Sustainability challenges for artisanal fisheries in the Azorean islands part of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves: Local conflicts, social actors and the opportunities of a new ecosystemic approach.
2018; Frontiers Media; Volume: 5; Linguagem: Inglês
10.3389/conf.fmars.2018.06.00016
ISSN2296-7745
Autores Tópico(s)Cruise Tourism Development and Management
ResumoEvent Abstract Back to Event Sustainability challenges for artisanal fisheries in the Azorean islands part of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves: Local conflicts, social actors and the opportunities of a new ecosystemic approach. Ana Rita Jordao Fraga1* 1 Centro de Humanidades, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CICS.Nova, Portugal Located in the middle of the northern hemisphere of the Atlantic Ocean, the Portuguese Autonomous Region of the Azores is composed by nine volcanic islands: S. Miguel, Santa Maria, Terceira, Graciosa, Faial, Pico, S. Jorge, Flores and Corvo. These islands belong to the Macaronesia area and extend along within an area approximately 600 kilometres (373 miles) wide and present very different characteristics in all aspects: each island has a unique natural beauty, totals of inhabitants and demographic density diverges drastically between S. Miguel or Terceira and the other islands and even the way how economic activities are organized in each island reflects local peculiarities. Four Azorean islands (the four smallest ones: Graciosa, S. Jorge, Flores e Corvo) are UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves, were solutions reconciling the conservation of biodiversity with its sustainable use are being promoted. The reserves are ‘Science for Sustainability support sites’ where interdisciplinary approaches should focus on understanding and help managing changes and interactions between social and ecological systems, including conflict prevention and management of biodiversity, namely by reinforcing scientific research, monitoring, training and education. Along with agriculture, fishing is a very important activity, especially in the smallest islands. Nowadays, artisanal fishery activity in the Azorean ‘Biosphere islands’ face a peculiar set of problems and challenges. In order to accomplish an effective sustainable use of these islands coastal ecosystems a new legal framework brought the awareness of the need to promote a responsible fishing in order to ensure both environmental balance and sustainable development of the professional activity, which has a very significant role in these islands social-economic situation. Based on a larger investigation that aims to bring out the social representations of Azorean small-scale fishermen about public policies for environmental preservation, namely by understanding the complex problems of ‘illegal fishing’ and ‘environment threatening practices’, this manuscript proposes an ecosystemic approach on the issue of fisheries management and sustainable governance. On the field we find evidences of the lack of compliance towards a new legal framework with concrete restrictions to fishery activity (catch methods and allowed working areas): Daily illegal fishing practices threat the success of the regional government environmental policies and local actors (fishermen and other sea users) express a strong opposition to the implementation of the marine protected areas. Local conflicts between actors (fishermen and other sea users and management actors) contribute to a misunderstanding of the core issue: vision, strategy and criteria of regional policy to the Biosphere Islands (and wider Azorean environmental policy). This approach sets up in this main statement: More than 'just' a fisheries issue, this is an environmental problem. Combining a field based empirical research and theoretical investigation, we propose to focus on local actors’ perspectives about environmental challenges for Azorean Fisheries as key issue to be considered in every research related with fisheries management and coastal sustainable development. Having as conceptual background the new paradigm for governing the commons, namely by presenting both top-down and bottom-up reading itinerary of the daily realities, by understanding social dynamics at a local level, we aim to identify why illegal practices keep on happening and critically analyse the legal environmental protection measures that have a direct influence on the small-scale fisheries. We propose to discuss the role of the effective participation the local communities in research and in the decision-making process concerning the implementation of strategic national and regional policies (which are, nowadays, grounded in main guidelines draft at the European level, which in turn come out of major global goals). Although today in Europe the governance paradigm in anchored in the assumption that governance must be based on a strategic vision, implementing strategic plans which should attend both to global goals and local needs and particularities, namely by considering local actors’ contributions, the daily reality of illegal fishing practices suggests that this process seems to be failing. We propose an itinerary which invites to a critical questioning about the need of hearing local actor’s voices and taking them into account when building regional policies with local incidence, and we state that this process must start in scientific research which produces advises for informed policy-making. Top concern of the proposed approach in the need of an effective and consistent research strategy developed by multidisciplinary teams, involving marine biologists, oceanographers, sociologists, economists, managers and working articulated in field anchored projects participated by local actors. Managing fisheries is much more than managing fish stocks and habitats... to promote coherent and consequent strategies for the sustainable use of marine resources (namely fishes), local management processes, regional policies and coastal uses conflicts must be taken in a holistic and integrated way. 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Rules, games, and common-pool resources. Ann Arbor: James Editors, University of Michigan Press. Ostrom, E., & Hess, C. (2006). Understanding knowledge as a commons: From theory to practice. Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press. Sachs, I. (1994). Estratégias de transição para o século XXI. In A. D. Mendes, & M. Bursztyn (Eds.), Para pensar o desenvolvimento sustentável (pp. 29-56). São Paulo: Brasiliense. Sachs, I. (2008). Caminhos para o desenvolvimento sustentável. Rio de Janeiro: Garamond. Viegas, M. C. (2012). Comunidades piscatórias e bio-recursos marinhos: Estratégias para políticas de desenvolvimento e gestão sustentáveis (Tese de doutoramento). Universidade Nova de Lisboa, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologias, Lisboa. Viegas, M. C., Moniz, A. B., & Santos, P. T. (2014). Artisanal fishermen contribution for the integrated and sustainable coastal management: Application of strategic SWOT analysis. Procedia- Social and Behavioral Sciences, 120, 257-267 Keywords: Public policies, Fisheries Research and Management, governance, Social-ecological systems, sustainability, Social actors, Coastal ecosystems Conference: IMMR'18 | International Meeting on Marine Research 2018, Peniche, Portugal, 5 Jul - 6 Jul, 2018. Presentation Type: Oral Presentation Topic: Fisheries and Management Citation: Jordao Fraga A (2019). Sustainability challenges for artisanal fisheries in the Azorean islands part of UNESCO’s Biosphere Reserves: Local conflicts, social actors and the opportunities of a new ecosystemic approach.. Front. Mar. Sci. Conference Abstract: IMMR'18 | International Meeting on Marine Research 2018. doi: 10.3389/conf.FMARS.2018.06.00016 Copyright: The abstracts in this collection have not been subject to any Frontiers peer review or checks, and are not endorsed by Frontiers. They are made available through the Frontiers publishing platform as a service to conference organizers and presenters. The copyright in the individual abstracts is owned by the author of each abstract or his/her employer unless otherwise stated. Each abstract, as well as the collection of abstracts, are published under a Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0 (attribution) licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) and may thus be reproduced, translated, adapted and be the subject of derivative works provided the authors and Frontiers are attributed. For Frontiers’ terms and conditions please see https://www.frontiersin.org/legal/terms-and-conditions. Received: 06 Apr 2018; Published Online: 07 Jan 2019. * Correspondence: PhD. Ana Rita Jordao Fraga, Centro de Humanidades, Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CICS.Nova, Lisbon, Graciosa, Açores, 9880-026, Portugal, anaritafraga@gmail.com Login Required This action requires you to be registered with Frontiers and logged in. To register or login click here. Abstract Info Abstract The Authors in Frontiers Ana Rita Jordao Fraga Google Ana Rita Jordao Fraga Google Scholar Ana Rita Jordao Fraga PubMed Ana Rita Jordao Fraga Related Article in Frontiers Google Scholar PubMed Abstract Close Back to top Javascript is disabled. Please enable Javascript in your browser settings in order to see all the content on this page.
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