ABSTRACT
This paper reviews and synthesises available literature about fisheries
management, property rights systems, and other institutional
arrangements.
It begins with an overview of the fundamental components of rights-based
systems and uses this information to analyse the similarities and difference
of common characteristics of the property rights systems spectrum, from
conventional to alternative. The paper also gives an overview of various
elements of community-based and co-management approaches – i.e., the
ways in which stakeholders, especially fishers, communities, and governments
interact. The paper examines the community-based fisheries management
systems in several case studies from fisheries in Southeast Asia, looking at
the respective elements of (i) rights-based systems and (ii) collaborative
management approaches.
In closing, the paper identifies some of the current knowledge gaps and
their implications for region-wide research and policy towards improving
well-being amongst poor fisheriesdependent households in Southeast
Asia.
INTRODUCTION
In the fisheries management arena, three lessons have been learned over time:
Fisheries are finite and as a result, catch has to be similarly
finite. Even tropical fisheries have a finite number of fish, and there must
be limits to the amount of fish caught.
Since fisheries are finite, not everyone can make a profit out of it.
Participation in fisheries also has to be finite, which means that access to
capture fisheries must be limited.
Even if access and participation are limited, fishermen can still
overfish their fisheries. There are many examples of limited access
fisheries that have either implicit or explicit limits on total catches
(total allowable catches or TACs) and are overfished, over capacitated, and
unprofitable. Thus, it is not enough to limit participation and catch; there
also has to be a sharing mechanism that determines clearly who gets
what.
In addition, there are two more lessons increasingly being understood by
fishermen, policy makers, and fisheries managers. First is that centrally
imposed, command and control regulatory regimes are not compatible with
commercial forces that exist in fisheries. Indeed, command and control schedules
increase fishing costs for fishermen and motivate them to catch more fish,
either legally or, in desperation, illegally.