Balance The national IFCA vision is to “lead, champion and manage a sustainable marine environment and inshore fisheries, by successfully securing the right balance between social, environmental and economic benefits to ensure healthy seas, sustainable fisheries and a viable industry”. IFCAs therefore are built on a concept of sustainability that focusses on balance between the needs of society, environment and economy. This is not always the case in other organisations or policies which prioritise one pillar of sustainability over others. The IFCA commitment to delivering balance, which was a central feature in many interviews, demonstrates it is a ‘living’ vision across all IFCAs and a lot can be learned from them about the realities of operationalising balance in practice. The IFCA model facilitates the management of the sea as a resource for all society (not just one group) and, via its sustainability remit, future generations too, democratically navigating competing claims over marine resources to find balance between diverse priorities and multiple agendas. It is this breath of engagement and knowledge within the IFCA, and decentralised power to make decisions at regional levels, that make IFCAs a clear model of co-management. Genuine co-management is only achieved when power is shared between users, not devolved to one particular group over another. From a practical perspective alone, if central government were to pursue a co-management model with just one stakeholder group at a time it would end up with a highly fragmented and unmanageable sets of parallel relationships, government and fishing industry, government and recreational anglers, government and conservation groups etc., all generating very different expectations regarding the management of marine resources, with central government being left to decide between the competing priorities. Of course, other consultative engagement efforts abound, where stakeholders are invited to comment, and sometimes co-design marine management options, but ultimately cannot influence decisions made. That power always resides within central government and is therefore not co-management, since government is not legally bound to act on any consultation findings. IFCAs are similarly not legally bound to act on consultation findings, but the accountability afforded by the multi-stakeholder public forum, and majority committee voting, by which decisions are made, means that evidence cannot easily be assumed away. Delivering co-management is not easy. IFCAs use (what will always be) imperfect evidence to navigate balanced management, as dictated by the 2009 Act, that can incorporate different needs of stakeholders whilst ensuring sustainability across social, economic and environmental criteria. IFCA members can vote to accept or reject recommendations from officers, often employing experience-based skills of ‘disagreeing agreeably’ in order to progress action. This means IFCAs usually make decisions that are not universally popular but are bounded by the legal duties of the authority; as one IFCA officer put it ‘if no one is livid but no one is happy, we’ve probably got our management about right’. This reality, that all IFCAs face, is important to consider in any external evaluations that are perceptions-based.
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