Stakeholders’ behavior: a crucial factor to sustainable fisheries

Dr. Renato QuiñonesInterdisciplinary Center for Aquaculture Research (INCAR)

FONDAP-CONICYT Universidad de Concepción

Global trends in the state of world marine fish stocks, 1974–2011

IUU fishing has escalated in the past 20 years, especially in

high seas fisheries.

Rough estimates indicate that IUU fishing takes 11–26

million tonnes of fish each year, for an estimated value of

US$10–23 billion. FAO (2014)

ILLEGAL, UNREPORTED AND UNREGULATED (IUU) FISHING

FISHERIES ARE PART OF HIGHLY COMPLEX SOCIAL-ECOLOGICAL SYSTEMS

Contributing factors for failures of fisheries management

01

0203

04

0506

07

01 Data uncertainty

02 Model inadequacy

03 Ecosystem structure

04 Institutional efficacy

05 Economic discord

06 Research focus

07 Stakeholders’ behavior

Based on Smith & Link (2005)

Is fisheries governance a tame or wicked problem?

Tame Problem

• Has a well-defined and stable problem statement

• Has a definite stopping point, i.e. when the solution is

reached

• Has a solution which can be objectively evaluated as

right or wrong

• Belongs to a class of similar problems which are all

solved in the same similar way

• Has solutions which can be easily tried and abandoned

• Comes with a limited set of alternative solutions.

Problem

Solution

© 2008 CogNexus Institute

Time

Gather the data about the problem

Analyze the data

Formulate a solution

Implement it

Traditional wisdom for solving complex problems: the ‘waterfall’

Wicked Problems• You don’t understand the problem until you have

developed a solution

• Wicked problems have no stopping rule

• Solutions to wicked problems are not right or wrong; they are simply ‘better,’ ‘worse,’ ‘good enough,’ or ‘not good enough.’

• Every wicked problem is essentially unique and novel

• Every solution to a wicked problem is a ‘one-shot operation

• Wicked problems have no given alternative solutions

Wicked problem involves moral judgements and value-based decisions: governance (Jentoft & Chuenpagdee 2009)

It is a major mistake to deal with wicked problems as if they were

tame problems

“For every complex problem there is a simple solution. And it is wrong.” H.L.Menken

Source: © 2010 CogNexus Institute

“If men define situations as real, they are real in their consequences”

William Isaac Thomas and Dorothy Swaine Thomas (1928)

THOMAS THEOREM

Meaning, values, identities

Every stakeholder may have a completely different perception about the management of shared resources

“Culture is a system of shared beliefs, values, customs, behaviors, and

artifacts that the members of a society use to cope with their world and with

one another, and that are transmitted from generation to generation through

learning” (Bates & Plog 1976).

Anthropological definition of Culture

Resource management and governance institutions shape and are shaped by

cultural dimensions of ecosystems (Poe et al. 2010)

MOCHA ISLANDPoaching represent loss between 32-68% of annual gross historical revenues of the TURF (Bandin & Quiñones 2014)

SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC PRESSURES

Fishers protesting in central-south Chile during the Jack mackerel crisis 1997-2002

Protest by artisanal fishers against prohibition of operating in the first nautical mile from the coast and the use of satellite positioning for individual vessels (13/11/2012)

The collective learning process that can take place through

interactions among multiple interdependent stakeholders when

proper facilitation, institutional support and a conducive policy

environment exist.

SOCIAL LEARNING

Source: SLIM PROJECT (2004)

Steyaert & Jiggins (2007)

Linking behavior

change models with

fisheries management

THE ICEBERG ANALOGY

Some of the crucial challenges to sustainable fisheries are below the surface

Examples:• Stock assessment• Ecological impact of

fisheries• Effects of environmental

variability • etc.

- Stakeholders’ behavior- Cultural change