Search

Management agencies increasingly seek to broaden stakeholder participation in fisheries decision making beyond commercial fisheries groups. This precipitates the challenge of meaningfully involving additional stakeholders without unjustifiably diminishing the role of commercial users. This research examines participants'; evaluations of one attempt to broaden but balance participation in groundfish management planning on Canada's Pacific coast. Commercial fishery and noncommercial fishery stakeholders were separated onto two advisory committees with more and less control over the design of the management plan, respectively. Respondents from the noncommercial fishery committee were accepting of this asymmetrical arrangement, provided they had sufficient opportunities to influence the design of the advisory process and define overarching objectives that would bound potential outcomes. Findings suggest several reasons that involvement in these early steps may be particularly important to meaningful participation of noncommercial fishery stakeholders within asymmetrical, multicommittee processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]