The Monitoring and Compliance (M&C) Panel aspires to identify and promote the fair, practical, and effective monitoring and compliance policies and practices critical to realize the level of collaborative management required to sustain salmon and salmon fisheries. The Panel’s work will be instrumental in building best practices, in promoting a widespread appreciation of the importance of monitoring and compliance practices, and in addressing issues related to access, certification, traceability, and in season adjustments.
DESCRIPTION
The Monitoring and Compliance (M&C) Panel aspires to promote the fair, practical, and effective monitoring and compliance practices and policies critical to realize the level of collaborative management required to sustain salmon and a salmon fishery. Without a widespread confidence among all sectors and within the public that best practices of monitoring and compliance are being engaged, there can never be sustainable outcomes. Credibility in monitoring and compliance activities is the vehicle that will drive us to mutual accountability.
The Panel’s work will be instrumental in building best practices, in promoting a widespread appreciation of the importance of monitoring and compliance practices, and in addressing issues related to access, certification, traceability, and in season adjustments. Success will be realized when all sectors can “tell each other’s stories” about each other’s standards and practices, rather than disputing each other’s numbers, and confidently share those stories with the public.
The Panel will operate on a provincial level. It will work with and support local groups, as well as work co-operatively with other institutions, groups and processes to share work and avoid duplication. The M&C Panel will be terminated after 3 years (2009-2012). This sunset provision is designed to force the Panel to prove its ability to make a difference in a timely manner.
Key issues that the M&C Panel will address include:
* Identification of Fisheries Monitoring & Catch Reporting Best Practices and Incentives
* Education, Awareness and Recognition of Best Practices and Incentives
* Demonstrating Collaborative Management and Governance in Action
* Community Based Enforcement to Ensure High Levels of Compliance
* Capacity Building to Sustain Participant Driven Collaborative Processes at Local Levels
Four key projects have been developed to address M&C Panel goals, objectives, and issues above:
* Project 1 - Best Practices: Highlight best practices, management alternatives and solutions that provide effective implementation tools for all sectors; Conduct engagement with harvest and non-harvest sectors around the “Charting Our Course” Report developed during 2009-2010; Advocate improved fisheries monitoring and catch reporting practices through existing planning and consultation processes (IHPC, CSAB, Roundtables); Assess and evaluate current and desired levels of fisheries monitoring and catch reporting programs for all fisheries in Pacific Region
* Project 2 - Communications: Conduct Field Trips/Pilot Projects (working in partnership with local processes and initiatives) designed to improve catch monitoring programs and generate confidence in each sectors numbers; engage a Public Panel Member to increase public awareness and understanding regarding M&C Panel, fisheries monitoring & catch reporting practices and compliance; Share innovative monitoring and compliance practices within broader sectors and communities; Provide recognition for Monitoring and Compliance leadership and excellence by individuals and organizations; implement web-based communications media to reach wider audiences and increase effectiveness of engagement with target audiences and the public
* Project 3 - Governance: Liaise with ISDF Governance Guidebook & Framework deliverables development to provide lessons learned by the M&C Panel as a living example of co-management and collaborative decision making.
* Project 4 - Compliance: Work in collaboration with others to support and enable the delivery of the Participant Driven Collaborative Processes Training Initiative (refer to Attachment 3 for overview re: Peacemaker/other related training) to build capacity for sector representatives to resolve conflicts between sectors in the field.
Through the activities identified above, the M&C Panel serves as a catalyst and partner to other local and regional initiatives by helping them to address fisheries monitoring practices and levels of compliance to identify current weaknesses and issues, and then identify improvements required to build trust and confidence in numbers across all sectors and the public. Without this continued effort, there is significant risk that all sectors will return to past patterns of disputing each other’s practices and numbers instead of building relationships, working together to assess and evaluate each sector’s monitoring practices, and then resolving issues and collectively making needed improvements.
OBJECTIVES
Promote within all sectors and the public an understanding of, and confidence in monitoring and compliance practices
Promote collaborative decision making processes that generate opportunities for meaningful participation in monitoring and compliance decisions, and provide a foundation for building broader collaborative management structures, processes and activities
Foster the use of monitoring and compliance practices that incorporate best practice standards, and involve transparent decisions that are fairly, and equally applied
Identify and champion the vital changes needed to support monitoring and compliance initiatives in each sector to sustain wild salmon
Build capacity to resolve conflicts and ensure high levels of compliance by all sectors
METHODS
The M&C Panel is made up of a Main Panel with 15 Members/Alternates, supported by 3 Working Groups (~6-8 Panel members each, with other subject experts as needed) tasked with developing ideas/concepts, conducting engagement on projects and issues with sectors, and implementing a variety of pilot projects and initiatives in various issue and scale based locations that best support the overall Panel goals, objectives and projects/initiatives.
The Panel collaborates directly with other ongoing processes and initiatives (such as the Fraser River Salmon Table, Lower Fraser Sport-FN WG, Local Community Roundtables, existing multi-sector planning processes like IHPC, CSAB and IFMP, and DFO Consultation Processes) in order to ensure that initiatives of the Panel are aligned with other ongoing efforts through collaboration and cooperation.
Specific methods and techniques being employed by the Panel to increase effectiveness include:
Facilitation/Dialogue techniques: The M&C Panel is utilizing various techniques and principles to ensure authentic, respectful and constructive dialogue and dialogue between Panel members and other community representatives. The Panel is putting in to action the following principles:
1. First talk about how we are going to talk to each other (establish respectful & constructive dialogue)
2. Build relationships and trust between participants and communities
3. Create safe places to have difficult conversations and work out issues
4. Leverage relationships and trust built into shared and collaborative action at regional and local community levels to address and resolve issues.
Online Meeting/Collaboration Technology: The M&C Panel is leveraging available low-cost online meeting and web collaboration tools alongside traditional tools to make the most effective use of Panel member’s time, reduce travel costs and associated carbon emissions, and improve communications and collaboration for meetings and project deliverables.
In-Persona and Online Communications: A number of products and messages developed by the M&C Panel will be directed at diverse audiences (non-fisheries, non-technical, public at large, etc.) and are involving continued communications design and online expertise to assist in the design, development and delivery of these final products for them to be effective.
BENEFITS
The M&C Panel provides the following overall benefits:
* Acts as a forum to identify, develop and promote the use of best practices in monitoring and compliance that will support conservation and salmon management efforts region-wide as well as build trust and confidence in numbers across all harvest sectors
* Provides practical information on effective tools and best management practices associated with monitoring and compliance that will directly assist all harvest sectors in planning and implementing more effective monitoring programs, and will facilitate solutions to the critical challenges with making monitoring affordable.
* Develops improved relationships among resource users may help to reduce in-season conflicts over access to resources
* Contributes to raising awareness and understanding regarding the importance of effective catch monitoring and compliance practices so we can “get past the numbers” and begin to trust each other’s catch data.
* Advocates for the role of community self-policing in achieving high levels of compliance which are critical to building confidence in each other’s numbers, and supports the desire and capacity of communities to take responsibility for implementing practices on the water and dealing with non-compliance in a meaningful and effective manner.
Anecdotal impacts/benefits during 2009-10 identified by Panel Members/Alternates include:
* Significantly improved communications and relationships between Recreational and First Nation representatives/communities on Lower Fraser River
* Increased cooperation between sectors via the Peacemaker training initiative as all sector representatives are keen to participate and build skills to reduce tensions and resolve conflict.
* Improved understanding and awareness of each sector’s fisheries monitoring programs and practices
Increased participation by all sectors as participants and/or observers in other sector processes and meetings.
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