Hawaii FEP - Western Pacific Fishery Council

issues. One alternative would be to centralize virtually all domestic marine managementauthority within one agency; however, this would fail to utilize the local expertise andexperience contained in existing agencies and offices, and would likely lead to poor decisionmaking and increased social and political conflict.2.10 Community-based ManagementCommunities are created when people live or work together long enough to generate localsocieties. Community members associate to meet common needs and express common interests,and relationships built over many generations lead to common cultural values andunderstandings through which people relate to each other and to their environment. At this point,collective action may be taken to protect local resources if they appear threatened, scarce, orsubject to overexploitation. This is one example of community-based resource management.As ecosystem principles shift the focus of fishery management from species to places, increasedparticipation from the primary stakeholders (i.e., community members) can enhance marinemanagement by (a) incorporating local knowledge regarding specific locations and ecosystemconditions; (b) encouraging the participation of stakeholders in the management process, whichhas been shown to lead to improved data collection and compliance; and (c) improvingrelationships between communities and often centralized government agencies (Dyer andMcGoodwin 1994).Top-down management tends to center on policy positions that polarize different interest groupsand prevent consensus (Yaffee 1999). In contrast, “place”—a distinct locality imbued withmeaning—has value and identity for all partners and can serve to organize collaborativepartnerships. Despite often diverse backgrounds and frequently opposing perspectives, partnersare inspired to take collective on-the-ground actions organized around their connections andaffiliations with a particular place (Cheng et al. 2003).In August 2004, President Bush issued Executive Order 13352 to promote partnerships betweenfederal agencies and states, local governments, tribes, and individuals that will facilitatecooperative conservation and appropriate inclusion of local participation in federal decisionmaking regarding the Nation’s natural resources. Similarly, the U.S. Ocean Action Plan (2004)found that “local involvement by those closest to the resource and their communities is critical toensuring successful, effective, and long-lasting conservation results.”Successful resource management will need to incorporate the perspectives of both local andnational stakeholder groups in a transparent process that explicitly addresses issues of values,fairness, and identity (Hampshire et al. 2004). Given their long histories of sustainable use ofmarine resources, indigenous residents of the Western Pacific Region have not universallyembraced increasingly prohibitive management necessitated by the modern influx of foreigncolonizers and immigrants. In addition, some recent campaigns by non-governmentalorganizations representing often far-off groups vigorously opposed to virtually all use of marineresources have increased what many see as the separation of local residents from the naturalenvironment that surrounds them. As humans are increasingly removed and alienated from thenatural environment, feelings of local ownership and stewardship are likely to decline, and32