A Global Social-Ecological Systems Monitoring Framework .
A Global Social-EcologicalSystems Monitoring Frameworkfor Coastal Fisheries ManagementA Practical Monitoring Handbook
Published by:Wildlife Conservation Society2300 Southern BlvdBronx, NY 10460 USATel: 1 718 220 5193www.wcs.orgAuthors: Georgina G. Gurney1 and Emily S. Darling2Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies2Marine Program, Wildlife Conservation Society, Bronx NY, USA and University ofToronto, Toronto ON, Canada1Cover photo: A fisher works the surf in coastal Mozambique.Photo: Emily Darling / WCS.Suggested citation: Gurney, G.G. and E.S. Darling. 2017. A Global Social-EcologicalSystems Monitoring Framework for Coastal Fisheries Management: A PracticalMonitoring Handbook. Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, 63 pp.ISBN-10: 0-9820263-3-1ISBN-13: 978-0-9820263-3-5 2017 Wildlife Conservation Society.All rights reserved. This publication may not be reproduced in whole or in part and inany form without the permission of the copyright holders. To obtain permission, contactthe Wildlife Conservation Society, marineprogram@wcs.org.AcknowledgementsWe are grateful to Stacy Jupiter, Tim McClanahan and Caleb McClennen for developingthe original concept for a global monitoring framework to inform the managementof coastal fisheries. We thank WCS Marine programs in Kenya, Madagascar, Fiji,Indonesia and Belize for their invaluable input into this work, particularly in regards toidentifying information needs, developing and refining indicators, and assessing theappropriateness of indicators: thank you Carol Abunge, Stuart Campbell, StéphanieD’agata, Kim Fisher, Margaret Fox, Yudi Herdiana, Kate Holmes, Catherine Jadot, StacyJupiter, Tasrif Kartawijaya, Peni Lestari, Sangeeta Mangubhai, Elizabeth Matthews,Tim McClanahan, Efin Muttaqin, Nyawira Muthiga, Waisea Naisilisili, Prayekti Ningtias,Shinta Pardede, Volarina Ramahery, Bemahafaly Randriamanantsoa, FakhrizalSetiawan, Sukmaraharja Tarigan, Alek Tewfik, Tantely Tianarisoa and Irfan Yulianto. Wethank Josh Cinner for his continuing collaboration, and his leadership on socio-economicinitiatives within many WCS Marine programs. We are also grateful to many experts,partners and stakeholders throughout the Western Indian Ocean, Melanesia, Indonesiaand Caribbean, including but not limited to: Gabby Ahmadia, Jessica Blythe, Pip Cohen,Graham Epstein, Chris Filardi, Helen Fox, Louise Glew, Chris Golden, Nick Graham,Christina Hicks, Ando Raberisoa, Mike Mascia, Joe McCarter, Eleanor Sterling, DiogoVerrissimo, David Wilkie, and all participants who attended workshops in the SolomonIslands, Madagascar, Indonesia, the USA and Scotland. Funding for this work wasgenerously provided by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation (Grant no.13-105118-000-INP).
ContentsBackground. 4Social-ecological systems. 5Global coastal fisheries monitoring framework. 6Social-ecological system indicators. 8Description of indicators.13Actors.13Governance system.22Resource system.31Resource units.32Interactions.33Outcomes.34Social, economic and political settings .37Related ecosystems.38Underpinning social science theory and composite social indicators.39Evaluating impact .42References.43Appendix 1: Underwater structural complexity .46Appendix 2: Global household survey .47Appendix 3: Global key informant survey .56 3
BackgroundWhat are the social, economic and ecological impacts of natural resource management?How can natural resources be managed sustainably into the future?What are the contextual conditions that facilitate positive or negative impacts ofresource management?These are critical questions for natural resourcemanagement, but to date, the evidence for addressingthese questions across many forms of management,including protected areas, is weak (Miteva et al. 2012).This is particularly true in regards to the social impactsof natural resource management (Bottrill et al. 2014,Pullin et al. 2013). Despite the immense amount ofresources allocated by the conservation practitioners toecological and social monitoring, often the right thingsare not being monitored in the right way to robustlyassess the impact1 of conservation and managementinvestments.To assess the impacts of coastal conservation andmanagement activities around the world, the WildlifeConservation Society (WCS) has developed a globalmonitoring framework to identify and monitor a keyset of social and ecological indicators. These indicatorswere defined to track progress towards two strategicgoals over the next 10 years:1. What are the social and ecological impacts ofconservation and management actions?2. What social, ecological and governance contextscreate successful outcomes?1This manual is organised as follows: (1) we introducethe social-ecological systems framework (Ostrom2007, 2009) that we use or organize our indicators;(2) we describe each of the social and ecologicalindicators in detail, including what they represent andhow they are operationalized; (3) we provide furtherdetail on the social science theory underpinning someof our indicators and how the indicators can be usedto form composite indexes; and (4) we provide someinformation on impact evaluation in the context ofglobal monitoring.Here, we define impact as the difference that a treatment (e.g. conservation intervention) makes relative to a control or counterfactual scenario (i.e.without a conservation intervention).Local stakeholders monitor coral reefs in Indonesia.Photo: Emily Darling / WCS.4The overall goal is to monitor, evaluate and learnfrom successful conservation and managementinterventions, and to assess the social and ecologicalimpacts of on-the-ground investments and develop a‘typology’ of locally-defined successful interventions.As a first step to achieving this, we have worked withconservation programs and partners in the WesternIndian Ocean, Melanesia, Indonesia and the Caribbeanand leading academic researchers to develop a keyset of social and ecological monitoring indicators. Todo this, we have drawn on Elinor Ostrom’s socialecological systems framework (Ostrom 2007, 2009) tostructure and guide our choice of indicators.Background
Social-ecological systemsSocial-ecological systems are complex and adaptivesystems defined by feedbacks and interactionsbetween nature and people. Here, we adopt NobelPrize Winner Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecologicalsystems framework that that depicts the essentialelements of social-ecological systems and wasdesigned for analyzing outcomes in social-ecologicalsystems (Figure 1; Ostrom 2007, 2009). Commons(i.e. ‘common-pool resources’) are a type of resourcecharacterised by non-excludability and subtractability.Coastal fisheries are often defined as ‘common-pool’resources because, (1) it is difficult to place spatialboundaries on fisheries and therefore costly to excludeother fishers (i.e. non-excludability); and (2) when onefisher extracts fish from the system there are less fishfor other fishers to catch (i.e. subtractibility).Ostrom’s multi-tier social-ecological systemsframework depicts elements operating at multiplescales that are thought to influence outcomes insituations involving common-pool resources (Ostrom2007, 2009). It describes four core subsystems: actors(e.g., fishers or resource users), governance (e.g.,decision-making process and formal and informalrules of resource use), resource system (e.g., coralreef ecosystem) and resource units (e.g., fish andinvertebrate catches). Environmental governancecan be defined as the ‘set of regulatory processes,mechanisms, and organisations through whichpolitical actors influence environmental actions andoutcomes’ (Lemos and Agrawal 2006). Importantly,‘governance’ is not the same as ‘government’, andencompasses actors such as NGOs (e.g. national andinternational NGOs), communities and communitygroups, and businesses, in addition to governmentorganisations. Elements of the four core subsystemsaffect interactions within the social-ecological system,which can ultimately lead to outcomes. Each of thesubsystems is composed of second-tier variablesthat may be drawn upon to assess specific socialecological characteristics, outcomes, and behaviours.Second-tier variables for the actor subsystem, forexample, include social attributes of actors andnorms/social capital. The social-ecological systemis embedded in the broader social, economic andpolitical setting and may also affect and be affectedby related ecosystems. Ultimately, engaging key socialconcepts is critical for sustainability (Hicks et al. 2016)Figure 1. Elinor Ostrom’s original social-ecological systems framework conceptualized using four core subsystems.Image from Ostrom (2009).Social-ecological systems5
Global coastal fisheries monitoring frameworkHere, we adapt and operationalize Ostrom’s socialecological systems framework to structure and guideour choice of indicators for a global coastal fisheriesmonitoring program, with a specific focus on smallscale coastal fisheries. Specifically, we populatedeach of the first-tier variables (including each of thefour subsystems, interactions, outcomes, relatedecosystems and social, economic and political setting)with indicators that we organized under the secondtier variables specified in the framework. Our approachto developing the set of indicators was to use theminimum number of indicators to adequately capturethe key elements of the social-ecological system thatare relevant in the context of assessing the impactof conservation and management interventions,and also feasible to operationalize and monitor overthe long term. Standardising the indicators usedacross geographies will provide a global portfolioof comparable datasets, and is an important step inenabling resource managers and decision makers toassess the impact of their coral reef conservation andmanagement interventions. At the same time, ourapproach allows for customization and flexibility ofadditional indicators that can be added to suit localcontexts. Essential habitat Reef Þsh biomass Fishable biomass Invertebrate densityIn total, we describe 10 core indicators (Table 1)supported by a broader suite of social and ecologicalindicators (Table 2) to conceptualize a socialecological systems framework.Figure 2. The four subsystems of social-ecologicalsystems conceptualized for coastal small-scalefisheries. Within each subsystem, the 10 coreindicators are identified (see Tables 1, 2).Social,ecological,economic, andpoliticalGovernancecontext Management rules Political efÞcacy Fairness of decision makingResource SystemResource UnitsThe social indicators were developed to facilitateassessment of the impact of conservation andmanagement interventions, as well the describevarious mechanisms and theories of change throughwhich impacts occur and the conditions under whichimpacts are likely to be positive. Therefore, the set ofindicators represent elements of the social systemthat are likely to be affected by interventions (e.g.participation in resource decision-making), andthose that will not be affected (e.g. gender, ethnicity)but which are important moderators of impact. Amoderator is a variable that is unaffected by theintervention and whose value affects the magnitudeof an impact (Ferraro and Hanauer 2013)Interactions Catch per unit effort (CPUE) Perceived conßict overresource use, managementOutcomes Perceived impacts of management onpersonal and community wellbeing Perceived fairness of management Material wealth (assets) Subjective wellbeing6Global coastal fisheries monitoring frameworkActors Knowledge of humanagency Fisheries livelihoods Number of livelihoods
The social indicators can be implemented in ahousehold survey and key informant survey,which are provided at the end of this manual. It isimportant to note that the household survey couldalso be conducted with individuals to understandindividual-level variation by gender, age, ethnicity, etc.Household-scale surveys are typically employed insocial monitoring, and involve surveying the head ofthe household. However, this approach does not allowexamination of intra-household inequalities, and alsohinders examination of gender inequalities.A small-scale fisher returns with his catch in NosyBe, Madagascar. Photo: Emily Darling / WCS.To facilitate adoption of the social and ecologicalindicators by local managers and subsequentcomparison of data across a global portfolio of coastalfisheries interventions, we attempted to adequatelycapture the key elements of the social-ecologicalsystem that are relevant in the context of assessingthe impact of conservation and managementinterventions with the minimum number of indicators.To further facilitate comparison across geographies,many of the social indicators are operationalizedwith closed-ended questions (i.e. questions wherethe answer is limited to a set number of categories).Nevertheless, there are numerous questions in thesurvey that produce qualitative data, which willprovide insights into elements of the social-ecologicalsystems that are not amenable to quantification andwill be critical to interpreting the quantitative data.This framework is intended to be supplementedwith intervention- and context-specific qualitativeand quantitative data, including indicators basedon local priorities (e.g., through a participatorydevelopment of indicators, see Woodhouse et al.2015) or through a biocultural lens (see McCarter etal. in preparation). Further, the social indicators thatcould be derived from the data obtained with bothtypes of surveys are not limited to the indicatorsdetailed in the following section. Note that many ofthe social indicators described below were developedoriginally by Joshua Cinner (Australian ResearchCouncil Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies,James Cook University) and have been successfullyused by resource managers and decision makersfield programs for many years; we strived to includeas many of these previously-employed indicators toensure comparable data through time.Ultimately, this framework is intended to be practicaland sustainable. Surveys can be repeated every threeyears, and supported by capacity building and costeffective transitions from external expert monitoring toscience practitioners and community monitoring (e.g.,Fox et al. in press).Global coastal fisheries monitoring framework7
Social-ecological system indicatorsTable 1.Social-ecological systems monitoring for coastal fisheries: 10 core indicators.ConstructIndicatorDescriptionResource System1 Productivity of Hard coral coverthe systemEssential habitat unlies the productivity of all coastal ecosystems.Using coral reefs as an example, the amount of living coral cover isthe foundation of tropical reef ecosystems, and provides essentialhabitat and structural complexity for reef-associated organisms. Otherindicators for mangroves and seagrass habitats can also be applied.Reef fish biomassFish biomass is a primary driver of coastal ecosystem services. Forcoral reefs, total reef fish biomass is used to evaluate reef status andset management targets ( 500–1000 kg/ha) for sustainable coral reeffisheries (McClanahan et al. 2011, MacNeil et al. 2015, Graham et al.2017). Biomass is also an indicator of fisheries exploitation and marketdrivers (Maire et al. 2016, Cinner et al. 2016).Biomass of targetreef fishFishable biomass represents the actual resource that users can extractfrom the broader resource system. This can be described as key fisherytargets (e.g., groupers, snappers), or invertebrates (e.g., sea cucumbers,trochus shells, lobster).Resource Units2 Number ofresource unitsDensity of targetinvertebratesActors3 Knowledgeof socialecologicalsystemKnowledge of human Human agency assesses whether respondents recognize that humansagencyare causal agents of change in marine systems (Cinner et al. 2012).Theory suggests that when actors share common knowledge ofsocial-ecological systems, including how human actions affect thesocial-ecological system, they be more likely to engage in successfulmanagement outcomes (Ostrom 2009). There is reasonable consensusthat it is desirable to increase human agency to reduce inequality,injustice and the imbalance of power (Hicks et al. 2016).4 Importance ofresourceFisheriesdependenceWhen people are highly dependent on marine resources fortheir livelihoods, they are more likely to attach a high value to thesustainability of the resource and engage in management of a commonresource (Ostrom 2009). For example, high resource dependence isassociated with 'bright spots' of fish biomass (Cinner et al. 2016).Number oflivelihoodsThe number of alternative livelihoods is an indicator of the pressureon natural resources, and the portfolio of household activities that canprovide income and food security.Governance System5 OperationalrulesRule descriptionOperational rules are those that directly guide behaviour concerninga resource (Ostrom 1990, Thomson and Freudenberger 1997).Operational rules define: (1) who can access the resource; (2) howmuch individuals can harvest, when and where they may exploit theresource, and what tools they are permitted to use; and (3) who has tocontribute money, labour, or materials to protect and maintain resourcesin the community.6 Collectivechoice rulesPolitical efficacyCollective choice rules specify who can make, modify or revoke rulesabout managing common resources. Theory suggests that if resourceusers are involved in making and modifying rules it is more likely therules will be considered legitimate and fair.Fairness of decisionmaking8Social-ecological system indicators
ConstructIndicatorDescription7 HarvestingCatch per unit effort(CPUE)The amount of resource extraction is critical to understanding socialecological system dynamics (Ostrom 2009). Locations with differentCPUEs will likely indicate different fisheries pressure and managementoutcomes. For example, fisheries that depend on low CPUE maysuggest high effort and concerns of unsustainable exploitation. Areaswith high CPUE may suggest more
Social-ecological systems are complex and adaptive systems defined by feedbacks and interactions between nature and people. Here, we adopt Nobel Prize Winner Elinor Ostrom’s social-ecological systems framework that that depicts the essential elements of social-ecological systems and was designed for analyzing outcomes in social-ecological
4.3.1 Age and the Ecological Footprint 53 4.3.2 Gender and the Ecological Footprint 53 4.3.3 Travelling Unit and the Ecological Footprint 54 4.3.4 Country of Origin and Ecological Footprint 54 4.3.5 Occupation, Education, Income and the EF 55 4.3.6 Length of Stay and Ecological Footprint 55 4.4 Themes of Ecological Resource Use 56
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