Jorge Torre Cosio

Multi-scale governance for effective marine resource management suggests collective decision making, the devolution of some rights and responsibilities to various entities, co-production of knowledge, and coupling governance and ecological scales. This talk will describe the elements of multi-scale governance of Mexican small-scale fisheries and the contribution of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to this approach. Given NGOs’ agenda shift in the Gulf of California region from advocacy for environmental conservation to participation in sustainable management, this research highlights how NGOs can contribute to multi-scale governance through a framework for the evaluation of management processes and the contribution of different stakeholders applied to any management process.

Jorge Torre is the Executive Director and co-founder of Comunidad y Biodiversidad, (www.cobi.org.mx), a nongovernmental organization focusing on the conservation of marine biodiversity through effective participatory approaches. He obtained his Ph.D. from the School of Natural Resources, The University of Arizona, in 2002.