Institutional resilience in marine resource governance

Powell, John R ORCID: 0000-0001-8464-4521 (2013) Institutional resilience in marine resource governance. In: Commoners and the Changing Commons: Livelihoods, Environmental Security and Shared Knowledge, 3 - 7 June 2013, Kitafuji, Japan. (Unpublished)

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Abstract

The marine environment is a complex area for commons management requiring multi-level governance to ensure that large numbers of (often conflicting) users can sustain their resource use, and the quality of ecosystems, over the long term. Multi-level governance, however, brings its own problems in term of institutional conflict and inertia, which prove problematic for dynamic ecological, political and socio-economic systems. Although Ostrom (2007) has demonstrated the importance of the need for local input into ‘evolutionary’ rule making, governance of marine resources has increasingly moved away from local communities of resource users to regional, national, and even international institutions. Inshore and deep-sea fisheries around the UK, for example, are under threat from highly centralised policies that manage and control fishing, marine conservation, seabed mineral extraction, and energy generation. Despite the overlapping and complex institutional arrangements to manage fisheries regional management approaches (such as the North Sea Cod Recovery Plan) are not achieving their stated goals; stocks of many species remain low, and numbers of fishermen are declining with negative impacts on local communities and associated supporting service industries. Recent and potential legislative change at UK and EU level suggests there are opportunities for exploring community-based institutional arrangements that may enhance the resilience of a range of institutional structures governing fisheries and a wider range of marine resources. Resilience in a complex marine environment requires capacity for adaptation within the interaction between ecological and socio-economic systems, to enable continued ecological functioning, value creation in the face of change, and effective management. The paper explores the effectiveness of multi-layered governance on marine resource management. In particular, it examines the institutional arrangements influencing the interplay between ecological, political, and socio-economic systems in relation to the marine environment, and their capacity for adaption and resilience.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Additional Information:	14th Global Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	institutional change, commons, adaptation, resilience, inshore fisheries, upland commons
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General)
Divisions:	Schools and Research Institutes > Countryside and Community Research Institute
Research Priority Areas:	Place, Environment and Community
Depositing User:	John Powell
Date Deposited:	05 May 2015 09:30
Last Modified:	03 Feb 2022 18:45
URI:	https://eprints.glos.ac.uk/id/eprint/2159

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