Institutional context and governance of Peruvian fisheries and aquaculture

Abstract

Marine coastal governance encompasses the formal and informal processes of interaction and decision-making of actors involved in any issue of public interest regarding the marine and coastal environment. This report focuses primarily on summarizing and describing the main state-driven processes related to the governance of the coastal fisheries and (marine) aquaculture sectors (i.e. mariculture) in Peru. However, we also explain the predominant tensions between resource-based development regulations and key user groups. These tensions include strategies of contestation and adaptation of users which can involve or relate to informal and illegal processes in marine and coastal resource management. In a short introduction we will first provide context to the described processes by framing them with broader debates about the ways in which resource-based development is organized in Peru, namely privately owned and centralized, and discursively naturalized through narratives that prioritize economic growth over sustainability. The following second section provides the broader institutional background of fisheries and aquaculture governance by sketching the cornerstones of the Peruvian legal and political systems. The third section of the report is dedicated to the governance of fisheries, especially artisanal and small-scale fisheries, paying special attention to the mech-anisms of different fishing access regimes. Peruvian artisanal and small-scale fishing is one of the most relevant economic activities of the Humboldt Current Upwelling System (HCUS) as it provides the majority of fish for domestic human consumption, targeting more than 300 species, and employing four times more people than the industrial fisheries. The fourth and last section then focuses on the governance of mariculture following the same structure as the previous one. In this section, the information presented is being related to the specific case of the Peruvian bay scallop [Argopecten purpuratus]. Together with the whiteleg shrimp [Litopenaeus vannamei], this species makes up for more than 99 percent of commercial mariculture in Peru over the last decades, and it is of particular importance in the two main research areas of our study. The fifth and sixth subsectionsof the governance of fisheries (i.e. third section) and mariculture (i.e. fourth section) describe the limits of current governance and important lines of conflicts respectively.