An Introduction to Fish Conservation Zone Assessments
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This presentation was given at a workshop to select indicators for Fish Conservation Zone assessments on November 7 and 8, 2016, in Vientiane, Lao PDR. It provides an overview of assessing the effectiveness of Fish Conservation Zones. Assessments examine how well management is achieving its goals and objective; therefore, identifying goals and objectives is an integral to performing assessments. Once goals and objectives are identified, indicators can be selected – these are measurements that provide evidence for whether goals and objectives are being met. Indicators should be measurable, precise, consistent, sensitive, and simple, and should be able to be communicated in non-technical language. Assessments are a key part of fisheries management, and the information they provide can benefit community members, Civil Society Organization partners, and the government.
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An Introduction to Fish Conservation Zone Assessments
- 1. Assessing the Effectiveness of FCZs Presented by: Shaara Ainsley (shaaraainsley@fishbio.com) | Fisheries Biologist Erin Loury (erinloury@fishbio.com) | Fisheries Biologist
- 2. FCZ assessments examine how well management is achieving its goals and objectives
- 3. Why Assess the Effectiveness of FCZs?
- 4. Why Assess the Effectiveness of FCZs? • Considerable effort in establishing FCZs, but this alone does not guarantee success • Assessment is necessary to understand if FCZs are performing as desired • Situations may change over time and errors may be made; assessment can help learn from experience
- 5. Assessment is a Key Step in Fisheries Management “As [FCZ] objectives are defined and agreed upon by the local community, it is important that the community members are involved in periodically reviewing the effectiveness of regulations in meeting these objectives.”
- 6. Benefits of Effectiveness Monitoring • Benefits to the Community: • Knowledge production to inform co-management • Efficient use of enforcement and committee efforts • Benefits to the CSO Partners: • Donors want to see effectiveness monitoring • Assessments can identify strengths to build on and weaknesses to improve upon • Benefits to Government: • Contributes to successful co-management • Multinational agreements with targets (e.g., Sustainable Development Goals, Convention on Biological Diversity Targets – global and national)
- 7. What is an “Assessment”? • Assessment is a process of gathering information on how well an FCZ is performing • Assessments should be conducted regularly, not just one time • Assessment can be done through measuring indicators of effectiveness • Indicator: A specific qualitative or quantitative variable directly linked to management goals and objectives used to measure the status and trends of management effectiveness
- 8. Examples of Existing Assessment Frameworks MARINE Pomeroy et al. 2004 “How is your MPA doing?” TERRESTRIAL Rodriguez-Rodrigues and Martinez-Vega 2012 “System for the Integrated Assessment of Protected Areas (SIAPA)”
- 9. Goals and objectives are based on the stakeholder’s “vision” of an ideal FCZ
- 10. Developing Goals and Objectives • Goals: Broad statements about the long-term conditions, like a mission statement • Objectives: specific, realistic, measurable descriptions of what will be accomplished to reach the goals • Example • Vision: The aquatic biodiversity of the FCZ is healthy and being protected, and fisheries resources outside of the FCZ are abundant • Goal: Individual species are protected inside the FCZ • Objective: Probarbus spp. abundance is increased or maintained
- 11. • Goals and objectives may differ for each FCZ and should be specific to context • Often developed through a participatory process • Gather stakeholders and define a shared “vision” of a successful FCZ • Use this vision to develop a list of goals • Use list of goals to develop specific objectives • Regularly re-examine and revise as necessary through the assessment process Developing Goals and Objectives
- 12. Clear goals and objectives are an essential starting point for selecting indicators of effectiveness
- 13. Indicators are measurements that provide evidence for whether goals and objectives are being met
- 14. Criteria for Useful Indicators From Pomeroy et al. (2004) Criteria Definition Measurable Able to be recorded and analyzed in quantitative or qualitative terms Precise Defined the same way be all people Consistent Not changing over time so that it always measures the same thing Sensitive Changing proportionately in response to actual changes in the attribute or item being measured Simple Simple indicators are generally preferred to complex ones Example: Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the total value of all goods and services produced in a country, and it is considered an indicator of economic growth
- 15. Indicators should be easy to communicate and interpret in non-technical language to communities
- 17. How do you use an indicator? Goals and Objectives - Biophysical Indicators - Socioeconomic Indicators - Governance Indicators Metric/ Measurement Methodology Focal Species Abundance is Increased or Maintained Catfish Abundance Number of Catfish per Trap per Hour Trap Surveys
- 18. How do you use an indicator? Food Security is Enhanced or Maintained Perceptions of Fish and Other Aquatic Food Availability Opinions of FCZ Effects on Aquatic Food Availability Household Interview Surveys Effective Legal Structures and Strategies for Management Maintained Enforcement Coverage Number of FCZ Patrols Undertaken Per Month Review Patrol Logbooks; Interview Enforcement Teams Goal/ Objective Indicator Metric/ measurement Methodology
- 19. Conclusions • Considerable effort goes into establishing FCZs, but establishment alone does not ensure successful conservation and management of resources • FCZ Assessments can benefit communities, CSO partners, and the government • Clear goals and objectives are essential for selecting appropriate indicators • Useful indicators should be: measurable, precise, consistent, sensitive, relevant, simple and understandable • Indicators are used to measure FCZ success towards achieving its ecological, socioeconomic, and governance objectives
Editor's Notes
- Our whole goal is developing a tool for assessing FCZs, so we want to talk about what is assessment
- According to Hockings (2006), management effectiveness evaluations assess the “extent to which management is protecting values and achieving goals and objectives.” Therefore - Goals and objectives are the starting place for an assessment
- Considerable effort goes into establishing FCZs, but establishment of FCZs alone is not sufficient to ensure successful conservation and management of resources
- Considerable effort goes into establishing FCZs, but establishment of FCZs alone is not sufficient to ensure successful conservation and management of resources Monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are required to determine whether FCZs are effectively meeting their intended objectives Situations may change after establishment and errors may be made – thus, monitoring and evaluation are needed to learn from experience and improve the FCZs
- The guidelines for establishment by DLF and WWF state that reviewing the effectiveness of regulations is an important step. Community should be involved. Regulations aren’t a static thing, should be reviewed and updated as needed
- To reiterate the benefits to assessing FCZs
- As mentioned previously Just like in the health side during the inception meeting, like a child should get regular checkups with a doctor, an FCZ should get regular health checks at well to make sure it’s continuing to meet its objectives
- More details tomorrow, but there are some existing frameworks that have been developed for other examples. We didn’t find any examples for freshwater protected areas, but here are examples from terrestrial and marine. A framework was developed for terrestrial protected areas called the “System for the Integrated Assessment of Protected Areas (SIAPA)” and was applied to protected areas in Spain (Rodriguez-Rodrigues and Martinez-Vega 2012 and 2013) In particular, Pomeroy et al. (2004) published “How is your MPA doing? A Guidebook of Natural and Social Indicators for Evaluating Marine Protected Area Management Effectiveness,” Although these guidelines are a good starting point, the FCZs in Laos are unlike most terrestrial protected areas or MPAs because they tend to cover a much smaller area and they are limited to freshwater habitats; thus, they will require a specialized approach for monitoring. Erin will discuss these in more detail tomorrow.
- FCZ assessments examine how well management is achieving its goals and objectives These goals and objectives should be based the stakeholder’s vision of the FCZ Some FCZs have already developed clearly defined goals and objectives during the establishment process, but if some have not, this is the place to start
- To conduct an assessment, we first need to be clear on the goals and objectives of the FCZ. If this is the starting point, here is an example of how we go from broad vision to a specific objective
- Now we’ve defined a shared vision of successful FCZs, you can do the same thing with communities, and use this to develop goals and objectives. If you conduct assessments regularly, it’s a good time to examine goals and objectives, and maybe you identify ones that you want to revise.
- Our take home message: Clear goals and objectives, as defined during the establishment of the protected area and agreed to by the stakeholders, are essential starting point for selecting indicators Therefore, FCZs that do not have clear goals and objectives outlined in the management plan this should be the first step to the assessment process. Now that we’ve defined goals and objectives, we can move into selecting indicators.
- Indicators are specific qualitative or quantitative variables that are directly linked to management goals and objectives Thus, selecting useful indicators is one of the most important steps in the process of FCZ assessments
- These are some attributes of useful indicators. Tomorrow in the small groups, you can keep these guiding points in mind as you are discussing which indicators are better. These might help you select what is relevant to FCZs in Laos. In general, indicators should be measurable, precise, consistent, sensitive and simple, and they should be relevant to the assessment of interest. Bad example: Giant catfish abundance – it’s difficult to measure, not simple, not sensitive if there’s no giant catfish fishery. They’re already so rare. In situations where protected areas are co-managed with local communities, as with FCZs in Lao PDR, there is the additional need for indicators to be effectively communicated and interpreted in non-technical language
- Effectiveness indicators can be categorized by the management cycle (e.g., context, planning, inputs, processes , outputs, and outcomes, or by discipline This project will utilize three categories by discipline, please choose a group for tomorrow.
- Indicators can be described by various metrics or measurements that have a unit of scale, and data for these metrics may be gathered using numerous methodologies. The Metrics and Methodologies you use will depend on the question you are trying to answer. For example, the biological indicator “focal species abundance” can be measured with the metric of ‘number of fish per trap per hour,’ which can be obtained through the methodology of fish trap surveys.
- Indicators can be described by various metrics or measurements that have a unit of scale, and data for these metrics may be gathered using numerous methodologies. The Metrics and Methodologies you use will depend on the question you are trying to answer. For example, the biological indicator “focal species abundance” can be measured with the metric of ‘number of fish per trap per hour,’ which can be obtained through the methodology of fish trap surveys.