Abstract

There is increasing global interest in fisheries governance as a means of providing a broader perspective than science-based fisheries management on the successes, but particularly the failures, of fisheries around the world. Governance perspectives may be particularly important for understanding and improving complex small-scale fisheries such as those that occur throughout the Caribbean. Fisheries governance in Trinidad and Tobago encompasses many different institutions, organisations, types of interaction and arenas of interaction. Many of these are linked. Key individuals have memberships in several fisheries organisations. By wearing several hats they are actors with multiple roles in various exchanges, some of which may be concurrent, and perhaps also in conflict. Their organisations similarly often have multiple mandates. The result is a network of individuals and organisations in which the decisions made and actions taken can be influenced to a large extent by connections to others. This paper reports upon a preliminary analysis of the fisheries governance networks in Trinidad and Tobago with the aim of contributing to our understanding complex adaptive social-ecological systems. The research was undertaken by the Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) as part of the project on Marine Resource Governance in the Eastern Caribbean (MarGov project).

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