Science and Technology Production

D4.4: Community based sustainable management and governance models in marine and coastal areas

Technical Report

Authorship:

London, Silvia ; ROJAS, MARA LETICIA ; Zilio, Mariana ; Perillo, Gerardo ; Piccolo, Cintia ; Scordo, Facundo ; Huamantinco Cisneros, Andrea ; Bustos, Ma. Luján ; Ferrelli, Federico ; Pascale, Juan Carlos ; Vitale, Valeria ; Berninsone, Leonardo ; Bordino, Pablo

Summary *

The aim of the Deliverable 4.4 is to provide tools to build a community-based governance model for coastal and marine systems. Based on the Argentina case study of COMET-LA project, we analyze the relation between the governance system and the sustainable management of artisanal fishery and tourism. Several conflicts arise due to industry concentration, government legislation and intervention, and port activities, which contrast with artisanal activities and production. The exploitation patterns, the anthropic impacts and the climate change increase the tension on system, leading to one of the major environmental challenges: the construction of a governance system for sustainability. The main purpose of the Argentinean group during the COMET-LA three years research period was to propose community-based sustainable management and governance models in marine and coastal systems by analyzing its application in the Argentina case study, and upscaling the results to higher geographical levels. A first step was the characterization of the social-ecological system adopting the Ostrom?s framework. Participative methodological approaches have been used to capture the key characteristics of these social-ecological systems in the area of study and the impact of climate change. The results of the analysis of the information gathered from previous studies of the Argentine team, but mostly from the input provided by stakeholders and decision makers clearly show that Argentine case differs from the Colombia and Mexico cases from the governance system. Second step of the analysis was the structural prospective study (PSA). Note that the methodology allowed building meeting-spaces to discuss the common use and management of resources. From PSA workshops the consensus about the needed of a common management plan in coastal and marine system was strengthened in order to ensure the sustainability of the system. Last step of the analysis was scenarios analysis. This was a defiant methodology, in particular at the Argentine case, because our society has a cultural focus on present problems and challenges; the conjuncture prevails over the future. Nevertheless, the outcome of the activity was constructive and promising, in particular because the SHs noticed the importance of their participation in all the actions aimed to construct their ?future?. They recognized the relevance of their own participation in the creation process of rules and laws, also understanding that they could be involved in several activities for controlling resource management. More, due to the big extension of the area under study, different coastal environments are involved and then the interaction between the different localities is made more difficult. This situation implies a huge diversity of environmental and socioeconomic problems in the area. In many cases, the boundaries between them are confused and even overlapped, generating future conflicts. In this sense, spatial heterogeneity makes more difficult the communitarian action. Information provided by the agent in SIGEVA