Sustaining small-scale fisheries through a nation-wide Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries system.

Territorial Use rights in Fisheries (TURFs) are used around the world to manage small-scale fisheries and they've shown varying levels of success. Our understanding of what leads to different performance levels is limited due to several reasons. Firstly, these systems are often present in areas with low monitoring capacity where data is scarce. Secondly, past research has centered on the analysis of successful cases, with little attention paid to entire systems. Thirdly, research has been ahistorical, disconnected from the development process of TURF systems. Fourthly, TURFs are often viewed as homogenous ignoring the socio-ecological conditions under which they develop. To address these gaps, the study focuses on Mexico as a case study and context. The research first presents a historical overview of the development of TURF systems in Mexico, including the institutional and legal frameworks that have shaped their evolution. The paper then presents a TURF database that maps all TURF systems in Mexico, including their geographical locations and characteristics. In addition, the study presents case studies based on identified archetypes that showcase the diversity of TURF systems in Mexico, highlighting the different types of systems and the challenges they face. By presenting a comprehensive map of all TURF systems in Mexico, this research paper aims to make an important addition to the case studies in the global literature on TURF systems and provide a valuable resource for marine resource management policymakers, researchers, and practitioners.

Illegal fisheries, environmental crime, and the conservation of marine resources.

The illegal harvest of marine species within exclusive economic zones can have a strong impact on the function of local ecosystems and livelihoods of coastal communities. The complexity of these problems is often overlooked in the development of solutions, leading to ineffective and sometimes harmful social and environmental outcomes. One-dimensional, oversimplified perspectives can lead to conservation prescriptions that exacerbate social stressors. This is particularly critical in the case of international illegal trade of endangered, high-value species, which generate a value chain in which artisanal fishers are the first operational and often the weakest link of an intricate web. We examined 2 illegal fisheries, totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) and sea cucumber (Isostichopus badionotus and Holothuria floridana), in Mexico. Although these are 2 separate and independent fisheries, important ecological (resource condition, fishery impacts at the ecosystem level) and social (governance, markets) similarities improve understanding of their complexity. Our findings are relevant globally and show the need for interdisciplinary decision-making groups, community engagement, and the development of demand reduction measures.

Pesquerías Ilegales, Crímenes Ambientales y la Conservación de los Recursos Marinos Resumen La cosecha ilegal de especies marinas dentro de las zonas económicas exclusivas puede tener un impacto serio sobre la función de los ecosistemas locales y el economia de las comunidades costeras. La complejidad de estos problemas generalmente se ignora durante el desarrollo de soluciones, lo que conlleva a resultados ambientales y sociales poco efectivos y algunas veces dañinos. Las perspectivas unidimensionales y sobresimplificadas pueden derivar en prescripciones de conservación que empeoran las condiciones sociales sociales. Lo anterior es particularmente crítico para el caso del mercado ilegal de especies en peligro y de alto valor, lo que genera una cadena de valores en la que los pescadores tradicionales son el primer eslabón operativo y con frecuencia el más débil de una red intrincada. Examinamos dos pesquerías ilegales, la de la totoaba (Totoaba macdonaldi) y la del pepino de mar (Isostichopus badionotus y Holothuria floridana), en México. Aunque estas dos pesquerías son diferentes e independientes, las importantes similitudes ecológicas (estado del recurso, impactos de la pesquería a nivel de ecosistema) y sociales (governancia, mercados) mejoran el conocimiento de su complejidad. Nuestros hallazgos son relevantes a escala global y muestran la necesidad de tener grupos interdisciplinarios para tomar decisiones, la participación de la comunidad y el desarrollo de medidas para reducir la demanda por el producto pesquero.

Cooperation as a solution to shared resources in territorial use rights in fisheries.

Territorial use rights in fisheries (TURFs) are coastal territories assigned to fishermen for the exclusive extraction of marine resources. Recent evidence shows that the incentives that arise from these systems can improve fisheries sustainability. Although research on TURFs has increased in recent years, important questions regarding the social and ecological dynamics underlying their success remain largely unanswered. In particular, in order to create new successful TURFs, it is critical to comprehend how fish movement over different distances affects the development of sustainable fishing practices within a TURF. In theory, excessive spillover outside a TURF will generate incentives to overharvest. However, many TURFs have proven successful even when targeted species move over distances far greater than the TURF's size. A common attribute among some of these successful systems is the presence of inter-TURF cooperation arrangements. This raises the question of how different levels and types of cooperation affect the motivations for overharvesting driven by the movement of fish outside the TURF. In this paper, we examine equilibrium yields under different levels of inter-TURF cooperation (from partial to full) and varying degrees of asymmetry across TURFs of both biological capacity and benefit-sharing. We find that partial cooperation can improve yields even with an unequal distribution of shared benefits and asymmetric carrying capacity. However, cooperation arrangements are unstable if the sharing agreement and biological asymmetries are misaligned. Remarkably, we find that asymmetry in the system can lead to the creation of voluntary no-take zones.

An interdisciplinary evaluation of community-based TURF-reserves.

Coastal marine ecosystems provide livelihoods for small-scale fishers and coastal communities around the world. Small-scale fisheries face great challenges since they are difficult to monitor, enforce, and manage, which may lead to overexploitation. Combining territorial use rights for fisheries (TURF) with no-take marine reserves to create TURF-reserves can improve the performance of small-scale fisheries by buffering fisheries from environmental variability and management errors, while ensuring that fishers reap the benefits of conservation investments. Since 2012, 18 old and new community-based Mexican TURF-reserves gained legal recognition thanks to a regulation passed in 2012; their effectiveness has not been formally evaluated. We combine causal inference techniques and the Social-Ecological Systems framework to provide a holistic evaluation of community-based TURF-reserves in three coastal communities in Mexico. We find that, overall, reserves have not yet achieved their stated goals of increasing the density of lobster and other benthic invertebrates, nor increasing lobster catches. A lack of clear ecological and socioeconomic effects likely results from a combination of factors. First, some of these reserves might be too young for the effects to show (reserves were 6-10 years old). Second, the reserves are not large enough to protect mobile species, like lobster. Third, variable and extreme oceanographic conditions have impacted harvested populations. Fourth, local fisheries are already well managed, and while reserves may protect populations within its boundaries, it is unlikely that reserves might have a detectable effect in catches. However, even small reserves are expected to provide benefits for sedentary invertebrates over longer time frames, with continued protection. These reserves may provide a foundation for establishing additional, larger marine reserves needed to effectively conserve mobile species.

Design trade-offs in rights-based management of small-scale fisheries.

Small-scale fisheries collectively have a large ecological footprint and are key sources of food security, especially in developing countries. Many of the data-intensive approaches to fishery management are infeasible in these fisheries, but a strategy that has emerged to overcome these challenges is the establishment of territorial user rights for fisheries (TURFs). In this approach, exclusive fishing zones are established for groups of stakeholders, which eliminates the race to fish with other groups. A key challenge, however, is setting the size of TURFs-too large and the number of stakeholders sharing them impedes collective action, and too small and the movement of target fish species in and out of the TURFs effectively removes the community's exclusive access. We assessed the size of 137 TURFs from across the globe relative to this design challenge by applying theoretical models that predict their performance. We estimated that roughly two-thirds of these TURFs were sized ideally to overcome the challenges posed by resource movement and fisher group size. However, for most of the remaining TURFs, all possible sizes were either too small to overcome the resource-movement challenge or too large to overcome the collective action challenge. Our results suggest these fisheries, which target mobile species in densely populated regions, may need additional interventions to be successful.

Diseño de Compensaciones en la Administración Basada en Derechos de las Pesquerías de Pequeña Escala Resumen Las pesquerías de pequeña escala tienen una gran huella ecológica de manera colectiva y son fuentes importantes de seguridad alimenticia, especialmente en los países en desarrollo. Muchas de las estrategias cargadas de datos para la administración de las pesquerías son inviables en este tipo de pesquerías, pero una estrategia que ha emergido para sobrellevar estos retos es el establecimiento de los derechos de uso territorial para las pesquerías (TURFs, en inglés). Como parte de esta estrategia se establecen zonas exclusivas de pesca para los grupos de accionistas, lo que elimina la competencia por la pesca con otros grupos. Sin embargo, un reto importante es el establecimiento del tamaño de los TURFs - si son muy grandes, el número de accionistas que los comparten impide la acción colectiva; si son muy pequeños, el movimiento de las especies diana de peces dentro y fuera de los TURFs le retira efectivamente el acceso exclusivo a la comunidad. Evaluamos el tamaño de 137 TURFs ubicados en todo el mundo en relación con este reto del diseño aplicando modelos teóricos que pronosticaron su desempeño. Estimamos que aproximadamente dos tercios de estos TURFs tenían el tamaño ideal para superar los retos que presentan el movimiento del recurso y el tamaño del grupo pesquero. Sin embargo, para la mayoría de los TURFs restantes todos los tamaños posibles eran o muy pequeños para superar el reto del movimiento del recurso, o muy grandes para sobrellevar el reto de la acción colectiva. Nuestros resultados sugieren que estas pesquerías que se enfocan en especies móviles dentro de regiones pobladas densamente pueden requerir de intervenciones adicionales para ser exitosas.