Co-management in Small-scale Fisheries: Creating Effective Links among Stakeholders

Establishing effective operational linkages among stakeholders in resource management depends on the institutional environment within which management occurs. As resource-based industries have developed and industrialized, resource management has tended to become specialized and centralized. Centralized management has been fraught with problems and has in many cases proven ineffective in the promotion of long-term sustainability. The centralized approach has often resulted in poorly designed regulations, a lack of buy-in by user groups, low levels of compliance, and ineffective controls on exploitation. As a result, interest in decentralized management approaches has increased. Co-management is the sharing of authority and responsibility among government and stakeholders. The main appeal of co-management is that it offers the prospect of relief from some of the more negative aspects of centralized decisionmaking. This paper discusses establishing effective linkages among stakeholders in the context of small-scale fishery co-management. The main message of the paper is that underlying the establishment of linkages among governments and communities are basic economic dynamics that influence the effectiveness of those linkages. These dynamics relate to the transactions costs of co-management and to its requirements for human capital. Examples are provided of fishery co-management, where costs and human capital have played a critical role in the degree of management effectiveness.