Conversations with the IFCA
Regionality
Fisheries management that operates at regional levels provides multiple benefits. These include the generation of in-depth knowledge and understanding that is relevant to the region’s inshore fishery and wider marine environment, facilitated by IFCAs through monitoring and environmental research programmes, regularly enhanced by working with commercial fishers and other organisations, including universities. IFCAs have high embeddedness in fishing communities; IFCA staff often live in coastal communities in which they operate and are widely known to fishers, regularly seen at the quayside and at sea, providing the foundation for long-term relationships to be established and maintained. Relationships between fishers and managers, which of course can oscillate in terms of quality depending upon context, personality, and the issue of the day, are the cornerstones of co-management. Regularly maintained relationships are fundamental to achieving engagement, two-way flows of information, and feedback on the state of the fishery and the workings of the management in place. enforcement officers at sea, further enables IFCA responsiveness to changes in the fishery, which are multiple, fast paced and unpredictable. IFCAs’ regionality therefore makes them well placed to deliver climate proofing of fisheries, strengthening resilience. This regionality also allows for, and embraces, difference and complexity; one size fits all approaches, as embodied in national level planning, are likely to be most effective when adapted to place and relevance in the regions. This is widely argued in the academic literature on co-management that advocates the subsidiarity principle, which IFCAs exemplify, that decisions should be taken at the lowest possible level or closest to where they will have their effect. The IFCA model also speaks to procedural justice where people have a basic right to have some involvement in fisheries management decisions that directly affect their lives. The closeness of feedback between fishers and managers, facilitated by extensive consultation processes and the engagement via the IFCA officers, including
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