Trapped institutional change: the quest for regulating fishing activities in protected areas

• Innovations in the co-management of Peruvian marine protected areas have stalled, failing to control unregulated fishing. • Power inequalities and hybrid institutions enable the incorporation of informal production into formal value chains. • The state's bureaucratic flexibility and discretionary regulation perpetuate unregulated practices. • Locally legitimised practices that deviate from state regulations are important to understand institutional traps. • State interventions should be based on social institutions, establish state authority and responds to local expectations. The Peruvian state has implemented innovative regulations and participatory processes to establish co-management systems in marine protected areas. Following global trends, state conservation agencies seek to establish agreements with local producers to regulate fishing activities and achieve sustainable economic growth. Yet despite efforts to regulate fishing and aquaculture activities within protected areas, unregulated production continues to increase, threatening sustainable efforts amid increasing market opportunities for fish products. Why are institutional regulatory innovations failing to achieve their objectives? This article argues that the implementation of co-management policies has led to the empowerment of local producers who combine formal and informal extractive activities that threaten coastal-marine ecosystems, configurating a socio-ecological trap. It shows how the implementation of institutional innovations for collaborative co-management has not taken into account locally legitimated, institutionalised practices that deviate from or contradict state regulations. Formalised fishers have resorted to combining formal and informal activities, fostering a process of institutional hybridisation to increase their production in response to market opportunities, while local state officials open up spaces for negotiating certain rules and sanctions in the reproduction of institutional hybridity. The research is based on a qualitative case study of the Paracas National Reserve (PNR), the oldest coastal marine protected area in Peru. It focuses on the analysis of two activities that the state is attempting to co-manage: giant kelp collection and scallop aquaculture. Based on interpretative approaches and qualitative research methods, the data collection techniques included archival review, interviews, and non-participant observation.