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This introduction to the special feature describes the development and application of a "full-spectrum sustainability" evaluation framework that emerged from a transdisciplinary research process. The framework and corresponding case studies described in this paper originated in the work of a Canadian Fisheries Research Network project that sought to enhance fisheries management by including diverse social-ecological considerations in fisheries management evaluation. The first section discusses the tendency of sustainability evaluation frameworks in fisheries to focus on ecological and economic considerations and introduces the Canadian Fisheries Research Network's four pillar approach, which includes ecological, economic, social and cultural, and institutional/ governance categories. To illustrate the comprehensive nature of this framework, the second section provides a comparison of the framework with elements in the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals. The third section provides an overview of the eight papers in this special feature that explore the development and application of full-spectrum sustainability. The conclusion synthesizes some key findings, highlighting four overall critical and ongoing challenges associated with advancing full-spectrum sustainability evaluation in Canada and elsewhere: the politics of transdisciplinary research; integrating social considerations into management agencies reluctant to move beyond ecological and economic considerations; dynamic and diverse issues involved in supporting robust and inclusive governance processes; and translating technical frameworks into usable practical instruments for different societal actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The economically and culturally important Pacific halibut fishery in British Columbia, Canada, managed as an individual transferable quota fishery since 1993, has frequently been held up as an example of management best practices. This narrative of success has continued despite repeated warnings that there are serious problems with the fishery, including processors exerting ever greater control over the fishery, contrary to stated fisheries objectives. Administrative data from federal and provincial data sets were used to consider ownership and control in the halibut fishery, with a focus on processor quota ownership, leasing, and brokerage of leases. The analysis indicated that direct processor ownership of halibut quota, while more than doubling between 1996 and 2016, remains relatively low at less than 10% of the available quota. Processor control through the leasing of halibut, however, is much higher, accounting for more than half of all halibut quota transfers in 2016. Through strategies such as "holding licences," processors increasingly act as hubs for leasing activity, which has shifted the balance of power in the fishery. This analysis (a) reveals that there is much more processor control than is obvious from a cursory review of ownership, (b) highlights approaches for assessing the level of processor control, and (c) recommends alternative government procedures for improving transparency and evaluating full spectrum outcomes of fisheries management such as equitable distribution of benefits. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The reintroduction of a previously extirpated predator can engender conflict when the reintroduced species depletes customary fisheries to which indigenous communities have constitutionally protected rights. In the case of sea otter (Enhydra lutris) recovery on the west coast of North America, not only is Canada's Species at Risk Act in conflict with Indigenous rights, but it also illuminates gaps in the principles of ecosystem-based management (EBM), such as equity and social justice. Broadly, we ask in this paper how EBM might be advanced if Indigenous communities were viewed as components of ecosystems having rights to a sustainable future equal to other components. Specifically, we explore evidence of sea otter management among precontact Northwest Coast societies and a contemporary co-managed system proposed by the Nuu-chah-nulth First Nations that would combine research with refinement of traditional hunting practices. We show that barriers persist through lack of knowledge of past controlled hunts, ignorance of recent experiences of successful community-based clam management, distrust of Indigenous capacity to self-manage or co-manage a hunt, and divergent values among actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

When the Government of British Columbia (BC) introduced the Community Forest Agreement Program in 1998, it permitted a range of governance structures to allow flexibility and to learn which structures might be most appropriate for this new form of forest tenure. One structure that became fairly common was collaboration between Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities. This paper characterizes and analyzes the advantages of this collaborative governance model in three ways, identifying (1) what benefits this model entails, (2) how these are illustrated in three different community forests, and (3) how these forms of collaboration fit into a co-management spectrum. Because some of these benefits involve communities having greater degrees of power in forest governance, the model invites a consideration of the types of decision-making power experienced by Indigenous communities partnering or collaborating in BC community forests, as well as the types and range of benefits for all parties emerging from these collaborations. Fourteen indicators of the benefits of collaboration are identified, building on the discovery of five new benefits heretofore unrecognized in the literature. These understandings permit a more nuanced assessment of this particular type of co-management, leading to the generation of three new, broader hypotheses regarding the conditions that support co-management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many fisheries managers and neoliberal fisheries economists promote Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs) as a solution to the race for fish which can cause rent dissipation under competitive quota or open access fisheries. These actors consider the Canadian Pacific halibut ITQ fishery an example of successful achievement of these objectives. However, critics note the weak performance of this management model in distribution of benefits, increased capital costs to fishermen, deteriorating safety conditions, reductions in crew income and barriers to entry. They point to the layup system which successfully managed effort in the Pacific halibut fishery for four decades prior to the introduction of ITQs. A system similar to the layup has been used for Atlantic halibut since 2013, initiated by the Fish Food and Allied Workers (FFAW) representing owner‐operator license holders in the halibut fishery off the coast of western Newfoundland and southern Labrador. The FFAW rejected the two halibut management plan options presented to them by Fisheries and Oceans Canada: the status quo (a competitive 12‐hr "derby" fishery) or IQs, likely leading to ITQs. Instead, the FFAW worked with license holders to develop a management plan that required harvesters to choose between different fishing periods that spread fishing opportunities over time. This approach improved conservation results, delivered strong economic returns, distributed benefits widely to active fishermen, and allowed an even flow into the market. The authors consider the advantages of these Canadian east and west coast halibut co‐management systems and their broader application. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Brazil, the recognition that fisheries encompass both natural ecosystems and human well-being has increased, but initiatives are focused largely on highly-valued species, ignoring socially relevant resources such as Venus clams (Anomalocardia brasiliana). We investigate two initiatives involving comanagement of Venus clams in the past two decades: the Marine Extractive Reserve "Pirajubaé" and the "People of the Tides" project. We focus on the nature of the institutional arrangements, the involved groups (fishing communities and government), and the resource, as well as the steps involved in developing the partnerships, identifying which factors favor success in comanagement. Through these projects, fisherwomen got visibility and clam harvesters became the center of institutional developments. However, their rights in management will not become meaningful unless comanagement in protected areas is fully implemented, and government becomes more willing to share power in harvest planning, and to improve health, infrastructure, and the return of value to fisher families. Only then would such cooperation promote sustainability for Venus clams and fisher families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aboriginal and nonaboriginal fishing-dependent communities on the coast of British Columbia, Canada, having lost traditional fisheries management institutions along with significant fishing opportunity, are in the process of rebuilding local and regional institutions to allow their survival. Sometimes, the rebuilding effort involves the creation of largely new institutions. It can also involve the reactivation, reinvention, or repositioning of older ones. We consider the aspirations, strategies, and activities of organizations in two regions of the coast involved in two different fisheries: salmon on the north coast and intertidal clams in the Broughton Archipelago. We analyze what the two regions have in common, as well as their differences, to generate general predictions and recommendations about what preconditions appear to be necessary for success in rebuilding institutions in communities and regions at these scales and what actions are likely to be most effective, according to a body of literature on self-management and comanagement. In both cases, we found favorable conditions in the communities, the external political arena, and in government to support the rebuilding goals of the organizations working in the two regions. Although both areas would benefit from greater financial resources, the most critical need is for external support in the form of alliances, issue networks, and access to multiple sources of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compared the resilience to economic shocks--such as the downturn of the U.S. housing market--of commodity sawmills, which tend to be large, and value-added specialty sawmills, which tend to be small or medium in size, that are located in one region of the province of British Columbia, Canada, as measured by their average days in operation over the last decade and during the 2007-2009 recession. Using a combination of qualitative and quantitative measures, we then examined three behavioral characteristics contributing to their different degrees of resilience: flexibility, diversity, and orientation to place. We found that the specialty mills had greater resilience over the decade because they (a) contributed more jobs per volume of wood consumed and produced, (b) had greater flexibility to operate further below their capacity, (c) produced more diverse primary and secondary (value-added) wood products, (d) targeted more diverse markets, and (e) did more log sorting and trading in logs of different species with other specialty mills and with local commodity mills, with whom they acted as a resilient cluster. Although all these activities resulted in more logs flowing toward their highest value use, we found that the specialty mills lacked a secure and adequate timber supply, while the major timber tenures held by the commodity mills went largely unused during the downturn. This finding suggests that, in addition to contributing to resilience within the forest products sector, more access to timber tenure by the specialty mills, or having a greater portion of timber on the open market, would result in more value being produced from publicly owned timber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fishers often rely on their social capital to cope with resource fluctuations by sharing information on the abundance and location of fish. Drawing on research in seven coastal fishing communities in Loreto, Baja California Sur, Mexico, we examine the effect of resource scarcity on the bonding, bridging, and linking social-capital patterns of fishers' information-sharing networks. We found that: (1) fishers' information sharing is activated in response to varying ecological conditions; (2) resource scarcity is an ambiguous indicator of the extent to which fishers share information on the abundance and location of fish within and between communities; (3) information sharing is based on trust and occurs through kinship, friendship, and acquaintance social relations; (4) friendship ties play a key and flexible role in fishers' social networks within and between communities; (5) overall, the composition of fishers' social networks follows a friendship>kinship>acquaintance order of importance; and (6) the function of social ties, internal conflict, and settlement histories moderate the effects of resource scarcity on fishers' social capital. We conclude by arguing that the livelihoods of fishers from Loreto have adaptive capacity for dealing with fish fluctuations but little or no proactive resilience to address resource-management issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As neoliberalism continues to influence environmental governance, it affects notions about the appropriate level of community involvement in resource management. Under more recent iterations, hybrid forms of governance are emphasized, including government–civil society partnerships and approaches geared towards harnessing the strengths of local communities. Here we explore the characteristics of different resource management rights, strategies, and tools through which communities can find political space to assert their own agendas within a neoliberalized policy environment. We examine the successful use of some of these approaches by communities during the initial development of community forests policy and practice in British Columbia, Canada. While we confirm the complex, contingent and case-specific nature of opportunities for comanagement created through neoliberal policy elements, we suggest that space does exist for community forest bodies to assert local values, goals and strategies, demonstrating the creativity, ingenuity and determination of communities to attain a real voice in management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

CET ARTICLE PASSE en revue le développement du mouvement des communautés forestières en Colombie-Britannique à partir de ses débuts dans les années 1970 jusqu'à sa plus récente expression dans un projet de loi sur les pratiques forestières: la loi sur la gestion forestière de Tin Wis. Ce projet de loi consiste en une entente de cogestion qui alloue aux comités des collectivités un rôle proéminent dans la gestion forestière. En situant ce projet de loi dans le contexte de la littérature sur les mouvements sociaux. Fauteur nous fournit des pistes quant à la possibilité d'une réussite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is widespread debate about the best strategies to provide local benefits in forest management. We evaluate recent policy changes in British Columbia, Canada, focussing on attempts to create local benefits from public forests through a community forestry program and broad policy changes in 2003 that removed obligations of tenure holders to process timber in areas near where timber was harvested. These obligations were intended to retain benefits of milling jobs locally and were considered part of a 'social contract'. We evaluate these policy changes by asking two specific questions. (1) Do community forest tenures provide more local benefits than major industrial tenures? (2) How have the policy changes of 2003 affected the patterns of fibre flow over the period to 2008? We evaluate these questions through qualitative research and a quantitative fibre flow analysis using a large time-series dataset. Community forests as a group performed better than major industrial tenures in delivering local benefits as we defined them. However, large variation among individual community forests is evident, highlighting the disparate strategies used by communities to promote local benefits. Our fibre flow analysis did not reveal major changes following 2003, suggesting that broader fibre flow trends mask more local perturbations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Localization is posited as the antidote for globalization, but little exists in the way of quantifying the micro-scale of small communities. In this paper, the reader's attention is drawn towards understanding that social network analysis, Markov chains and input-output models are equivalent, and that together these tools can be used to map and measure the circulation of currency in a small community. The "map" of the economy can be created using social network analysis, in a form equivalent to Markov chains and input-output models, by representing businesses as nodes and the percentage of expenses spent by one business at another as the strength of the edges between the nodes. Markov chain mathematics is used to measure the circulation of currency in the economy by calculating the average number of transactions (average path length) from where the dollar enters the community until it leaves. This method is equivalent to the multiplier effect from input-output models but more granular. An example using a simple loop is provided showing different methods of solutions, their equivalence and the impact of loops on the average number of transactions in a small economy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, a modified version of the Gini coefficient and social network-based Markov chains are combined to quantify the distribution of benefits in natural resource-dependent communities. This distribution includes both the width and the depth of the circulation of economic benefits from resource extraction. The modified Gini coefficient is used to calculate the share of benefits each party receives (width) while the social network analysis-based Markov chains are used to map the local economy and calculate the average number of times a dollar circulates in that economy (depth). These two values are combined to create an "equity" factor that considers localization and other financial benefits to the community. This combination allows resource managers to optimize resource access based on quantified values other than highest bid/lowest cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Techniques for quantifying equity, which are discussed in the companion articles by the authors, "Quantifying Equity with Messrs. Markov, Lorenz and Gini: Retaining and distributing benefits in natural resource-dependent communities", and "Social network analysis, Markov Chains and input-output models: Combining tools to map and measure the circulation of currency in small economies", in this issue of JRCD, are applied by the primary author in a case study of Dunster, British Columbia, a small rural community heavily dependent on forestry revenue. The community has forestry tenure rights over a small area in the Robson Valley area of British Columbia, but as of 2011 had not yet begun logging. The application of the techniques highlight the challenges faced by small communities with limited industrial capacity in attempts to capture benefits from the extraction of natural resources. By establishing a "pre-logging" standard, the community can measure progress towards distributing the benefits of natural resource extraction equitably within the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An interdisciplinary team of academics and representatives of fishing fleets and government collaborated to study the emerging requirements for sustainability in Canada's fisheries. Fisheries assessment and management has focused on biological productivity with insufficient consideration of social (including cultural), economic, and institutional (governance) aspects. Further, there has been little discussion or formal evaluation of the effectiveness of fisheries management. The team of over 50 people (i) identified a comprehensive set of management objectives for a sustainable fishery system based on Canadian policy statements, (ii) combined objectives into an operational framework with relevant performance indicators for use in management planning, and (iii) undertook case studies that investigated some social, economic, and governance aspects in greater detail. The resulting framework extends the suite of widely accepted ecological aspects (productivity and trophic structure, biodiversity, and habitat–ecosystem integrity) to include comparable economic (viability and prosperity, sustainable livelihoods, distribution of access and benefits, regional–community benefits), social (health and well-being, sustainable communities, ethical fisheries), and institutional (legal obligations, good governance structure, effective decision-making) aspects of sustainability. This work provides a practical framework for implementation of a comprehensive approach to sustainability in Canadian fisheries. The project also demonstrates the value of co-construction of collaborative research and co-production of knowledge that combines and builds on the strengths of academics, industry, and government. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In fisheries management--as in environmental governance more generally--regulatory arrangements that are thought to be helpful in some contexts frequently become panaceas or, in other words, simple formulaic policy prescriptions believed to solve a given problem in a wide range of contexts, regardless of their actual consequences. When this happens, management is likely to fail, and negative side effects are common. We focus on the case of individual transferable quotas to explore the panacea mindset, a set of factors that promote the spread and persistence of panaceas. These include conceptual narratives that make easy answers like panaceas seem plausible, power disconnects that create vested interests in panaceas, and heuristics and biases that prevent people from accurately assessing panaceas. Analysts have suggested many approaches to avoiding panaceas, but most fail to conquer the underlying panacea mindset. Here, we suggest the codevelopment of an institutional diagnostics toolkit to distill the vast amount of information on fisheries governance into an easily accessible, open, on-line database of checklists, case studies, and related resources. Toolkits like this could be used in many governance settings to challenge users' understandings of a policy's impacts and help them develop solutions better tailored to their particular context. They would not replace the more comprehensive approaches found in the literature but would rather be an intermediate step away from the problem of panaceas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Fisheries sustainability is recognized to have four pillars: ecological, economic, social (including cultural) and institutional (or governance). Although international agreements, and legislation in many jurisdictions, call for implementation of all four pillars of sustainability, the social, economic and institutional aspects (i.e., the “human dimensions”) have not been comprehensively and collectively addressed to date. This study describes a framework for comprehensive fisheries evaluation developed by the Canadian Fisheries Research Network (CFRN) that articulates the full spectrum of ecological, economic, social and institutional objectives required under international agreements, together with candidate performance indicators for sustainable fisheries. The CFRN framework is aimed at practical fisheries evaluation and management and has a relatively balanced distribution of elements across the four pillars of sustainability relative to 10 alternative management decision support tools and indicator scorecards, which are heavily focused on ecological and economic aspects. The CFRN framework has five immediate uses: (a) It can serve as a logic frame for defining management objectives; (b) it can be used to define alternate management options to achieve given objectives; (c) it can serve as a tool for comparing management scenarios/options in decision support frameworks; (d) it can be employed to create a report card for comprehensive fisheries management evaluation; and (e) it is a tool for practical implementation of an integrated social–ecological system approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the literature on property rights, there is general consensus framed by people such as Boserup and Demsetz that common property regimes will change to private property regimes when resources are scarce and population increases. This is mostly correct where land tenure is concerned. However, there are many cases where common property regimes continue even though the population has grown and resources have become scarcer. Ocean areas are almost always held as common property. This article analyzes property regimes that develop for land and ocean and the conditions under which they do so. The analysis is based on worldwide ethnographic case studies. I argue that the form property regimes take is determined by economic defendability. Many variables influence economic defendability, ranging from technical change and physical attributes of the resource to government action and cultural factors. That arable land is usually held privately suggests this solution is adaptive for land with high economic defendability. However, the fact that many ocean areas, forests, pastures, and swidden lands are held as common property suggests that this type of tenure may be an optimal solution when the value of resources are low relative to defense costs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ecosystem stewardship is an action-oriented framework intended to foster the social–ecological sustainability of a rapidly changing planet. Recent developments identify three strategies that make optimal use of current understanding in an environment of inevitable uncertainty and abrupt change: reducing the magnitude of, and exposure and sensitivity to, known stresses; focusing on proactive policies that shape change; and avoiding or escaping unsustainable social–ecological traps. As we discuss here, all social–ecological systems are vulnerable to recent and projected changes but have sources of adaptive capacity and resilience that can sustain ecosystem services and human well-being through active ecosystem stewardship. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]