Governance and Fisheries Management

Study Notes

Governance refers to the processes, systems, and controls used to safeguard and grow assets, as well as the exercise of economic, political, and administrative authority to manage a country's affairs at all levels.
It includes mechanisms, processes, and institutions that allow citizens and groups to articulate their interests, exercise their legal rights, meet their obligations, and mediate their differences.
Good governance promotes equality, participation, pluralism, transparency, responsibility, and the rule of law, and assures that corruption is minimized, the views of minorities are taken into account, and the voices of the most vulnerable are heard in decision-making.

Fisheries governance is the sum of the legal, social, economic, and political arrangements used to manage fisheries, with international, national, and local dimensions.
It includes legally binding rules as well as customary social arrangements, and is an intricate web of public, private, and hybrid institutions interacting in a complex manner to administer and regulate the sector.
Weakness in fisheries governance is considered the main factor behind the problems of overfishing and stock decline.

Connecting the fishery policy framework within a supporting national policy framework.
The capability of fishery administrations.
Failure to distinguish between what is private and what is public, establishment of a predictable framework of laws, and prioritization consistent with development.
Non-transparent decision-making, lack of sufficient regulations, and excessive regulations that encourage "rent-seeking" behavior.

Government
Civil society, including:
- Rural stakeholders (local people, influential land lords, associations of peasant, farmers, cooperatives, NGOs, research institutes, religious leaders, finance institutions, political parties, the military, etc.)
- Urban stakeholders (organized crime syndicates, media, lobbyists, international donors, multi-national corporations, etc.)

Participation by both men and women
8 principles of good governance:
1. Participation
2. 2nd Order Governing (institutional arrangements)
3. 3rd Order (meta-governance) Governing (the 'center of the onion' that feeds, binds, and evaluates the entire governing exercise)

Co-management can be understood as a situation in which two or more social actors negotiate, define, and guarantee amongst themselves a fair sharing of the management functions, entitlements, and responsibilities for a given territory, area, or set of natural resources.
Two models to conceptualize co-management:
1. Horizontal continuum from nearly total self-management to nearly total state management.
2. Vertical contracting out model of state management powers, characterized by devolution of rights.

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