Fishing Logbook as Stewardship Action within Turf Management in Seribu Marine National Park, Indonesia

Abstract

Stewardship, as a concept that relates to any action taken by a steward in favor of the sustainability of their environment, has attracted attention. However, research on stewardship action taken by fishers at the local level is particularly understudied. Our study was conducted in the Seribu Marine National Park, where fishing logbook activity occurred as part of the introduction of Territorial User Rights for Fisheries (TURF) management. We collected empirical data using the local environmental stewardship framework to analyze the main causes of the fishing logbook's stagnancy and determine the leverage strategies to relaunch the activity. Semi-structured phone interviews with fishers who did and did not submit the logbook reveal that the fisher's intrinsic motivation and agency are strongly intertwined with the social, cultural, and political contexts, which together provide a good understanding of why stewardship action failed in this context. Applying the framework demonstrates that the failure of the stewardship action is a result of a mismatch between the TURF approach and the fishers understanding of how the problem should be managed and solved. Despite being granted exclusive management rights by the authorities, the fishers have little intrinsic motivation and a lack of agency, and they ask heavily for government action. We outline different leveraging strategies that could potentially relaunch the logbook activity in Seribu.

Keywords: Keywords: Territorial User Rights for Fisheries (TURF), Stewardship, Fishing logbook, Motivation, Agency, Local champion