Participation and representation in governing multiple-use marine ecosystems

ABSTRACT

Stakeholder participation has become central to marine governance, a trend that is consistent with resource governance more broadly. Imperatives for increasing participation in marine governance reflect complex sociological trends, including population-driven change in coastal areas, increasing marine industry; climate-mediated changes in productivity; and decreasing trust in governing institutions. Despite this, marine governance research points to a paradox – efforts to increase participatory governance are leading towards decreasing legitimacy and low levels of trust in the governance system. This paper examines stakeholder perceptions of representation in the context of efforts to achieve effective participatory governance of a multiple-use marine commons: the D’Entrecasteaux-Huon Channel region in Tasmania, Australia. Political representation was found to be an essential component of stakeholders’ assessment of the legitimacy of the governance of multiple-use marine systems. At the same time, representation was found to be a contradictory component that could not necessarily be settled by ideal type institutional rules for participation in governance. This paper suggests that rethinking how representation can be managed institutionally within the network context is warranted. It contributes to marine governance research by directly facing the complexity of representation in participatory initiatives, and signals a potential avenue for examining the challenges of participatory governance of shared marine systems.

Acknowledgements

My thanks go to the stakeholders and research participants who generously shared their experiences of the initiative discussed in this paper. My thanks go Dr Peat Leith whose guidance and mentoring has underpinned the development of this paper, and to Professor Marcus Haward for his helpful suggestions on the early draft of this paper. I wish also to thank Dr Tom Lewis, RDS Partners P/L for his helpful comments and editing of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Maree Fudge is a PhD candidate researching the limits and constraints of participatory governance of marine-based socio-ecological systems, comparing the experience in Canada and Australia. Maree's academic background is in political studies, social research and her professional background is in social research, evaluation, strategic project development, and community and stakeholder engagement.

ORCID

Maree Fudge http://orcid.org/0000-0003-1327-0053

Notes

1. The remaining statement types, ‘choice’, ‘aggregation’, ‘information’ and ‘scope’, relate more to operations within the institutions (Ostrom and Crawford 2005, 186) and were therefore outside the scope of this study.