Exploring compliance with inland fishing rules
IUU fishing in the inland context…
Humans rely on natural resources, and the rules that exist to ensure the persistence of natural resources often fail to ensure their continued existence. Environmental rules ensure the persistence of important natural resources and prevent over-exploitation of resources that can be detrimental to society. Rules can exist in the form of laws, regulations, or even social norms and can fail in one of two ways: either (1) they are poorly defined (even if everyone follows the rule, the natural resource will be exhausted); or (2) they are well defined but not followed.
An important example of the latter is illegal, unregulated, and unreported (IUU) fishing, or fishing in violation of existing rules, which poses threats to fisheries worldwide. IUU fishing is increasingly recognized as a global high policy priority issue, with the United Nations, civil society groups, nongovernmental organizations, and federal governments working, often together, to reduce its associated risks to global fisheries and the billions of people that depend on them. These efforts are ongoing in part because of the significant role fisheries play in sustaining healthy ecosystems and in part because of the natural food security they provide.
This research considers inland IUU fishing in the Brazilian Pantanal, exploring and characterizing key factors influencing noncompliance with fishing regulations, including trust in those defining the rules, especially in the scientists doing field work supporting those definitions. The research compliments previous work on compliance and noncompliance, and our interdisciplinary approach reflects conservation criminology, or the integration of conservation biology, criminology, and risk and decision science
Shirley, E., and M. L. Gore. (In preparation). The influence of trust in scientists on illegal fishing:insights from the Brazilian Pantanal. PLoS ONE.