New Marine Commons Along the Chilean Coast: The Management Areas (MAs) of Peñuelas and Chigualoco

"To halt degradation of benthic resources in Chile, managementareas (MAs) were set up under the Territorial Use Rights in Fisheries (TURFs)framework in the late 1990s. Integrated into the global market, MAs have sinceexpanded along the Chilean coast, involving thousands of small-scale artisanalfishers. This paper analyses how economic criteria relates to social and ecologicalperformance of Chilean MAs, by applying TURFs, commons and co-managementtheory to two cases: MAs Peñuelas and Chigualoco. To collect and analyse dataParticipatory Rural Appraisal tools, interviews and official statistics and reportswere used. Our results show that MAs economic benefits are connected tofluctuations on the global market. Adapting to changing world market prices thenbecomes paramount. TURFs main goal is ecological conservation, but achievingthis seems to depend on meeting fishers livelihoods; failure to do so likely resultsin failure to meet conservation objectives. A serious weakness of the ChileanTURFs system is that it does not pay enough attention to fishers livelihoods orto the global market context. Furthermore, there is a strong relationship betweengood economic benefits and social sustainability. But irrespective of economicperformance, fisher organizations have been empowered and gained increasedresource control with the TURFs system. At policy level, a differentiated andmore flexible system could be more suitable for existing heterogeneous MAsand their particular economic, social and ecological challenges. For improvedeconomic sustainability and resource conservation, a system with multiplespeciesmanaging MAs could be promoted as well. Finally, to enhance theory of commons, co-management and TURFs, we argue for greater acknowledgement of TURFs social benefits in addition to economic assessments. More attention should also be paid to global market conditions of which MAs are dependent and in which they are embedded: macrostructures that are seldom considered in the analyses."