Join us for a webinar hosted by the Collaborative Governance thematic stream working group, titled “He Au Hou: Exploring new policy options for adaptive co-management of coastal fisheries in Hawaiʻi” with Amber Datta. The webinar will take place on Thursday, August 28, 2025 at 11:00am (Arizona – UTC-7) / 8:00am (Hawaiʻi – UTC-10). Register here to attend via Zoom.
More information on the webinar:
He Au Hou: Exploring new policy options for adaptive co-management of coastal fisheries in Hawaiʻi
Adaptive co-management has arisen as a collaborative, place-based approach to effectively navigate change. This approach is utilized for coastal fisheries management in Hawaiʻi, as it has the potential to support the interweaving of community-led stewardship practices and government resource management approaches. However, implementing adaptive co-management requires overcoming myriad barriers, including the need to evolve new governance arrangements (e.g. laws, decision processes) to support collaboration and adaptive management simultaneously.
This highly applied postdoctoral research project focused on adaptive management in Hawaiʻi, where a community-based approach is central to management. It examined the past use and potential use of a novel “adaptive management law”, emergency rule-making, and regular administrative rule-making to support relatively rapid changes to administrative fisheries rules. This research aimed to contribute an empirical understanding of the opportunities and limits of implementing adaptive management through administrative rule-making, but prioritized creating recommendations for decision-makers (local communities, non-profits, and government officials) on how to implement available legal mechanisms to meet the needs of community stewards across Hawaiʻi. The study provides insight into how adaptive management actions can be approached in U.S. states and comparable democratic legal systems as fisheries governance actors navigate climate and other unpredictable social-ecological system change.
Dr. Amber W. Datta is the marine program officer at the Harold K.L. Castle Foundation. Datta holds a joint Ph.D. in conservation science, supported by the National Science Foundation’s Graduate Research Fellowship. She recently completed a Smith Conservation Postdoctoral Fellowship, where she partnered with Kuaʻāina Ulu ʻAuamo’s statewide network of coastal communities and the Hawai‘i Department of Land and Natural Resources to examine how coastal and nearshore marine decision-making can become more adaptive under state law.
She has previously worked with The Nature Conservancy, contributed to the Holomua Marine Initiative and served in volunteer leadership roles with the West Hawai‘i Fishery Council. Her fieldwork has taken her from the Great Barrier Reef to the Solomon Islands to communities across Hawai‘i.
