What does comanagement offer? Exploring users' knowledge through mental models in the fishery of La Encrucijada Biosphere Reserve, Mexico

In the context of collaborative resource management, mental models can provide insights on participants' understanding of the resource management system and in so doing allow researchers and practitioners to derive lessons about the success or failure of comanagement approaches. We analyzed ind...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Ecology and society 2021-03, Vol.26 (1), p.1, Article art25
Main Authors: d'Armengol, Laia, Ruiz-Mallén, Isabel, Barnaud, Cecile, Corbera, Esteve
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Biosphere
Cognitive ability
Collaboration
collaborative management
Ecology, environment
Empowerment
Failure analysis
Fisheries
Fishery resources
Life Sciences
Model testing
Natural resources
Paternalism
protected area
Resource management
shared decision making
Small-scale fisheries
small-scale fishery
Social goals
Success
Citations: Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:In the context of collaborative resource management, mental models can provide insights on participants' understanding of the resource management system and in so doing allow researchers and practitioners to derive lessons about the success or failure of comanagement approaches. We analyzed individual and group mental models in the comanaged small-scale fishery of La Encrucijada, Mexico, active since 2009. Mental models reveal a strong consensus around the idea that the comanagement initiative is a government-led partnership to subsidize fishers. This belief reflects a history of state paternalism and coexists with a diversity of views about who are the actors involved in comanagement, their role in the fishery, and the resources mobilized through comanagement. We argue that local participants' limited understanding of the collaborative mechanisms established by the comanagement initiative suggests a failure of the promoting actors to communicate the initiative's environmental and social goals and to exploit its transformative potential in terms of actors' empowerment and participation in the long term. This research contributes to the burgeoning literature on the use of mental models as a means to unravel the cognitive aspects that may lie underneath the success or failure of natural resource governance.
ISSN:1708-3087
1708-3087
DOI:10.5751/ES-12177-260125