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In travelling around the world working on fisheries co-management, the question that people always seem to ask is: 'I understand the concept of co-management and it seems to be a good management strategy, but how do we make it work in practice?' This question was really the driving force behind the writing of this handbook. There seemed to be a need to have a practical reference on a process for community-based co-management. While there were a number of very good publications available which discuss individual activities and components of the process of community-based co-management, there was no one publication which could serve as a reference to the process from beginning or pre-implementation, through implementation, to post-implementation.

This handbook is meant to be a companion volume to the book, Managing Small-scale Fisheries: Alternative Directions and Methods, authored by Fikret Berkes, Robin Mahon, Patrick McConney, Richard Pollnac and Robert Pomeroy (2001). It is meant to provide more detail on the application of community-based co-management in small-scale fisheries. This handbook focuses on small-scale fisheries (freshwater, floodplain, estuarine or marine) in developing countries. The community-based co-management process described may also be relevant to small-scale fisheries in developed countries, as well as to other coastal resource (i.e. coral reefs, mangroves, seagrass, wetlands) management.

This handbook is based on years of experience conducting research on and practising community-based co-management in Asia, Africa, and the Caribbean and Latin America. There are far too many people who have shared their knowledge, experience and life with us to thank each one individually.

We hope this handbook will serve its purpose. We request feedback from you, the users, on how to improve the handbook. As co-management is a process, so is the development of a handbook. There is still a great deal to learn and share as we use community-based co-management to hopefully improve fisheries and marine resources and the lives of the people who depend upon these resources.

Document(s) 4 de 18