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It is estimated that there are 51 million fishermen in the world of whom 50 million are small-scale, subsistence, or artisanal operators mainly living and working in the developing world. Unfortunately, the common-property fish resources that these fishermen depend upon for their livelihood are in a precarious state. Why do we find ourselves in this critical situation and what can we do to correct it? Researchers and stakeholders are actively searching for new forms of fishery management, and one of the most promising forms centres around approaches involving the users – the fishermen themselves – working in some form of shared or collaborative management with government authorities.

For many years, Canada's International Development Research Centre (IDRC) has maintained an active portfolio of projects examining co-management and communitybased management in fisheries and other resource systems. Since the publication of Managing Small-scale Fisheries (Berkes et al., 2001), there has been an increasing demand for guidance on what IDRC has learned about co-management, particularly across different geographical settings, socio-economic conditions, and histories of operation; and how it could apply to other types of fishing, link to other livelihoods, relate to other dynamic processes (such as the migration of fishermen), and respond to the seasonal nature of fish resources. This book attempts to respond to this demand by compiling recent experience from as wide a cross section of research as possible.

During the development of this book, both IDRC and the authors wrestled with the concept of co-management. Given the evolving nature of this science, for example, what does co-management cover and how widely is the concept accepted? Importantly, there has been increasing acceptance of the idea that co-management is not an end point but rather a process – a process of adaptive learning. Recognizing the diversity of both local contexts (ecological and social) and factors depleting the fishery (such and overfishing and habitat destruction), however, would it even be possible to put together a book of lessons learned? As you will soon discover, IDRC and the authors felt that it was neither possible nor desirable to produce a blueprint for fishery co-management. Rather, we agreed that it would be more useful to document the co-management process, as undertaken by both IDRC partners and others, and to put this experience into a form that could be shared with anyone interested in learning more about co-management and what others have learned. This shared and adaptive approach to learning is what this book is all about. In the pages that follow, you will find a complete picture of the co-management process: strengths, weaknesses, methods, activities, checklists and so on.

IDRC will continue to field-test this publication. Our evolving support for research on the co-management of natural resources is part of IDRC's ongoing work around governance, decentralization and adaptive learning, most of which are managed through the Centre's Rural Poverty and Environment programme. Details on this and other IDRC programmes can be found on our website: web.idrc.ca.

F. Brian Davy

Senior Program Specialist
Environment and Natural Resource Management
International Development Research Centre
Ottawa, Canada
email: bdavy@idrc.ca

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