Conservation needs exposed by variability in common-pool governance principles.

Common-pool governance principles are becoming increasingly important tools for natural resource management with communities and comanagement arrangements. Effectiveness of these principles depends on variability in agreements, trust, and adherence to institutional norms. We evaluated heterogeneity in governance principles by asking 449 people in 30 fishing communities in 4 East African countries to rate their effectiveness. The influences of individuals, their membership and role in stakeholder community groups, leadership, community, and country were tested. The membership and role of people were not the main influence on their perceptions of the effectiveness of governance principles. Therefore, drawing conclusions about the effectiveness of specific principles would be difficult to make independent of the individuals asked. More critical were individuals' nationalities and their associations with the shared perceptions of a response-group's effectiveness of each principle. Perceptions of effectiveness differed strongly by country, and respondents from poor nations (Madagascar and Mozambique) were more cohesiveness but had fewer and weaker between-community conflict-resolution mechanisms. Overall, group identity, group autonomy, decision-making process, and conflict resolution principles were perceived to be most effective and likely to be enforced by repeated low-cost intragroup activities. Graduated sanctions, cost-benefit sharing, and monitoring resource users, fisheries, and ecology were the least scaled principles and less affordable via local control. We suggest these 2 groups of principles form independently and, as economies develop and natural resources become limiting, sustainability increasingly depends on the later principles. Therefore, management effectiveness in resource-limited situations depends on distributing power, skills, and costs beyond fishing communities to insure conservation needs are met.

Necesidades de la Conservación Expuestas por la Variabilidad de los Principios de Gobernanza de Recursos Comunes Resumen Los principios de gobernanza de recursos comunes se utilizan cada vez más como una herramienta importante para el manejo de recursos naturales en las comunidades y los arreglos de co-manejo. La efectividad de estos principios depende de la variabilidad de los arreglos, la confianza y el apego a las normas institucionales. Para evaluar la heterogeneidad en los principios de gobernanza le pedimos a 449 personas en 30 comunidades pesqueras de cuatro países del este de África que calificaran la efectividad de los principios. Se evaluaron la influencia de los individuos, su afiliación y su papel dentro de los grupos de liderazgo, dentro de la comunidad de accionistas, dentro de la comunidad y dentro de los países. La afiliación y el papel de las personas no fueron la influencia principal sobre sus percepciones de la efectividad de los principios de gobernanza. Por lo tanto, llegar a conclusiones sobre la efectividad de los principios específicos sería complicado, independientemente de los individuos a los que se les pide la calificación. Fueron más relevantes la nacionalidad de los individuos y su asociación con las percepciones compartidas sobre la efectividad de un grupo de respuestas de cada principio. Las percepciones de efectividad difirieron fuertemente entre países, y las respuestas de las naciones pobres (Madagascar y Mozambique) fueron más cohesivas, pero tuvieron menos mecanismos de resolución de conflictos entre comunidades, además de ser más débiles. En general, se percibieron como más efectivos y con mayor probabilidad de ser impuestos por las actividades de bajo costo dentro de un grupo. Las sanciones graduadas, la partición de los costos de los beneficios y el monitoreo de los usuarios de los recursos, las pesquerías y la ecología fueron los principios que menos aparecieron en la escala de las calificaciones y también fueron las menos costeables para el control local. Sugerimos que estos dos grupos de principios se formen independientemente y, conforme se desarrollan las economías y los recursos naturales se vuelvan limitados, que la sustentabilidad dependa cada vez más de estos principios. Así, el manejo de la efectividad en situaciones de recursos limitados depende de la distribución del poder, las habilidades y los costos más allá de las comunidades pesqueras para asegurar que se cumpla con todas las necesidades de conservación.

Evaluating taboo trade-offs in ecosystems services and human well-being.

Managing ecosystems for multiple ecosystem services and balancing the well-being of diverse stakeholders involves different kinds of trade-offs. Often trade-offs involve noneconomic and difficult-to-evaluate values, such as cultural identity, employment, the well-being of poor people, or particular species or ecosystem structures. Although trade-offs need to be considered for successful environmental management, they are often overlooked in favor of win-wins. Management and policy decisions demand approaches that can explicitly acknowledge and evaluate diverse trade-offs. We identified a diversity of apparent trade-offs in a small-scale tropical fishery when ecological simulations were integrated with participatory assessments of social-ecological system structure and stakeholders' well-being. Despite an apparent win-win between conservation and profitability at the aggregate scale, food production, employment, and well-being of marginalized stakeholders were differentially influenced by management decisions leading to trade-offs. Some of these trade-offs were suggested to be "taboo" trade-offs between morally incommensurable values, such as between profits and the well-being of marginalized women. These were not previously recognized as management issues. Stakeholders explored and deliberated over trade-offs supported by an interactive "toy model" representing key system trade-offs, alongside qualitative narrative scenarios of the future. The concept of taboo trade-offs suggests that psychological bias and social sensitivity may exclude key issues from decision making, which can result in policies that are difficult to implement. Our participatory modeling and scenarios approach has the potential to increase awareness of such trade-offs, promote discussion of what is acceptable, and potentially identify and reduce obstacles to management compliance.

Connecting marine ecosystem services to human well-being: insights from participatory well-being assessment in Kenya.

The linkage between ecosystems and human well-being is a focus of the conceptualization of "ecosystem services" as promoted by the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment. However, the actual nature of connections between ecosystems and the well-being of individuals remains complex and poorly understood. We conducted a series of qualitative focus groups with five different stakeholder groups connected to a small-scale Kenyan coastal fishery to understand (1) how well-being is understood within the community, and what is important for well-being, (2) how people's well-being has been affected by changes over the recent past, and (3) people's hopes and aspirations for their future fishery. Our results show that people conceive well-being in a diversity of ways, but that these can clearly map onto the MA framework. In particular, our research unpacks the "freedoms and choices" element of the framework and argues for greater recognition of these aspects of well-being in fisheries management in Kenya through, for example, more participatory governance processes.

What Happens after Conservation and Management Donors Leave? A Before and After Study of Coral Reef Ecology and Stakeholder Perceptions of Management Benefits.

The coral reefs of Tanga, Tanzania were recognized as a national conservation priority in the early 1970s, but the lack of a management response led to damage by dynamite, beach seines, and high numbers of fishers until the mid 1990s. Subsequently, an Irish Aid funded IUCN Eastern Africa program operated from 1994 to mid 2007 to implement increased management aimed at reducing these impacts. The main effects of this management were to establish collaborative management areas, reduce dynamite and seine net fishing, and establish small community fisheries closures beginning in 1996. The ecology of the coral reefs was studied just prior to the initiation of this management in 1996, during, 2004, and a few years after the project ended in 2010. The perceptions of resource users towards management options were evaluated in 2010. The ecological studies indicated that the biomass of fish rose continuously during this period from 260 to 770 kg/ha but the small closures were no different from the non-closure areas. The benthic community studies indicate stability in the coral cover and community composition and an increase in coralline algae and topographic complexity over time. The lack of change in the coral community suggests resilience to various disturbances including fisheries management and the warm temperature anomaly of 1998. These results indicate that some aspects of the management program had been ecologically successful even after the donor program ended. Moreover, the increased compliance with seine net use and dynamite restrictions were the most likely factors causing this increase in fish biomass and not the closures. Resource users interviewed in 2010 were supportive of gear restrictions but there was considerable between-community disagreement over the value of specific restrictions. The social-ecological results suggest that increased compliance with gear restrictions is largely responsible for the improvements in reef ecology and is a high priority for future management programs.