A case Study Focus on the Process of Involving Multiple Stakeholders Rachel Hodge April 10, 2011 urp 5122 Case Study Paper

The focus of the FishSmart Initiative was to improve several key aspects of fisheries management for Atlantic king mackerel fisheries on the southeast U.S. coast. The goal was to develop a process that would not only combine the visions and needs of multiple stakeholders, but would create relationships between the involved parties that would continue to influence fisheries management into the future. The first aspect of improvement sought to enhance fisheries management practices in order to create a more ecosystem-based approach that involved multiple levels of stakeholders. The second aspect involved increasing varied stakeholder participation and involvement through preferred performance measures. The final aspect sought to improve relations between recreational anglers and commercial fishermen to create a future vision of sustainable fisheries management practices.

To understand the development of the FishSmart process, three main criteria were assessed during the evaluation of this case study. Executive summaries of workgroup meetings, articles, presentation slides, and stakeholder participation notes were reviewed in order to assess these criteria.

1) Comparison of approaches: What are some other ways that fisheries management are typically approached and how do they compare to FishSmart?

2) Stakeholders and drivers of the process: How did the stakeholders involved with FishSmart change or improve the process of participation?

3) Process during and after FishSmart: Did the new process improve stakeholder relationships? How did the involvement enhance the outcomes of the process?

The structure of this case study will include background information about the FishSmart Project and how it came to be; the stakeholders and their respective roles in the process; details about the facilitations process of FishSmart; the outcomes of the process in terms of the major evaluative criteria; and conclusions made about the process.

In 2008, multiple levels of stakeholders came together to participate in facilitated workshops and decision analyses for comparing alternative management options for southeastern Atlantic king mackerel fisheries. The recommendations would be provided to the South Atlantic Fisheries Management Council (SAFMC) for inclusion in future management practices. The FishSmart Initiative aimed to solve two problems by addressing the types of stakeholders involved in the process and the policies guiding the experiences of recreational angling in king mackerel fisheries.

In 2007, the evaluation of these statements led the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to fund a team of scientists and commercial and recreational fishing interests to develop an approach that would incorporate and address the above views, but also encourage increased and varied stakeholder participation for a fair and sustainable set of marine fisheries management practices. The result was Project FishSmart.

The principal participants totaled thirteen stakeholders. The stakeholders represented the following types of organizations, interests, and agencies: independent recreational anglers (2), angling organizations (2), charter captains (1), tournament organizers and participants (2), commercial anglers (2), tackle shop owners (1), environmental NGOs (2), state biologists (1), and managers (1) (Miller et al., 2010). There were three groups that comprised the initiative during the series of meetings that were held between April and November of 2008: the stakeholder workgroup, the science team, and the facilitation team. The workgroup was made up of people who had been selected after extensive consultation with members from South Atlantic Fishery Management Council staff (SAFMC), Gulf of Mexico Fishery Management Council staff (GMFMC), recreational angling organizations, sports writers, editors of sport fishing magazines, and individual anglers before they were chosen as representatives of their organizations and agencies. The process for identifying and eventually selecting the stakeholders rested on evaluations of their “history, perspectives, and [the] relationships among those with a stake in the king mackerel fishery in the Atlantic” (Miller et al., 2010, p. 427). The number of stakeholders was important to the success of census-building as part of the FishSmart process. Miller and colleagues (2010) indicated that prior consensus-building workshop experience with greater than 20 participants required a different approach that necessitated extra time and resources.

The science team was represented by environmental NGOs, such as The Nature Conservancy and Environmental Defense Fund, and federal staff scientists. Their role was largely to develop the simulation model based on stakeholder input, as well as explaining the results of the model and responding to questions or recommendations from the stakeholder participants. The scientists also acted as teachers, responding to both the uncertainties and certainties of the scientific data.

Faculty members of Florida State University’s FCRC Consensus Center served as the facilitation team. Other involved parties included the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and The University of Maryland Center for Environmental Sciences Chesapeake Biological Laboratory.

The outcomes of FishSmart were achieved through a series of workgroup meetings that incorporated visioning, planning, goal achievement assessment, recommendations, and consensus. The FishSmart process served to develop “a model that simulates the population of the fish stock of interest to evaluate alternative management practices” (Miller et al., 2010, p. 426). Only workgroup members voted on recommendations and proposals, though all members and facilitators were present during voting periods during the meetings. The votes were not meant to endorse views of stakeholder’s respective agencies or organizations. No votes by the workgroup members were taken on recommendations that involved specific regulatory changes.

Experienced staff from the FCRC Consensus Center facilitated the workgroup meetings between April and November of 2008. The processes of the workgroup meetings have been summarized from the Workgroup Final Report (2008) and are outlined below:

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  Meeting 1: Once the stakeholders were selected, they met to establish a goal that expressed their collective vision of an ideal king mackerel fishery. The goal that was created by the workgroup reads: “A sustainable Atlantic King Mackerel (AKM) fishery should be managed to prevent overfishing from occurring, prevent the species from being overfished, to ensure optimum yield is not exceeded, while maintaining the genetic diversity of fish and providing acceptable levels of access and allocation for all sectors while conserving biological and ecological functions” (Workgroup Consensus Goal Recommendations, 2008, p. 1).
  
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  Meeting 2: Ranges of options for fishery management were developed by the workgroup. The options called for either voluntary action or enforced regulation to achieve the goal created during Meeting 1.
  
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  Meeting 3: The workgroup developed a series of quantifiable performance measures, describing the extent to which the options developed during Meeting 2 would help achieve the goal from Meeting 1.
  
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  Meeting 4: Evaluation of the performance of the options relative to the selected performance measures of Meeting 3 led the workgroup to develop a collection of recommendations that would be presented to the SAFMC by the end of 2008.
  

Stakeholders were involved in all aspects and stages of the process so that buy-in and devotion to reaching general consensus were shared at all levels. The overall process was based on a decision-analytical framework with the stakeholder group, the science team, and the facilitation team. The FCRC facilitators used various techniques for involving the stakeholders, including shared visioning, brainstorming, ranking, and prioritizing approaches. The goal was to achieve general consensus where all members could find agreements that were suitable on levels of “accept, support, live with, or agree to not agree” (Final Report, 2008, p. 5-6). After all options for consensus had been exhausted and if 100% agreement could not be reached, then a super majority decision rule of 75% favorable vote had to be attained by the voting members in order for a recommendation to be passed.

The facilitators helped the stakeholders develop and agree to meeting and process rules, structured to “ensure a full, open, and respectful discussion of all aspects of the management challenge” (Miller et al., 2010, p. 428). The FCRC faculty also helped the stakeholders understand that no final votes would be taken until the end of the meetings. This agreement encouraged the participants to comprehensively evaluate all discussions and any new material presented during the meetings before they made a final decision; it helped them to not feel locked into their initial positions. The facilitators were neutral and helped to keep stakeholders on topic throughout the meeting sessions.

V. Outcomes of the Process

The FishSmart process was developed as a stakeholder-centered model that “[simulated] the population of the fish stock of interest to evaluate alternative management policies” (Miller et al., 2010, p. 426). The roles of the stakeholders, scientists, and fisheries managers were well defined by the process illustrated in Figure 1. The stakeholders were to identify the problem (Meeting 1), the options (Meeting 2), and the performance measures (Meeting 3). The science team served the role of developing a simulation model for the stakeholders to conduct a decision analysis of the options and performance measures outlined during Meetings 2 and 3. The final step in this process occurred when the stakeholders made their recommendations to the fisheries managers (in this case, the SAFMC) based on the ranking of their options.