Using conflict over risk management in the marine environment to strengthen measures of governance

Abstract

Management of and planning for the Canadian marine environment can be disrupted by conflict, but conflict is inevitable given the plurality of actors, interests, values, and uses of marine space. Unresolved conflict may impede governance objectives and threaten the sustainability of social-ecological systems. Innovative institutional arrangements such as adaptive comanagement theoretically reduce conflict and support sustainable management. The southwest New Brunswick Bay of Fundy Marine Advisory Committee (MAC) was assembled in 2004 to address conflict between marine users and to further marine planning. As an innovative planning institution influenced by comanagement theory, the MAC experience served as a case study to develop governance measures for the Canadian Fisheries Research Network Comprehensive Fisheries Sustainability Framework, which includes a consideration of ecological, social, economic, and governance dimensions of sustainability. One of the most important but neglected aspects of sustainability measurements involves the assessment of governance and planning effectiveness. An assessment of the MAC experience through a comprehensive sustainability evaluation framework offers significant lessons for advancing the theoretical and empirical literature on adaptive comanagement through deeper consideration of challenges in creating institutions of "good governance." In doing so, the case study also contributes to the Comprehensive Fisheries Sustainability Framework by testing some measures of governance effectiveness, including cooperation , resources, transparency, accountability, and inclusivity.

Alternative environmentalities: recasting the assessment of Canada’s first Marine Stewardship Council-certified fishery in social terms

“…Sustainability assessment frameworks, from private certification standards to government-led assessment frameworks and academic-led evaluation initiatives, can be interpreted as part of a more general international circulation of values, knowledge, and audit-based technologies of the political rationality of managerialism (Djama et al 2011). Technologies of government such as auditing, assessment frameworks, and benchmarking linked to a managerial rationality have the sometimes intended and sometimes unintended effect of obscuring conflicts and politics in sustainability standards (Djama et al 2011, Parlee 2016).…”

Revisiting Integrated Coastal and Marine Management in Canada: Opportunities in the Bay of Fundy

“…The CVC was a framework created by the MRP process involving numerous participants to recognize local-scale values and to evaluate proposed activities in the Lower Bay (LB 24). Although CVC criteria were never used as envisioned, participants believed it worthwhile to incorporate the CVC into future decisionmaking for activities within the sub-region (Parlee and Wiber, 2018). The MRP process subsequently evolved into an advisory body [i.e., the Marine Advisory Council (MAC)] that has since been dissembled (Jones and Stephenson, 2019).…”

Full-spectrum sustainability: an alternative to fisheries management panaceas

“…Open conflict represents a serious challenge in fisheries management and Parlee and Wiber (2018) argue that such conflict is inevitable given the plurality of actors, interests, values, and uses of marine space. Unresolved conflict may impede governance objectives and threaten the sustainability of social-ecological systems.…”

“…The inclusion of governance and social considerations into research projects was spurred both by research into existing Canadian policy statements and by the active participation of social scientists, government scientists, and fishing industry representatives in research design workshops, a coconstruction approach in which the independent owneroperator sector of eastern Canada's small-scale fishery fleet played a central role. A key contribution of this special feature is thus highlighting the importance of governance/institutional processes (Parlee and Wiber 2018, Angel et al 2019, Jones and Stephenson 2019 and the distribution of resource access and benefits ( Barnett 2018, Edwards and Pinkerton 2019, Mussels and Stephenson 2020. Overall, the research experience reveals several overarching critical and ongoing challenges:…”