Social Impacts Research for Marine Protected Areas and Priority Marine Features Management in Scottish Waters

6 Discussion

6.1 What do people in coastal communities value?

In all the locations, but particularly the island communities, there was a narrative running through contributions to the engagement activities about a sense of independence, freedom and self-sufficiency. Participants who took part in the research from coastal communities expressed a sense of connectedness to and understanding of the natural environment. For the fishers who participated, these values were felt to be inherent to the culture of fishing or living from the exploitation of marine resources. They see fishing as part of both local and national heritage. It was suggested, only partly tongue-in-cheek, that fishing should be protected like other features of the marine environment.

Fisher participants generally expressed pride in their work and their way of life. This however was tinged with anxiety about changes in society and attitudes which are creating a new narrative about fishing as a negative force for the environment. Many fishers spoke movingly about the problems of passing on their activity and heritage to their children. While there are substantial economic and administrative challenges of starting or taking on a fishing business at the moment, many fishers reported that young people in their communities are also coming up against a negative image of fishing in the media.

Participants not from the fishing industry included people who identify strongly with the local fishers and see them as a vital part of the local community but also people who are concerned about the marine environment and the impact of some fishing techniques. Trawling and dredging in particular were seen as damaging to the seabed. This contrasted with the view of many fishers working on trawlers and dredgers that turning over the seabed helps maintain productivity.

In their inputs to the survey, drop ins and workshops, both individual fishers and some fishing organisations expressed a willingness to look at alternative measures to improve environmental impacts. Many fisher organisations are involved in initiatives to improve the management and preservation of marine resources. In general, fishers were proud of their role in protecting the marine environment and wanted this to be more widely recognised. What they rejected were measures that had been developed without their involvement and appeared not to take account of their specific practices and constraints.

How might the things that coastal communities value be affected by potential management measures?

In most of the locations local people are already concerned about demographic decline and pressures on the fishing industry, and they feel that MPAs create an additional economic challenge.

In the islands and remote mainland communities, local fishing activity is seen as holding the community together, even if it is not the main economic activity, with aquaculture, tourism and services providing alternative employment options. In Barra, participants gave several examples of basic community functions – such as ensuring that food was brought from the mainland to the island’s shop and staffing lifeboat operations – which are provided by the local fishers. These remote economies are fragile and there was concern among participants that a shock to commercial fishing could lead to a collapse of the whole economy, and in turn, of the community that depends on it. The corollary of this situation is that relatively small amounts of income can be vital to sustaining fishing businesses and individual livelihoods. Many people have multiple jobs because activities like fishing are seasonal.

Living in a fragile and remote community brings awareness of interdependence on others and the movement from one generation to the next. Local people are concerned about basic infrastructure of housing, health services and transport, because without these, younger people will not stay and new families will not be encouraged to come and settle. Changes in traditional fishing practices bring with them the risk that young people will be put off continuing to engage in fishing and that this could lead them to move out of the area in search of more stable or lucrative employment.

In larger, better-connected mainland locations like Peterhead and Troon, and in the well-established fisheries of Shetland, additional MPA measures are seen as a further challenge to fishing activities. The emphasis on the cumulative effects of the emergence of new pressures on the marine environment and resources reflects the sense that fishing is being squeezed.

6.2 Lessons learned: Reflection on the process and limitations

Design of the engagement process:

The views captured reflect those of the participants that came to the events or responded to the survey. In all locations, the majority of participants were from the fishing sector. This was recognised as a priority and the events were successful in involving those interests. Some other stakeholders were also involved and brought wider perspectives of the impacts of fisheries management measures. For future research it would be worth considering additional approaches to participation from other stakeholders.

The process worked well in terms of providing local people with different ways of contributing: survey, drop-in and workshop. It might be useful to start the process by carrying out one-to-one interviews with different stakeholders including community organisations and fishers operating different gear types. This could help design a representative sample including different perspectives. It would also have allowed a deeper probing of views in different sectors, although would not allow engagement with such large numbers of stakeholders.

A longer gap between the drop-in session and the workshop in each location would enable the identification of issues from the drop-in session responses which could be explored in greater detail in the workshops. The logistics of travel to remote and hard to access locations make this a more costly and time-consuming option, but it would be worth reviewing this approach.

Management of the drop in events:

The drop-in events were a novel methodology which aimed to provide information and get feedback from a wide range of stakeholders. This created challenges such as providing enough people with the right areas of expertise (the facilitation team and also government and statutory nature conservation bodies representatives) at each of the events, when the number of participants varied greatly.

Different mechanisms were used to advertise events, including advertisements in local media, direct mailing to community organisations and posters in some locations. Other advertising and communications strategies should be explored, particularly ways of using social media and trusted media in each location. It will always be necessary to allow a long lead in time to identify the best communications channels and ensure that information gets out to the community. It would be useful to allow a lead-in time of at least six weeks, also to allow time to arrange travel to the islands.

Attribution of comments:

There should be a clear decision when planning the engagement process about which stakeholder characteristics will be prioritised in the analysis (e.g., differences between fishers reflected in size of vessel and gear type) so that evidence can be collected about those characteristics.

In dynamic processes like drop-ins and workshops, it may not be possible to record relevant stakeholder characteristics against all comments. A follow-up meeting of the facilitation team on the same day or day after could be used to quickly go through key points and ensure that the participants who made the points are clearly identified.

When using methods involving participants writing their own comments, such as the drop-in sessions, mechanisms should be used to capture key stakeholder characteristics.

Future engagement on MPA measures:

Fishers, their organisations and local communities indicated that they were keen to be involved in developing any future measures. They suggested that measures developed with the authorities would be better measures because of being informed by local knowledge and would be more readily accepted by fishers if they had been involved.

In many of the locations, fisher organisations have been involved in data collection, development of measures and measures enforcement over many years. This needs to be taken into consideration in the objectives and design of stakeholder engagement processes, to ensure that stakeholders' previous contributions are recognised and built upon.