Search

The potential to improve the management of fisheries in Pemba, Mozambique, were explored by evaluating stakeholder's preferences for management and the key institutional design elements of the fisheries organisations or community councils of fisheries (CCPs). We interviewed fishers, community leaders and government fisheries officers regarding (1) their perceptions about different fisheries restrictions, (2) their socio-economic conditions, and (3) the institutional design and rules of the CCP arrangements. Fishers had low levels of education (<4 years) and biweekly expenditures of around US$100, and they were permanent residents of their villages, being part of large households (9–12 members). Apart from effort restrictions, respondents’ perceptions were similar and strongly supported a range of fisheries regulations, particularly gear and minimum size restrictions. The suggested minimum size of captured fish was 20.6 cm (SD 3.0), whereas the suggested size of closed areas was 8.4 km2(SD 2.0). Fishers associated with community or conservation groups generally had more positive views of spatial closures and other less-preferred management restrictions. A number of the essential design principles for fisheries rules were in place with the exception of graduated sanctions. There is a need for strengthening groups, forums, leadership training in finance, and means to implement transparency and graduated sanctions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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., (© 2018 Society for Conservation Biology.)