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Human wellbeing relies on the Biosphere, including natural resources provided by ocean ecosystems. As multiple demands and stressors threaten the ocean, transformative change in ocean governance is required to maintain the contributions of the ocean to people. Here we illustrate how transition theory can be applied to ocean governance. We demonstrate how current economic and social systems can adapt to existing pressures and shift towards ocean stewardship through incorporation of niche innovations within and across economic sectors and stakeholder communities. These novel approaches support an emergent but purposeful transition and suggest a clear path to a thriving and vibrant relationship between humans and the ocean. Oceans provide important natural resources, but the management and governance of the ocean is complex and the ecosystem is suffering as a result. The authors discuss current barriers to sustainable ocean governance and suggest pathways forward. Oceans provide important natural resources, but the management and governance of the ocean is complex and the ecosystem is suffering as a result. The authors discuss current barriers to sustainable ocean governance and suggest pathways forward.

Numerous studies have focused on the need to expand production of ‘blue foods’, defined as aquatic foods captured or cultivated in marine and freshwater systems, to meet rising population- and income-driven demand. Here we analyze the roles of economic, demographic, and geographic factors and preferences in shaping blue food demand, using secondary data from FAO and The World Bank, parameters from published models, and case studies at national to sub-national scales. Our results show a weak cross-sectional relationship between per capita income and consumption globally when using an aggregate fish metric. Disaggregation by fish species group reveals distinct geographic patterns; for example, high consumption of freshwater fish in China and pelagic fish in Ghana and Peru where these fish are widely available, affordable, and traditionally eaten. We project a near doubling of global fish demand by mid-century assuming continued growth in aquaculture production and constant real prices for fish. Our study concludes that nutritional and environmental consequences of rising demand will depend on substitution among fish groups and other animal source foods in national diets. Global demand for “blue food” is growing. In this quantitative synthesis, the authors analyse global seafood demand and project trends to 2050, finding considerable regional variation in the relationship between wealth and consumption.

Understanding compliance with conservation rules is key for biodiversity conservation. Here, we assess compliance and its underlying motivations in a small‐scale fishery in Chile. We adapt a framework originally developed for forestry to unpack compliance motivations at within‐individual and between‐individuals levels while accounting for contextual factors. We find that 92–100% fishers comply with temporal or gear rules, while only 3% comply with the quota limit. Legitimacy‐based motivations are more important in explaining why individual fishers comply with temporal/gear rules than they are for compliance with the quota. At the between‐individuals level, we find that normative motivations are significantly related to the degree of non‐compliance with the quota. Contextual factors such as quota levels are key in explaining broader non‐compliance patterns. Our results suggest that considering compliance at appropriate analytical levels is necessary to unpack motivations, guide local and national natural resource management policies, and move toward a better theory of compliance.

There has been increasing attention to and investment in local environmental stewardship in conservation and environmental management policies and programs globally. Yet environmental stewardship has not received adequate conceptual attention. Establishing a clear definition and comprehensive analytical framework could strengthen our ability to understand the factors that lead to the success or failure of environmental stewardship in different contexts and how to most effectively support and enable local efforts. Here we propose such a definition and framework. First, we define local environmental stewardship as the actions taken by individuals, groups or networks of actors, with various motivations and levels of capacity, to protect, care for or responsibly use the environment in pursuit of environmental and/or social outcomes in diverse social–ecological contexts. Next, drawing from a review of the environmental stewardship, management and governance literatures, we unpack the elements of this definition to develop an analytical framework that can facilitate research on local environmental stewardship. Finally, we discuss potential interventions and leverage points for promoting or supporting local stewardship and future applications of the framework to guide descriptive, evaluative, prescriptive or systematic analysis of environmental stewardship. Further application of this framework in diverse environmental and social contexts is recommended to refine the elements and develop insights that will guide and improve the outcomes of environmental stewardship initiatives and investments. Ultimately, our aim is to raise the profile of environmental stewardship as a valuable and holistic concept for guiding productive and sustained relationships with the environment.

While illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is a premier issue facing ocean sustainability, characterizing it is challenging due to its clandestine nature. Current approaches can be resource intensive and sometimes controversial. Using Chile as an example, we present a structured process leveraging existing capacity, fisheries officers, that provides a monitoring tool to produce transparent and stand-alone estimates on the level, structure, and characteristics of illegal fishing. We provide a national illegal fishing baseline for Chile, estimating illegal activity for 20 fisheries, representing ~ 70% of annual national landings. For four fisheries, we also estimate the relative importance of illegal activities across sectors, stakeholders, and infrastructure. While providing new information, our results also confirm previous evidence on the general patterns of illegality. Our approach provides an opportunity for government agencies to formalize their institutional knowledge, while accounting for potential biases and reducing fragmentation of knowledge that can prevent effective enforcement. Estimating illegal activity directly from fisheries enforcement officers is complementary to existing approaches, providing a cost-effective, rapid, and rigorous method to measure, monitor, and inform solutions to reduce IUU fishing.

To minimize the impacts of climate change on human wellbeing, governments, development agencies, and civil society organizations have made substantial investments in improving people’s capacity to adapt to change. Yet to date, these investments have tended to focus on a very narrow understanding of adaptive capacity. Here, we propose an approach to build adaptive capacity across five domains: the assets that people can draw upon in times of need; the flexibility to change strategies; the ability to organize and act collectively; learning to recognize and respond to change; and the agency to determine whether to change or not.

Mapping the spatial allocation of fishing effort while including key stakeholders in the decision making process is essential for effective fisheries management but is difficult to implement in complex small-scale fisheries that are diffuse, informal and multifaceted. Here we present a standardized but flexible approach that combines participatory mapping approaches (fishers' spatial preference for fishing grounds, or fishing suitability) with socioeconomic approaches (spatial extrapolation of social surrogates, or fishing capacity) to generate a comprehensive map of predicted fishing effort. Using a real world case study, in Moorea, French Polynesia, we showed that high predicted fishing effort is not simply located in front of, or close to, main fishing villages with high dependence on marine resources; it also occurs where resource dependency is moderate and generally in near-shore areas and reef passages. The integrated approach we developed can contribute to addressing the recurrent lack of fishing effort spatial data through key stakeholders' (i.e., resource users) participation. It can be tailored to a wide range of social, ecological and data availability contexts, and should help improve place-based management of natural resources.

Implementing a governance transformation entails the creation of a new institutional system when ecological, economic, or social structures make the existing system untenable. It involves building capacities, establishing viable formal and informal institutions, and triggering major societal changes. Early assessments (EAs) provide a mechanism to fine-tune and support institutional learning processes, which are needed to provide legitimacy and political acceptability of transformational change. We performed an EA of a governance transformation aimed at implementing ecosystem-based, multilevel participatory fisheries management in Chile. We performed individual interviews and workshops and synthesized existing reports to assess the main challenges of the institutionalization of the new policy. Results showed that successful implementation of the governance transformation would need to address key issues related to building trust and improving transparency, including clear protocols for cocreating knowledge and securing resources and capacities. The EA allowed us to define specific recommendations associated with legal reforms, issuing of new executive orders to clarify implementation, and improvement in operational standards by government agencies. EAs provide a fundamental tool that helps build legitimacy and sustainability of new governance systems. They bring a sense of reality, informed by social science, that allows us to understand progress in the implementation of governance transformations, by identifying rigidities that fail to accommodate emerging realities.

Coastal communities face increasing threats as global change diminishes the productivity of fisheries and agricultural land at the land-sea interface. Building adaptive capacities is essential to address threats to coastal livelihoods. Several theoretical frameworks exist to conceptualize and operationalize adaptive capacity that consider various domains and indicators. Local knowledge, as one of these domains, has been recognized as potentially crucial in determining adaptive capacity as it has been shown to contribute to risk reduction, climate change adaptation, and resilient food systems. However, little research has been conducted on indicators of adaptive capacity that include local knowledge for communities living at the land-sea interface. This study aims to assess how a measure of adaptive capacity, which includes indicators of local knowledge, connect to differences in fishers’ responses to real past and hypothetical declines in marine resources. To do this we conducted 99 semi-structured interviews in six communities along the coast of Southern Chile. Our findings reveal a high level of heterogeneity in the adaptive capacity of fishers, showing three types of individuals who displayed differential indicators of adaptive capacity. Fishers exhibited varied responses to income declines from marine resources, with 50% continuing to fish after a historic past decline, and 57.2% of fishers indicating they would also continue fishing in the event of a hypothetical 20% decline. However, a substantial 50% of decline in marine resources may lead to diversification away from fishing activities. Furthermore, our results illustrate how local knowledge, encompassing knowledge of land species and diversity of values, not only could strengthen and enable the ability to respond effectively in severe scenarios of decline that may drive diversification toward land-based activities, but also acts as a catalyst for other indicators of adaptive capacity, thereby promoting resilience and sustainable practices in the face of challenges. Thus, incorporating local knowledge in adaptive capacity frameworks is essential for supporting the well-being and adaptive strategies of coastal communities.

Marine ecosystems are in decline. New transformational changes in governance are urgently required to cope with overfishing, pollution, global changes, and other drivers of degradation. Here we explore social, political, and ecological aspects of a transformation in governance of Chile's coastal marine resources, from 1980 to today. Critical elements in the initial preparatory phase of the transformation were (i) recognition of the depletion of resource stocks, (ii) scientific knowledge on the ecology and resilience of targeted species and their role in ecosystem dynamics, and (iii) demonstration-scale experimental trials, building on smaller-scale scientific experiments, which identified new management pathways. The trials improved cooperation among scientists and fishers, integrating knowledge and establishing trust. Political turbulence and resource stock collapse provided a window of opportunity that triggered the transformation, supported by new enabling legislation. Essential elements to navigate this transformation were the ability to network knowledge from the local level to influence the decision-making processes at the national level, and a preexisting social network of fishers that provided political leverage through a national confederation of artisanal fishing collectives. The resultant governance scheme includes a revolutionary national system of marine tenure that allocates user rights and responsibilities to fisher collectives. Although fine tuning is necessary to build resilience of this new regime, this transformation has improved the sustainability of the interconnected social—ecological system. Our analysis of how this transformation unfolded provides insights into how the Chilean system could be further developed and identifies generalized pathways for improved governance of marine resources around the world.