INTRODUCTION
The current consensus of fisheries professionals’ is that the fisheries industry
and aquatic resources are under of various threats and risks because of overfishing
and the destruction of aquatic habitat. However, other professionals believe
that in addition to resources crisis, the fishing industry has faced a management
crisis, which has resulted in organizational and institutional problems. In
most developing countries fisheries resources are managed through the means
of state management. This top-down, centralized approach to fisheries management,
which emphasized the role of government in fisheries management, failed to protect
fish stocks from over-exploitation (Hollup, 2000). In
addition, this centralized approach has led to a lack of legitimacy (Nielsen
and Vedsmand, 1997). Failures of top-down approaches to fisheries management
have come under scrutiny and the concept of co-management has gained increasing
purchase (Beem, 2007).
There has been a growing recognition that user-groups have to become more actively
involved in fisheries management. Indeed, one of the most important differences
in the area of agriculture in general and fisheries in particular, is that the
users (i.e., the fishers) play vastly different roles. Consequently, in fisheries
management, one cannot ignore the role of the fishermen or the users themselves
play (Ghasemi, 1998). According to World
Bank (2006), co-management refers to an arrangement through which government
and resource users share the responsibility for managing fisheries. Co-management
can be defined as a dynamic partnership using the capacity and interest of user-groups
complemented by the ability of the fisheries administration to provide enabling
legislation (Nielsen and Vedsmand, 1997). In addition,
Hollup (2000) believed that this approach emphasizes
that recourse have to be involved in the management process and participate
in regulatory decision-making, implementation and enforcement. This approach
has grate advantages, too. Its advantage is that the fishers can influence the
decisions made, while governments can ensure that long-term management objectives
are met. Participation in decision-making gains the support of the fishers,
confers legitimacy on the regulations and fosters compliance, which may also
reduce the costs of monitoring and surveillance (Schumann,
2007; Kuperan et al., 2008; World
Bank, 2006; Hollup, 2000). However, co-management
is a means of building trust and empowering stakeholders to participate in the
shared governance of fisheries (Beem, 2007; Jentoft,
2005; World Bank, 2006). Pomeroy
et al. (2001) examined the conditions affecting the success of fisheries
co-management in Asia. These conditions are reported in the three following
levels:
| • |
The supra community level |
| • |
Community level and |
| • |
Individual and household level |
In following, they noted that none of the conditions exist in isolation,
but each supports and links to another to make the complex process and
arrangements for co-management work. All of the parties (resource users,
stakeholders, external agents and government) have different but mutually
supportive roles to play in co-management.
The primary purpose of the present study was to identify the factors affecting
the success of fisheries co-management as perceived by Guilan’s fishermen, Iran.
The specific objectives of this study were to: (1) describe the demographic
profile of Guilan Province fishermen and (2) identify effective factors to attract
fishermen participation in fisheries co–management.
MATERIALS AND METHODS
The study was conducted in the Province of Guilan, located in the north
part of Iran and southern part of Caspian Sea (Fig. 1).
Coastal fishermen in Guilan Province, Iran were the target population
for this study. The 136 of fishers were selected from fisheries cooperatives
through multistage cluster sampling. The research design for this study
was a survey design. From a review of the literature, the researchers
developed an instrument to collect data.
The survey was divided into two sections. The first section was designed
to gather data on personal characteristics of fishermen, included age,
years of experience, level of education, place of living, marital status,
second job, religious and race. The second section was designed to gather
data about fishermen perceptions with respect to the factors that would
promote the fisheries co–management process. Respondents were asked
to rate their viewpoints concerning these factors on a five point Likert-type
scale: (5 = very much, 4 = much, 3 = moderate, 2 = low and 1 = very low).
A panel of experts consisting of faculty members established content and
face validity. Questionnaire reliability was estimated by calculating
Cronbach’s alpha. Reliability for the instrument was estimated at 0.77.
The data were collected between October 2005 and March, 2006. After gathering
and encoding information from the questionnaires, data was obtained for
analysis. Data collected were analyzed using the Statistical Package for
the Social Sciences (SPSS, 14). Beside descriptive statistics, factor
analysis was employed for detailed analysis.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
The first objective was to describe the demographic profile of Guilan
Province fishermen. The ages of the respondents ranged from 15 to 73.
14.7% of fishermen (n = 20) described themselves as illiterate. 33.1%
of respondents (n = 45) had some elementary education. Approximately 26%
of fishermen had middle school education and 22.8% of them had high school
education and 3.7% (n = 5) had academic education. More than 52.2% of
respondents had less than 13 years of experience; however, 26.5% of respondents
had more than 24 years of experience. 45.6% of the sample (n = 62) lived
in urban areas. The remaining 54.4% lived in rural areas. Approximately
73% of respondents were married. Thirty Two percent of respondents had
managerial tasks and the remaining (n = 104) were fishermen. In seasons
out of fishing (six months of year), nearly 40% of fishermen were unemployed,
but 60% of fishermen had a second job such as fisheries industry, farming
etc. In addition, the religions of 83% of the sample (n = 113) were Shiite
and the remaining were Sunnite. 45.6% (n = 62) of fishermen were Gilak,
17.8% (n = 24) were Talesh and 36.8% were Azary (Table 1).
| Table 1: |
Demographic characteristics of respondents |
|
The second objective was to identify the effective factors to attract fishermen
participation in fisheries co-management. Exploratory Principal Component Analysis
(PCA) was conducted to summarize the variables of the research to a smaller
quantity and to determine the factors affecting the success fisheries co-management
and the obtained factors were subjected to VARIMAX rotation. PCA is a form of
factor analysis, which first looks for a linear combination of variables that
extracts maximum variance from variables and then identifies a second linear
combination to explain the remaining variance, leading to orthogonal, or uncorrelated,
factors (Rehman et al., 2007). The value of the
Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin Measure of Sampling Adequacy (KMO) was 0.73. Nelson
and Thompson (2005) reported that KMO values of 0.6 and above are required
for good factor analysis. Using the eigenvalue greater than one rule, the PCA
suggested the presence of nine factors, which accounted for 67.0% variance in
scores. The nine factors extracted and named in this study follow: (1) Common
goal, (2) Sustainable fishing, (3) Lack of bureaucracy, (4) Homogeneity, (5)
Local dependency, (6) Participation in problem solving, (7) Legitimacy, (8)
Professional fishery and (9) Economic (Table 2).
The first factor was called the Common goal factor. This factor had the most
eigenvalue (2.63) among the other factors. Also this factor explained 9.7% of
the total variances of the variables. The clarity and simplicity of objectives
helps steer the direction of co-management. The co-management process may involve
multiple objectives and multiple implementation strategies (Pomeroy
et al., 2001). Access to insurance was the most important objective
(M = 4.66) for fishers to participate in co-management process. Access to credits
and loan and to extension-education courses were the other objectives that encouraged
fishermen to involve in fisheries co-management process.
The second factor was called the Sustainable fishing. This factor that
its eigenvalue was 2.48 explained 9.2% of the total variances of the variables.
Sustainable fishing is a collective-action based process and participation
is a pivotal element for the achievement of it. A necessary condition
for sustainable fishing is that large numbers of fishermen must be motivated
to use coordinated resource management. Achievement of this condition
leads to promote fisheries co-management. Encouraging fishermen to use
of engines with authorized capacity and standard fishing nets, observance
of fishing bound, fishing time and season and propagation and releasing
of under-sized (juvenile) by fishermen lead to sustainable fishing and
accomplishment it, in turn, lead to enhance of fisheries co-management.
The third factor was called the Lack of bureaucracy. This factor that
its eigenvalue was 2.33 explained 8.6% of the total variances of the variables.
The lack of bureaucracy facilitate a vertical exchange of information
in cooperatives, be enabling fishers to access higher levels of management.
ANOVA tests were used to determine if significant differences existed
between factor scores of the effective factors to success fisheries co-management
when grouped by selected attributes of respondents. Fishermen’s view regarding
the affective factors to success fisheries co-management differed significantly
by fishermen’s age for the factors Common goal (F = 2.65; p≤0.05),
Lack of bureaucracy (F = 3.77; p≤0.01), Local dependency (F = 2.78;
p≤0.05) and legitimacy (F = 2.74; p≤0.05). The findings indicated
that the factor scores of the effective factors to promote fisheries co-management
differed significantly when examined by their level of education for the
factors Lack of bureaucracy (F = 3.13; p≤0.05), Local dependency (F
= 2.93; p≤0.05) and Economic (F = 2.82, p≤0.05). In addition, there
were not found any significant differences on factor scores when examine
by respondents’ race (Table 3). Both two factors Lack
of bureaucracy and Local dependency were affected by respondents’ age,
level of education and years of experience.
| Table 2: |
Results of factor analysis for effective factors to
success fisheries co-management process and the variables of each
factor |
|
| Table 3: |
F-test results to compare individual effective factors
on the success of co-management by fishers’ demographic characteristics |
|
*p≤0.05, **p≤0.01 |
CONCLUSION
The fishing industry is in a process change. This change is indicated by modification
in fisheries management decision-making processes in order to deal with the
present lack of legitimacy in management system. Co-management is seen as a
tool to handle changes in the fishing industry (Nielsen and
Vedsmand, 1997). This study was intended to draw the factors affecting the
success of fisheries co-management as perceived by Guilan’s fishers, Iran. An
important finding of the study was that several factors dealing with the success
of fisheries co-management process. Factors were extracted from PCA including
the first factor were called Common goal and explained 9.7% of the total variance
and were considered as the most effective factor. It is recommended that fisheries
cooperative managers be considered to clarify objectives of community-based
fishing. Based on the findings of the present study access to different types
of insurance and social security was the most important objective and motivator
factor to attract fishermen’s participation in the fisheries co-management process.
In addition, access to credits and loans and to extension-education courses
were the other most important factors in this area. The results also indicated
that Sustainable fishing and Lack of bureaucracy was the second and third factors
to promote fisheries co-management process, respectively. Sustainable fishing
ensure the fishermen’s livelihood and career, therefore participation in Sustainable
fishing practices can be considered as a motivator toward co-management process.
Finally, the Lack of bureaucracy facilitate a vertical exchange of information
in cooperatives, be enabling fishers to access higher levels of management and
contribution in decision-making process.
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