Scales of human values, trade-offs, and justice in coastal fisheries

Justice, fairness, and economic trade-offs are related concepts that are critical for considering and developing effective management in fisheries. Critical to how these divisions are evaluated is the social scale of value... [ view full abstract ]

Justice, fairness, and economic trade-offs are related concepts that are critical for considering and developing effective management in fisheries. Critical to how these divisions are evaluated is the social scale of value from the individual, family, community, to nation and the degree to which nature is valued for its intrinsic rights or value to people. Efforts to manage or conserve resources without understanding implicit assumptions and perceptions among stakeholders is expected to encounter compliance and sustainability problems that are often difficult to predict. The emerging polarization and trade-offs arise from implicit assumptions that are seldom explicitly stated in selective stakeholder forums and therefore difficult to plan around and resolve. Consequently, polarization of political identities is frequently at the core of management and conservation conflicts. Conservationist must therefore engage in research and dialogues on perceptions of fairness if they are to achieve their proposed goals. I discuss some of the major division in the political cognitive rifts that emerge in fisheries from fishers, leader, managers, and researchers in different social contexts. I show that the psychologies of these stakeholder positions are different enough that generic conservation proposals are unlikely to succeed outside homogenous or routine trade off social contexts. Developing diverse membership forums at the planning stage is a potential solution but are socially uncomfortable because of the underlying conflicts. Yet, agreed-on actions are expected to have high adoption and compliance rates and therefore a critical to management success.