Conservation needs exposed by variability in common‐pool governance principles

Abstract

Common‐pool governance principles are becoming increasingly important tools for natural resource management with communities and comanagement arrangements. Effectiveness of these principles depends on variability in agreements, trust, and adherence to institutional norms. We evaluated heterogeneity in governance principles by asking 449 people in 30 fishing communities in 4 East African countries to rate their effectiveness. The influences of individuals, their membership and role in stakeholder community groups, leadership, community, and country were tested. The membership and role of people were not the main influence on their perceptions of the effectiveness of governance principles. Therefore, drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of specific principles would be difficult to make independent of the individuals asked. More critical were individuals’ nationalities and their associations with the shared perceptions of a response‐group's effectiveness of each principle. Perceptions of effectiveness differed strongly by country, and respondents from poor nations (Madagascar and Mozambique) were more cohesiveness but had fewer and weaker between‐community conflict‐resolution mechanisms. Overall, group identity, group autonomy, decision‐making process, and conflict resolution principles were perceived to be most effective and likely to be enforced by repeated low‐cost intragroup activities. Graduated sanctions, cost–benefit sharing, and monitoring resource users, fisheries, and ecology were the least scaled principles and less affordable via local control. We suggest these 2 groups of principles form independently and, as economies develop and natural resources become limiting, sustainability increasingly depends on the later principles. Therefore, management effectiveness in resource‐limited situations depends on distributing power, skills, and costs beyond fishing communities to insure conservation needs are met.

Effects of management objectives and rules on marine conservation outcomes

“…Our study was not designed to examine some important factors that could influence conservation outcomes, such as preexisting reef conditions and management, local resource dependency and use patterns, compliance, the politics of management tools designation and implementation, among others (Gurney et al., 2019; Ostrom, 2009). Enforcement of the rules and boundaries is also likely to play a key role in achieving outcomes (McClanahan & Abunge, 2019, 2020; Iacarella et al., 2021). Further assessing other social and biological outcomes will be essential to obtaining a more complete understanding of the value of different area‐based management tools (Geldmann et al., 2021; Reimer et al., 2021).…”

Views of management effectiveness in tropical reef fisheries

“…Governance institutions vary in their influence depending on soft and hard infrastructure (Baggio et al., 2016). For example, the institutional governance principles of monitoring, enforcing graduated sanctions and balancing the cost‐benefits of activities can become problematic as human populations, market influences and economic centralizations increase (Dacks et al., 2020; McClanahan & Abunge, 2018, 2019). With increasing commercialization, these institutions are likely to become specialized and lead to unique roles of paid managers.…”

“…However, these linkages are expected to function more effectively when the stakeholders agree on the management goals and causative relationships. Therefore, improved understanding of the variability in stakeholders' views of local benefits and ability to control decision‐making should improve insights into barriers that might potentially undermine CPR management effectiveness (McClanahan & Abunge, 2018, 2019).…”

Attributes of climate resilience in fisheries: From theory to practice

“…We framed the majority of governance attributes under the domain of organization, with one attribute categorized within each of the flexibility, agency and learning domains (Table 3). In distilling and defining governance attributes, we understood fisheries governance to mean the sum of legal, social, economic and political arrangements in place, both formal and informal (McClanahan & Abunge, 2019), to coordinate and manage fisheries. We use the term "governance" throughout for brevity, recognizing that some mechanisms and examples are more relevant to fisheries management as nested within the broader systems of fisheries governance.…”