Abstract
In the late 1980s the ground fish fishery in Atlantic Canada suffered a massive collapse. This collapse and some institutional factors, including a massive cut in the budget of the Department of Fisheries and Oceans, led to a number of management innovations. The chapter focuses on the substantial expansion of both rights-based management and participatory governance and the ways these two changes interacted with one another. The most common form of rights-based management in Nova Scotia is ITQs. However, the smaller boats fishing with fixed gears are using community quotas instead. One community from this group, the one with the largest fishery, has developed an internal ITQ system to allocate its community quota and this approach has proven successful at mitigating some of the social costs of ITQs while retaining most of the economic benefits. Participatory governance in Nova Scotia also extends to some extent to the way scientific advice is developed and used. Overall, this process has improved social robustness, by reducing the feeling of industry of being ignored. It has also improved biological robustness, by increasing the feeling of ownership and responsibility for the resource and improving the commitment to scientific advice.
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The various designations can be confusing. Professional fisher is a qualification that depends on a training certificate while core fisher is a separate designation that was used to limit and finally eliminate part time fishing. The core fisher status can be purchased along with a fishing licence.
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Ulrich, C., Wilson, D.C. (2009). Rights-Based Management and Participatory Governance in Southwest Nova Scotia. In: Hauge, K., Wilson, D. (eds) Comparative Evaluations of Innovative Fisheries Management. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-90-481-2663-7_3
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