Net fishermen in Mombasa. (Photo: Tim Daw/ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies)

Community-level fisheries management can curtail overfishing

Management of fisheries at the community level can help curb overfishing and the 'tragedy of the commons' which is driving humans to decimate the planet's dwindling fish stocks, an international scientific team says.

The positive finding comes from the world's largest field investigation of 42 co-managed coral reef fisheries in five countries spread across the Indian and Pacific oceans.

The team of 17 scientists from eight nations concluded that partnerships between government, conservation groups, and local fishers – known as 'co-management' – were having considerable success in both meeting the livelihood needs of local communities and protecting fish stocks.

"We found clear evidence of people's ability to overcome the 'tragedy of the commons' by making and enforcing their own rules for managing fisheries," explains team leader Dr Josh Cinner of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and James Cook University, Australia.

"This is particularly encouraging because of the perceived failure of many open-access and top-down government-controlled attempts to manage fisheries around the world.

"More importantly, we have identified the conditions that allow people to make co-management successful, providing vital guidance for conservation groups, donors, and governments as to what arrangements are most likely to work," Cinner says.

Healthy coral reef. (Photo: ARC Centre of Excellence Coral Reef Studies)

Dr Tim McClanahan of the Wildlife Conservation Society says, "For a long time people have struggled to successfully manage fisheries, which are collapsing all around the world.

"Our research can help solve the overfishing crisis where it is needed most, by showing what does and does not work in the small-scale fisheries that are most difficult to manage. We found that both top-down and bottom-up solutions are needed."

The team studied local fisheries arrangements on coral reefs in Kenya, Tanzania, Madagascar, Indonesia and Papua New Guinea, using a combination of interviews with local fishers and community leaders, and underwater fish counts.

Sey trap fisher landing catch. (Photo: Tim Daw, ARC Centre of Excellence)

Its main finding, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), is that co-management has been largely successful in sustaining fisheries and improving people's livelihoods.

More than half the fishers surveyed felt co-management was positive for their livelihoods, whereas only 9 per cent felt it was negative. Also, comparing co-managed reefs with other reefs showed that, co-managed reefs were half as likely to be heavily overfished, which can lead to damaged ecosystems, says team member Dr Nick Graham.

"However, we also found that where fisheries are closest to big, hungry markets, they tend to be in worse shape," Graham says. "This strongly suggests globalized food chains can undermine local, democratic efforts to manage fisheries better."

The research also turned up some unexpected results, one of which is that co-management benefits the wealthier people in the local community, although it is not detrimental to the poor.

The team found that the institutional design of the fishery management arrangement was vital in determining whether or not people felt they benefited from co-management and were willing to work together to protect fish stocks by complying with the rules.

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