Collective management and territorial use rights: The Chilean small-scale loco fishery case

Efforts to regulate over-fishing of coastal fisheries through centralized, top-down management schemes have often failed. As a result, regulators have paid increasing attention to a limited entry/access rights approach, under which exclusive use rights over specific geographic locations are granted to well-defined fishermen groups. Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs) are expected to create incentives for fishermen to protect fish stocks from others and exploit them sustainably. Chilean authorities introduced TURFs, locally named Management and Exploitation Areas for Benthic Resources (MEAs), to manage benthic shellfish resources in 1991. Creation of the MEA system is one of the first large-scale efforts to transform formerly open access resources into restricted access collectively managed resources and it also is an exercise in co-management, as fishermen groups and government authorities share responsibility for resource management.; Biological studies suggest that the creation of MEAs has been successful. My research confirms these findings, while also illuminating how MEAs behave economically. Though this research identifies a number of MEAs that have fish stocks that are declining, fish stocks in most MEAs increased significantly after MEAs were established, and are currently stable or still increasing. The internal management practices of fishermen groups continue to evolve in nearly all groups and there is a wide range of different self-enforced rule systems that have been adopted by different MEAs, but all aim to rationalize fishing effort and share fishing proceeds.; My research focuses on the small-scale loco fishery. Although most MEAs exploit several species, the loco is the most important economically and most MEAs include the loco as their main target species. The information obtained from government sources and fieldwork allowed the construction of a unique dataset. Among the main results, this research identifies the key factors that led to the generation of new stewardship incentives that replaced the race-to-fish incentives among Chilean small-scale fishermen, and assesses the impact of biological and economic determinants on the fishing organizations' loco harvesting decisions and on the prices that they receive. My analysis also derives useful lessons from the Chilean experience that can be applied to other developing countries and selected fisheries elsewhere.