Invited Speaker

Abstract: The success of fisheries management regimes is often attributed to the design and implementation of regulatory tools. While sound design and effective implementation are crucial elements of any successful regulatory action, the social, cultural, and political institutions of those communities targeted by environmental governance also play an important role. Regulatory regimes can only succeed when those governed by them at the very least comply, and ideally cooperate. Through an engaging, ethnographic approach, this book investigates how institutions, at various levels of scale and formality, work to determine the degree of compliance and/or cooperation that fisheries stakeholders offer. That is, to what extent do differences in informal social, cultural, and political institutions affect inshore fishing community cooperation with centralized, quota-based national fisheries regimes?

Using data collected through in-depth interviews with a cross-section of fisheries stakeholders in several studies, the research suggests three major findings. First, sociocultural institutions play a much larger causal role in determining community cooperation with fisheries policies than natural resource management scholars and policymakers recognize. Second, levels of cooperation impact both the latitude that fisheries managers enjoy and the effectiveness of their policies. Third, the amount of trust afforded to fisheries managers (and the perceived legitimacy of their policies) by fishing communities is influenced by sociocultural institutions, but trust and perceptions of legitimacy can also be increased or eroded by policy choices made by fisheries managers.

Biography: Dr. Andrew Tirrell is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Political Science and International Relations at the University of San Diego, USA. He teaches a range of courses related to environmental politics, human rights, and sustainable development. His research focuses on marine policy, natural resource management, environmental justice, and the Arctic. Active projects include research into fisheries management policy, environmental justice at the Mexico-U.S. border, and environmental peacebuilding. Professor Tirrell previously taught environmental policy, human rights, and natural resource management in undergraduate and graduate courses at Boston College, Tufts University, and Harvard University.