Socioeconomic Constraints to Reef Fisheries Sustainability

The ecosystem goods and services provided by coral reefs are critical to the social and economic welfare of hundreds of millions of people, overwhelmingly in developing countries. Yet these goods and services are being threatened by overfishing and it is not clear how to prevent this problem given the multiple possible management philosophies, methods and their social-ecological consequences.  Among the three major alternatives and their political ecology philosophies are co-management, zoning, and economic development. Socio-economic development has a critical influence on the condition of reef fisheries but where they have been studied there is little evidence that they fully preserve fish ecology and ecological services.  Even at the highest levels of economic development, overfishing can occur and this libertarian view cannot provide the full ecology of reefs without interventions of closures.  Several key social and ecological feedback mechanisms associated with moderate levels of socioeconomic development drive reef fisheries toward a social-ecological trap with low levels of resilience and progressive programs from around the world are described that have been used to avoid or climb out of these social-ecological traps. Regardless of the system, the evidence suggests closures have a key role in protecting coral reef ecology at all levels of socio-economic development and need to be combined with a variety of alternatives that have the highest potential for local adoption.