Applying the Fisheries Management Effectiveness Indicators: An Attempt to Standardize an Evaluation Tool for Fisheries Management

P. Rojas, R. Mancao, R. Amolo Fisheries management has been implemented in the Philippines for over 3 decades either through local and foreign assisted projects or by local government unit’s own capacity.  Implementing fisheries management strategies includes one or a combination of MPAs [Marine Protected Areas], close and open season, gear restrictions, fisheries aggregating devices, and input and output controls. National laws and local ordinances that act as enabling environment to facilitate ground implementation supported these strategies. While project-based performance evaluation proved helpful in attributing impacts, very limited work has been undertaken to assess the effectiveness of fisheries management implementation thru the lens of local stakeholders thus shying away from the most critical lessons on adaptive management and sustainability. Moreover, evaluating performance is either based on biological and fisheries outcomes thus negating measurements on the implementation processes and organizational capacity. Here, we attempted to test the Fisheries Management Assessment and Rating Toolkit [FishMark] using 156 indicators in over 25 municipalities around the country.  These indicators are nested in 5 graduated levels and 6 management focuses to account management effectiveness. Our results showed that most of the sites falls under very similar conditions either at Pre level [Level 0] or level 1. Effectiveness scores and percentage achieved per management focus were also generated and ranges showed no surprising differences. We find these results very interesting because of the extreme differences in terms of implementation starting point, access to local or foreign assistance, and the scope of fisheries management strategies employed in each site. Our results supported our hypothesis that a standardized tool to evaluate management effectiveness is critical to allow points of comparison between and among sites as well as create an internal control system in local government units. We further provided lessons focusing on facilitating and  hindering factors in the delivery of fisheries program from target localities.