Marine ecosystems are in decline. New transformational changes in governance are urgently required to cope with overfishing, pollution, global changes, and other drivers of degradation. Here we explore social, political, and ecological aspects of a transformation in governance of Chile's coastal marine resources, from 1980 to today. Critical elements in the initial preparatory phase of the transformation were (i) recognition of the depletion of resource stocks, (ii) scientific knowledge on the ecology and resilience of targeted species and their role in ecosystem dynamics, and (iii) demonstration-scale experimental trials, building on smaller-scale scientific experiments, which identified new management pathways. The trials improved cooperation among scientists and fishers, integrating knowledge and establishing trust. Political turbulence and resource stock collapse provided a window of opportunity that triggered the transformation, supported by new enabling legislation. Essential elements to navigate this transformation were the ability to network knowledge from the local level to influence the decision-making processes at the national level, and a preexisting social network of fishers that provided political leverage through a national confederation of artisanal fishing collectives. The resultant governance scheme includes a revolutionary national system of marine tenure that allocates user rights and responsibilities to fisher collectives. Although fine tuning is necessary to build resilience of this new regime, this transformation has improved the sustainability of the interconnected social-ecological system. Our analysis of how this transformation unfolded provides insights into how the Chilean system could be further developed and identifies generalized pathways for improved governance of marine resources around the world.artisanal fishing | ecosystem services | human dimensions | social-ecological systems | window of opportunity

The empirical study of

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ABSTRACT. We explore the external validity of a common pool resource (CPR) laboratory experiment. The experimental subjects were artisanal fishers who exploit benthic resources on the coast of Chile. A first set of subjects was recruited from fishers' unions that comanage their resources through territorial user right areas. These unions differ in their performance, which is largely the outcome of the cooperative efforts of their members. A second set of subjects was recruited among nonunionized fishers who do not participate in the comanagement system. They fish exclusively in open-access areas and barely cooperate in their fishing. Membership of a union and the union's performance in comanagement were related to the subjects' behavior in the laboratory. In the CPR experiment, members of high-performance unions showed high cooperation with each other, while members of low-performance unions cooperated significantly less. Nonunionized fishers did not cooperate at all. We also explored how the weak external enforcement of an individual quota can trigger changes in behavior, what we refer to as internalizing the norm. Only the members of high-performance unions internalized the norm. They refrained from overfishing until the end of the game, even though the sanction for exceeding the quota was not strong enough to be dissuasive from the point of view of pure self-interest. This study provided insight on the experimental analysis of cooperation in artisanal fisheries and suggested that the capacity to internalize norms is important to the sustainable exploitation of artisanal fisheries common pool resources.RESUMEN. Exploramos la validez externa de un experimento de laboratorio con un recurso de uso común. Los sujetos del experimento han sido pescadores artesanales que explotan recursos bentónico en la costa de Chile. Un primer grupo de personas proviene de organizaciones de pescadores que utilizan sistemas de co-manejo explotando estos recursos a través de derechos territoriales de uso. Un segundo grupo de pescadores incluidos en este experimento no pertenecían a organizaciones de pescadores y tampoco participaban en sistemas de co-manejo, pescando de forma exclusiva bajo un régimen de acceso abierto y rara vez cooperan entre ellos. Este trabajo realiza un análisis comparativo entre el desempeño en co-manejo entre estas diferentes organizaciones de pescadores y el comportamiento colaborativo de los pescadores. Los resultados indican que los pescadores miembros de organizaciones con elevado desempeño presentan un alto grado de cooperación entre ellos, mientras que aquellos donde se observa bajo desempeño su nivel de cooperación es también significativamente más reducido. El trabajo también demuestra que los pescadores que no forman parte de organizaciones de pescadores tampoco mostraron ningún tipo de cooperación. Asimismo, tamibén investigamos cómo un débil cumplimiento externo de la normativa en relación a las cuotas de capturas puede provocar cambios en el comportamiento de los pescadores, entendido aquí como in...

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