Modern institutional framework for reef fisheries management

Summary

Alternative goals in tropical reef fisheries management include main tenance of similar total catch levels, but with a changed, or changing, balance of species; maintenance of a long-term cumulative catch via a series of short-term fluctuations; prevention of serious damage to stocks; avoidance of conflicts over resource use; or simply prevention of over fishing. Management options include a continuum of possibilities from dialogue between individuals to international conventions. All reef fish eries are subject to some convention or agreement on exploitation, although in remote areas there may be no effective control on use. There are two contrasting poles of practical management for reef fisheries. Pre emptive management requires detailed knowledge of the target organisms and fishing community. By contrast, retrospective management is a form of adaptive management in which rules are developed on the basis of ex perience of their effects on stocks. Continued feedback theoretically provides an increasingly precise system of management. Pre-emptive man agement requires much expensive research whereas retrospective manage ment is risky; the ideal management plan combines elements of both. Much information is needed for developing management models, comingfrom a broad range of sources from resource users and exploited stocks to societal, national and international levels. Good management plans involve feedback, cycling information from one level to another and parti cularly involving return of information to resource users.

Most fisheries require some form of regulation. Regulatory approaches available include investment guidelines, fishing licence issue and renewal criteria, trade licensing guidelines, community or government regulations and regional or international access agreements. Community-level regula tion is probably the most cost-effective and practical for countries with a high proportion of subsistence and small-scale fisheries. However, national legislation can empower and support community management without necessarily giving up sovereignty over resources. In many developing countries the national level is also the lowest at which sufficient resources can be dedicated to supporting fishery specialists and conservation measures. Export fisheries are most cost-effectively managed at the national level. Regulations are useless if they cannot be enforced but com pliance is always more desirable than enforcement. Community-appointed wardens, recognized and empowered by government, can be very useful in enforcing regulations, both traditional and modern. If biologically appro priate management measures are also appropriate to the human element of the fishery, they will be easier to comply with and will require less en forcement. Conflict between the fishing community and government managers can occur because measures are not usually introduced until a resource is demonstrated to be overfished, and catch or effort has to be cut. Avoidance of extreme conflicts can be a powerful argument to convince senior civil servants to promote measures in advance of actual problems in the fishery. Conditions fostering good relations, or at least un derstanding of the aims of every group involved, should be inherent in every institutional management framework.