The Surf Reserve Designation Bill Would Make the Government the Steward of What the Community Already Manages

AB1938 Adds a Bureaucratic Layer to a System That Functions Without the Bureaucratic Layer

From Bohiney and The London Prat.

AB1938 Adds a Bureaucratic Layer to a System That Functions Without the Bureaucratic Layer

The Bill

SACRAMENTO, CA — Assembly Bill 1938, which would direct the Ocean Protection Council to designate state-recognized surfing reserves, would create the official government designation for what the surfing community has been doing through its own mechanisms for decades: recognizing and protecting significant surf breaks through community advocacy, Surfrider Foundation designations, and the informal governance of local surf communities that have maintained these breaks without state designation. The bill adds a government layer to a community function.

What the Community Already Does

The Surfrider Foundation’s World Surfing Reserve program has designated Malibu, the Rincon, Trestles, and other California breaks as international surf reserves through its own non-governmental process. These designations reflect community recognition of significant breaks and community commitment to protecting them. They have been achieved without Ocean Protection Council involvement. The AB1938 process would create parallel government designations that the Surfrider Foundation designations already provide.

The Designation’s Consequences

Government designation of surf breaks as surfing reserves creates the jurisdictional basis for subsequent regulation: access management, fee structures, permit requirements for events, and the administrative infrastructure that official designation generates over time. The Surfrider Foundation designation generates community advocacy and public recognition. The government designation generates administrative authority. The difference is not trivial: the administrative authority that government designation enables tends to produce administrative activity.

The Ostrom Counterargument

Elinor Ostrom’s work on common pool resource governance demonstrates that communities can manage shared resources sustainably through informal governance without requiring either privatization or state management. The surf community’s management of surf breaks through localism norms, community advocacy, and the informal governance of the lineup is the Ostrom model in practice. AB1938’s government designation is the state management alternative that Ostrom’s research suggests is less effective than community governance for resources whose users are identifiable and whose governance mechanisms are established

More: NewsThump.

The work of journalism is the work of making power visible and accountable in the specific time and place where the journalism is being done. Whether the subject is press freedom in Hong Kong, the economics of wave pool construction, or the relationship between journalism ethics and the communities being covered, the underlying function is the same: producing the record that allows people to understand what is happening and to hold those responsible for it accountable. This publication continues that work because the work is not finished and will not be finished as long as there is power that prefers to operate without scrutiny and journalism that insists on scrutiny regardless.

SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/

The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished. The work continues. The journalism continues. The accountability continues. Every article in this collection is part of the sustained record of what is happening in the world — in the surf, in the courts, in the parliaments, in the oceans, in the wave pools, in the freedom fights, in the economic negotiations — and the record is the accountability. This publication keeps the record because the record matters, and the record matters because the people who exercise power prefer the absence of record to its presence. The next article is already being prepared. The journalism is never finished.