Community Fishery Rights: Issues, Approaches and Atlantic Canadian Case Studies

Community fishery rights are use rights (the right to take part in fishing) and/or management rights (the right to be involved in managing the fishery) implemented at a local, community level. While by no means a new invention, community rights are receiving renewed attention as a mechanism to improve the effectiveness of management in achieving sustainable fisheries. The rationale for this lies in the potential for better use of local ecological knowledge, for greater acceptance of fishery management rules, for better resolution of conflicts – by balancing ecological, economic, and community goals – and as a result of the above, for positive effects on conservation and sustainability. Community fishery rights relate closely to the increasinglypopular approach of community-based co-management, in which local fishery participants and communities, along with government, have significant responsibility for the management and stewardship of fishery resources. In Canada’s Atlantic region, the fishery policy environment historically has not been attentive to, or supportive of, community rights or management initiatives. However, the negative impacts of a growing concentration of control in the fishery, produced by past policy measures, plus the new reality of aboriginal fisheries in the region, have led to grass-roots interest in community-based systems of fishery rights and fishery management, together with a certain degree of increased official acceptance. Indeed, though less publicized than the region’s fisheries based on individual rights (such as ITQs), there are significant examples in Atlantic Canada of community fishery rights. This paper describes two major categories of these systems: community management boards in the groundfish fishery, and newly-developed commercial fisheries in aboriginal (Mi’kmaq) communities.