Matching Social and Ecological Systems in Complex Ocean Fisheries
By James A. Wilson. 2006
224 citations recorded by the source corpus.
This paper considers ocean fisheries as complex adaptive systems and addresses the question of how human institutions might be best matched to their structure and function. Ocean ecosystems operate at multiple scales, but the management of fisheries tends to be aimed at a single species considered at a single broad scale. The paper argues that this mismatch of ecological and management scale makes it difficult to address the fine-scale aspects of ocean ecosystems, and leads to fishing rights and strategies that tend to erode the underlying structure of populations and the system itself. A successful transition to ecosystem-based management will require institutions better able to economize on the acquisition of feedback about the impact of human activities. This is likely to be achieved by multiscale institutions whose organization mirrors the spatial organization of the ecosystem and whose communications occur through a polycentric network. Better feedback will allow the exploration of fine-scale science and the employment of fine-scale fishing restraints, better adapted to the behavior of fish and habitat. The scale and scope of individual fishing rights also needs to be congruent with the spatial structure of the ecosystem. Place-based rights can be expected to create a longer private planning horizon as well as stronger incentives for the private and public acquisition of system relevant knowledge.
Subfields: Ecology, Global and Planetary Change, Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/a4898c3e8aef119075c3962dd7197a004dda04ab
How researchers see this paper
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In Ecology
- L. Rival
- Victor Galaz
- P. Olsson
- Carl Folke
- Elena M. Finkbeiner
- R. Muradian
- D. Bellwood
- Fikret Berkes
In Global and Planetary Change
In Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Citations in the corpus
- Between markets and hierarchies: The challenge of governing ecosystem services (2012, background): “…in the case of the management of ecosystem services, an oversimplification might involve considerable risks since ecosystem functions are intrinsically complex, due to the multidimensional, non-linear and multi-scale (both geographical and temporal) nature of ecological dynamics (Wilson, 2006).”
- The role of diversification in dynamic small-scale fisheries: Lessons from Baja California Sur, Mexico (2015, background): “approach to managing for resilience (Berkes et al., 2003; Mahon et al., 2008; McClanahan et al., 2008a,b; Walker and Salt, 2002; Wilson, 2006).”
- Enhancing the Fit through Adaptive Co-management: Creating and Maintaining Bridging Functions for Matching Scales in the Kristianstads Vattenrike Biosphere Reserve, Sweden (2007, background): “For example, Wilson (2006) argues that this mismatch of ecological and management scales makes it difficult to address the fine-scale aspects of ocean ecosystems, and leads to fishing rights and strategies that tend to erode the underlying structure of populations and the system itself.”