives costs and benefits. Promoting deliberative thinking in fisheries management can improve equity, legitimacy and sustainability of collaborative governance.     

Accounting for enforcement costs in the spatial allocation of marine zones

Marine fish stocks are in many cases extracted above sustainable levels, but they may be protected through restricted‐use zoning systems. The effectiveness of these systems typically depends on support from coastal fishing communities. High management costs including those of enforcement may, however, deter fishers from supporting marine management. We incorporated enforcement costs into a spatial optimization model that identified how conservation targets can be met while maximizing fishers’ revenue. Our model identified the optimal allocation of the study area among different zones: no‐take, territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs), or open access. The analysis demonstrated that enforcing no‐take and TURF zones incurs a cost, but results in higher species abundance by preventing poaching and overfishing. We analyzed how different enforcement scenarios affected fishers’ revenue. Fisher revenue was approximately 50% higher when territorial user rights were enforced than when they were not. The model preferentially allocated area to the enforced‐TURF zone over other zones, demonstrating that the financial benefits of enforcement (derived from higher species abundance) exceeded the costs. These findings were robust to increases in enforcement costs but sensitive to changes in species’ market price. We also found that revenue under the existing zoning regime in the study area was 13–30% lower than under an optimal solution. Our results highlight the importance of accounting for both the benefits and costs of enforcement in marine conservation, particularly when incurred by fishers. Justificación de los Costos de Aplicación en la Asignación Espacial de Zonas Marinas     

Distal impacts of aquarium trade: Exploring the emerging sandhopper (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Orchestoidea tuberculata</Emphasis>) artisanal shore gathering fishery in Chile

Artisanal fishery activities support the livelihoods of millions of people worldwide, particularly in developing countries. Within these fisheries, distal global drivers can promote switching between alternative target resources. These drivers can promote the rapid development of new, unregulated and previously unexploited fisheries that pose a threat to the sustainability of ecosystems. In this paper, we describe a new artisanal shore gathering activity that targets a previously unexploited resource: the sandhopper (Orchestoidea tuberculata). The activity is driven by aquarium trade demand for food. We used mixed methods to describe the activity, assessed basic socio-economic incentives, and estimated Catches per Unit Effort. Results show that the sandhopper plays an important role for the livelihoods of shore gatherers engaged in the activity. Gatherers have adapted and developed two main extraction methods with different degrees of investment and extraction rates. Furthermore, gatherers have developed local knowledge regarding the ecology and management of the resource. Results show that economic incentives can motivate a rapid expansion of this unregulated activity. Future research gaps and management options to address the development of this fishery are discussed in light of these findings.     

Achieving biodiversity benefits with offsets: Research gaps,challenges, and needs

Biodiversity offsets are becoming increasingly common across a portfolio of settings: national policy, voluntary programs, international lending, and corporate business structures. Given the diversity of ecological, political, and socio-economic systems where offsets may be applied, place-based information is likely to be most useful in designing and implementing offset programs, along with guiding principles that assure best practice. We reviewed the research on biodiversity offsets to explore gaps and needs. While the peer-reviewed literature on offsets is growing rapidly, it is heavily dominated by ecological theory, wetland ecosystems, and U.S.-based research. Given that majority of offset policies and programs are occurring in middle- and low-income countries, the research gaps we identified present a number of risks. They also present an opportunity to create regionally based learning platforms focused on pilot projects and institutional capacity building. Scientific research should diversify, both topically and geographically, in order to support the successful design, implementation, and monitoring of biodiversity offset programs.     

Effects of experience with access regimes on stewardship behaviors of small-scale fishers

Governance regimes that assign exclusive access to support collective action are increasingly promoted to manage common-pool resources under the premise that they foster environmental stewardship. However, experimental evidence linked to existing policies that support this premise is lacking. Overlapping access policies in small-scale fisheries provide a unique opportunity to test the effects of access regimes on users’ stewardship behaviors. We performed a lab-in-the-field experiment to assess how fishers’ previous experience with access regimes relates to compliance and peer enforcement (n = 120). Fishers’ compliance and peer-enforcement decisions were compared in a common-pool-resource game. Treatments differed in framing to represent exclusive access and pseudo-open access regimes, both of which fishers face in real life. To contrast behavior in the game with real-life observations, we compared fishers’ associations that have shown relatively high and low management performance under exclusive access policies. Compliance and peer enforcement were higher under the exclusive access treatment than under the pseudo-open access treatment only for fishers’ associations with high management performance in real life. Behaviors in the game reflected differences between associations in real life. Our results support previous research on ocean governance by experimentally assessing the role of access regimes in determining users’ stewardship and suggest potential mechanisms for stewardship internalization.     

Design trade-offs in rights-based management of small-scale fisheries

Small-scale fisheries collectively have a large ecological footprint and are key sources of food security, especially in developing countries. Many of the data-intensive approaches to fishery management are infeasible in these fisheries, but a strategy that has emerged to overcome these challenges is the establishment of territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs). In this approach, exclusive fishing zones are established for groups of stakeholders, which eliminates the race to fish with other groups. A key challenge, however, is setting the size of TURFs—too large and the number of stakeholders sharing them impedes collective action, and too small and the movement of target fish species in and out of the TURFs effectively removes the community's exclusive access. We assessed the size of 137 TURFs from across the globe relative to this design challenge by applying theoretical models that predict their performance. We estimated that roughly two-thirds of these TURFs were sized ideally to overcome the challenges posed by resource movement and fisher group size. However, for most of the remaining TURFs, all possible sizes were either too small to overcome the resource-movement challenge or too large to overcome the collective action challenge. Our results suggest these fisheries, which target mobile species in densely populated regions, may need additional interventions to be successful.     

Add-on conservation benefits of marine territorial user rights fishery policies in central Chile.

To combine the rational use of marine benthic resources and economic development of small-scale fishers, Chile passed legislation in 1991 establishing a comanagement policy that grants exclusive territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs) to artisanal fisher organizations in well-defined inshore coastal areas, known as Management and Exploitation Areas for Benthic Resources (MEABRs). In general the policy has been proclaimed a management and economic success because benthic resource abundances have increased inside MEABRs in comparison with open-access areas. However, there is a lack of studies assessing the impact of this management policy on nontargeted subtidal species and community assemblages and the policy's implications for biodiversity and conservation. This study starts to fill this gap and links the allocation of TURFs for benthic resources with add-on conservation benefits for species that are not directly linked with the fishery policy. Comparative subtidal surveys inside vs. outside MEABRs were used to assess the effects of three MEABRs on managed targeted benthic species, biodiversity (species richness), and community assemblages in central Chile. Surveys focused exclusively on subtidal kelp forest habitats dominated by Lessonia trabeculata, spanning 4-12 m in depth and with similar levels of habitat complexity. The study comprised: (1) quantification of kelp forest complexity, (2) understory survey of sessile species, (3) quantification of conspicuous benthic macroinvertebrates, including those under management, and (4) quantification of reef-fish species inside the kelp habitat. Results showed population enhancement of target-managed invertebrates inside MEABRs. Moreover, reef-fish species were significantly more diverse and abundant inside MEABRs, and community assemblages of nontarget benthic invertebrates and reef fish were significantly different inside vs. outside MEABRs. The comanagement of inshore benthic resources in Chile, through MEABRs aims for the sustainability of invertebrate and algae stocks. However, our study shows that this management tool, which in practice restricts access to the entire management area, provides important conservation add-on effects for species that are not the focus of the management policies. Therefore, in Chile, the hundreds of already established MEABRs could represent an important ancillary network, which complements the biodiversity objectives of fully protected areas such as no-take marine protected areas or others.     

Mapping social–ecological vulnerability to inform local decision making

An overarching challenge of natural resource management and biodiversity conservation is that relationships between people and nature are difficult to integrate into tools that can effectively guide decision making. Social–ecological vulnerability offers a valuable framework for identifying and understanding important social–ecological linkages, and the implications of dependencies and other feedback loops in the system. Unfortunately, its implementation at local scales has hitherto been limited due at least in part to the lack of operational tools for spatial representation of social–ecological vulnerability. We developed a method to map social–ecological vulnerability based on information on human–nature dependencies and ecosystem services at local scales. We applied our method to the small‐scale fishery of Moorea, French Polynesia, by combining spatially explicit indicators of exposure, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity of both the resource (i.e., vulnerability of reef fish assemblages to fishing) and resource users (i.e., vulnerability of fishing households to the loss of fishing opportunity). Our results revealed that both social and ecological vulnerabilities varied considerably through space and highlighted areas where sources of vulnerability were high for both social and ecological subsystems (i.e., social–ecological vulnerability hotspots) and thus of high priority for management intervention. Our approach can be used to inform decisions about where biodiversity conservation strategies are likely to be more effective and how social impacts from policy decisions can be minimized. It provides a new perspective on human–nature linkages that can help guide sustainability management at local scales; delivers insights distinct from those provided by emphasis on a single vulnerability component (e.g., exposure); and demonstrates the feasibility and value of operationalizing the social–ecological vulnerability framework for policy, planning, and participatory management decisions.