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IDRC, R. Charbonneau.

This chapter contains a discussion of concepts and definitions about community-based co-management.

2.1. Co-management Defined

Cooperative management or co-management can be defined as a partnership arrangement in which the community of local resource users (fishers), government, other stakeholders (boat owners, fish traders, boat builders, business people, etc.) and external agents (non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic and research institutions) share the responsibility and authority for the management of the fishery (Fig. 2.1). Through consultations and negotiations, the partners develop a formal agreement on their respective roles, responsibilities and rights in management, referred to as 'negotiated power'. Co-management is also called participatory, joint, stakeholder, multi-party or collaborative management.

Fig. 2.1. Co-management is a partnership.

Co-management covers various partnership arrangements and degrees of power sharing and integration of local (informal, traditional, customary) and centralized government management systems (Fig. 2.2). Fisheries co-management can be classified into five broad types according to the roles government and fishers play (Sen and Nielsen, 1996):

• Instructive: There is only minimal exchange of information between government and fishers. This type of co-management regime is only different from centralized management in the sense that the mechanisms exist for dialogue with users, but the process itself tends to be government informing fishers on the decisions they plan to make.

• Consultative: Mechanisms exist for government to consult with fishers but all decisions are taken by government.

• Cooperative: This type of co-management is where government and fishers cooperate together as equal partners in decision-making.

• Advisory: Fishers advise government of decisions to be taken and government endorses these decisions.

• Informative: Government has delegated authority to make decisions to fisher groups who are responsible for informing government of these decisions.

Fig. 2.2. Co-management integrates local and centralized government management systems.

It is generally acknowledged that not all responsibility and authority should be vested at the community level (Box 2.1). The amount and types of responsibility and/or authority that the state level and the various community levels have will differ, and depend upon country and site-specific conditions. The substance of this sharing of responsibility and authority will be negotiated between community members and government and be within the boundaries of government policy. Determining what kind and how much responsibility and/or authority to allocate to the community level is ultimately a political decision in which government will always play a more decisive role. However, the key to co-management is negotiated power where the interaction of the state and non-state actors would be an important factor in defining a common and acceptable balance in sharing power and allocating responsibilities.

2.2. Co-management as a Process

There is no blueprint or model for co-management but rather a variety of arrangements from which to choose to suit a specific context. Co-management should be viewed not as a single strategy to solve all problems of fisheries management, but rather as a process of resource management, maturing, adjusting and adapting to changing conditions over time. A healthy co-management process will change over time in response to changes in the level of trust, credibility, legitimacy and success of the partners and the whole co-management arrangement. Co-management involves aspects of democratization, social empowerment, power sharing and decentralization. Co-management attempts to overcome the distrust, corruption, fragmentation and inefficiency of existing fisheries management arrangements through collaboration. Co-management is adaptive; that is, through a learning process, information is shared among partners, leading to continuous modifications and improvements in management. Through co-management, the partners actively contribute and work together on fisheries management. They share the costs and benefits and the successes and failures.

Co-management is not a regulatory technique, although regulations are used in co-management. It is a participatory management strategy that provides and maintains a forum or structure for action on empowerment, rule making, conflict management, power sharing, social learning, dialogue and communication, and development among the partners. Co-management is a consensus-driven process of recognizing different values, needs, concerns and interests involved in managing the resource. Partnerships, roles and responsibilities are pursued, strengthened and redefined at different times in the co-management process, depending on the needs and opportunities, the legal environment, the political support, capacities of partners and trust between partners. The co-management process may include formal and/or informal organizations of fishers and other stakeholders.

The establishment and operation of co-management can be complex, costly, time consuming and sometimes confusing. Research has shown that it may take 3 to 5 years to organize and initiate activities and interventions at the community level. It will also take this time for the partners to address concerns about legitimacy, trust, accountability and transparency.

Co-management can be considered as a middle course between the government's concern about social efficiency and equity and local concerns for active participation and self-regulation. Co-management involves a formal or informal agreement among partners to share power and to share the right to manage. Co-management can serve as a mechanism not only for fisheries management but also for community, economic and social development as it promotes fisher and community participation in solving problems and addressing needs. In some cases, co-management may be simply a formal recognition of a fisheries management system that already exists; some informal and customary community-based management strategies are already in place, operating side-by-side with formal state-level management strategies.

2.3. Stakeholder Involvement

Other than fishers, stakeholders (individuals, groups or organizations who are in one way or another interested, involved or affected (positively or negatively) by a particular action) that derive economic benefit from the resource (for example, boat owners, fish traders, business suppliers, police, politicians, consumers) should also be considered in co-management (see Chapter 4). These stakeholders often hold considerable political and/or economic influence in the community and over resource use and management. A proper balance of representation among stakeholders will prove crucial to the success of co-management (Box 2.2). A central question, however, is which stakeholders should be represented and involved and how those representatives should be chosen. While it is useful to have representation of all stakeholders, a line must be drawn or the process will break down from the representation of too many interests. As will be discussed in Chapter 5, stakeholder analysis can help to identify those stakeholders who should be included in co-management. This question can be partially answered by determining the spatial scale at which co-management should operate. The best opportunity for co-management seems to occur at the local or 'community' scale (although national-level fisheries advisory bodies to government can also be effective).

2.4. Equity and Social Justice

Through co-management, equity and social justice in fisheries management is sought. Equity and the equitable sharing of power among and between government, fishers and other stakeholders in a community are often thorny issues in co-management. These issues are often visible along social and economic divides in a given community, such as gender roles. Those fishers who will receive the costs (and benefits) of management and regulation need to have a voice in decision-making about fisheries management. Equity and social justice is brought about through empowerment and active participation in the planning and implementation of fisheries co-management. Responsibility means fishers have a share in the decision-making process and bear the costs and benefits of those decisions. The theme of co-management is that self-involvement in the management of the resource will lead to a stronger commitment to comply with the management strategy and regulations. The mutuality of interests and the sharing of responsibility among and between partners will help to narrow the distance between resource managers and fishers, bringing about closer compatibility of the objectives of management.

2.5. Co-management and Common Property

Co-management is based on common property theory (Box 2.3). Co-management provides for the collective governance of common property resources. Common property regimes are forms of management grounded in a set of individually accepted rights and rules for the sustainable and interdependent use of collective goods. A collective good is defined as a resource that is managed and controlled by a group of users. A common property regime is composed of a recognized group of users, a well-defined resource that the group uses and manages, and a set of institutional arrangements for use of the resource. In some situations the group may formalize the institutional arrangements with an organizational structure for management. Common property represents private property for the group of co-owners (Gibbs and Bromley, 1987).

Common property resources share two key characteristics (Ostrom, 1991). First, these are resources for which exclusion (or control of access) of potential users is problematic. Second, the supply is limited; that is, consumption by one user reduces its availability to others. It is also important to make a distinction between a resource unit and a resource system. A resource unit (what individuals use from the resource system such as fish) is not jointly used; while the resource system itself, the fishery, is subject to joint use.

Co-management is a governance arrangement located between pure state property and pure communal property regimes. It should be noted that while state law can enforce or strengthen communal property, it might not always do so. The level of help from the state will depend on its willingness to support communal property systems.

2.6. Institutional Arrangements and Collective Action

Common property regimes as collective resource management systems have been shown to develop when a group of individuals is highly dependent on a resource and when the availability of the resource is uncertain or limited (Runge, 1992). If the resource problem is repeatedly experienced, such as low or no catch, and if it exists within a single community of users, the fishers are likely to develop a collective institutional arrangement to deal with the problem. Institutional arrangements are sets of rights the fishers possess in relation to the resource and the rules that define what actions they can take in utilizing the resource. In the face of uncertainty in resource availability, fishers are more willing to group together to trade-off some benefit from individual use of the resource for the collective assurance that the resource will be used in a more equitable and sustainable manner (Gibbs and Bromley, 1987). Institutions, through rights and rules, provide incentives for the group members to take certain actions to achieve a desired outcome. Institutional arrangements require an investment of time on the members' part to build. Coordination and information activities are initial aspects of building institutions. The transaction process of developing institutions will have costs. These transaction costs can be defined as the costs of: (i) obtaining information about the resource and what users are doing with it; (ii) reaching agreements with others in the group with respect to its use; and (iii) enforcing agreements that have been reached. For common property regimes, these costs are part of the collective decision-making process.

An individual member of the group relies on reciprocal behaviour from other members of the group regarding their adherence to the agreed-upon rules for management. An individual's choice of behaviour in a collective action (action taken by a group (either directly or on its behalf through an organization) in pursuit of members perceived shared interests) situation will depend upon how he or she weighs the benefits and costs of various alternatives and their likely outcomes. An individual's choices are often affected by limited information which leads to uncertainty and by the level of opportunistic behaviour (taking advantage of a situation in your own self-interest so as to get the benefit while bearing less of the cost) that individual resource users can expect from other resource users. Individuals also have differing discount rates (the value people put on the future benefits from the resource versus today); many poor fishers, for example, attribute less value to benefits that they expect to receive in the future, and more value to those expected in the present (Ostrom, 1991).

In some situations, individuals may have incentives to adopt opportunistic strategies to circumvent the rules and to obtain disproportionate benefits at the cost of others. Three types of opportunistic behaviour may occur: (i) free riding, (ii) corruption, and (iii) rent seeking. Free riders (holding back on one's contribution so as to get the benefit while bearing less of the cost) respond to incentives to engage in other activities while other members of the group work. Corruption can occur when incentives exist for rules to be changed for an individual through, for example, the provision of illegal payments. Rent seeking (the gaining of excess profits from the resource) can occur when an individual's assets, for example, property rights, increase in value through special advantages (Ostrom, 1992; Tang, 1992). The imperative of the common property regime is to establish institutional arrangements which reduce or minimize transaction costs and counteract opportunistic behaviour.

The principal problem faced by group members of a common property regime is how to organize themselves. That is, how to change from a situation of independent action to one of collective action and coordinated strategies to obtain greater joint benefits and reduce joint harm. A sense of 'commonality', commitment and compliance must be established for the collective good. There are two broad classes of problems that must be overcome by the collective group. The first, called appropriation problems, is concerned with how to allocate the resource units (i.e. fish) in an economically efficient and equitable manner among the resource users. The second, called provision prob­lems, is focused on behavioural incentives to assigned duties to maintain and improve the resource over time.

Collective action does not occur where there is no organization that has authority to make decisions and to establish rules over the use of the resource. Note that institutions are not organizations. Organizations operationalize institutional arrangements (Bromley, 1991). There can be a variety of organizational forms for governing the resource, which may range from a government agency or enterprise to the fishers themselves. The common property regime will need to establish an agenda and goals which are to be achieved. This may include an identification of the problem or issue to be addressed, management and adjudication. The authority system to ensure that fishers' expectations are met is normally inherent in the organization.

Membership within common property regimes is not always equal. Some members may have fewer or lesser rights than others. Access to the resource, for example, may change or rotate for members through the year. Corresponding duties may or may not vary accordingly. The rights and duties of members of the group must be clearly specified.

Collective action entails problems of coordination that do not exist in other resource regimes, such as private property. In order to organize the harvesting, for example, fishers must develop rules to establish how rights are to be exercised. Rules give substance to rights, structure a situation, define the behaviour of the group's members and reduce conflict. Rules may create different incentive structures that affect cooperation or conflict among fishers (Tang, 1992). The type of rules that are devised will depend upon the severity of the problem the fishers face, the level of information they possess, sociocultural traditions, the extent of the bundle of rights they hold, the level of opportunistic behaviour, and the ease with which actions can be monitored and enforced. Rules require, permit or forbid some actions or outcome. Rules provide stability of expectations, and efforts to change rules can rapidly reduce their stability (Ostrom, 1991).

The institutions and rules fishers use may not always be the same as formal laws. The fishers may develop institutions and rules to meet their needs which are not legitimized by government.

For institutional arrangements to be maintained over time, it is important to develop workable procedures for monitoring the behaviour of fishers, enforcing against non-conforming behaviour with sanctions, and settling conflicts. The ease and costliness of monitoring rules devised to organize the fishing activity depend upon the physical nature of the resource, the rules-in-use and the level of conformance to the rules (Ostrom, 1990). The number of times that non-conformance must be measured affects the cost of monitoring. The ease and cost of monitoring will depend upon whether the fishers can monitor compliance themselves, as they fish or through self-monitoring incentives, or if they must establish more elaborate arrangements, such as external authorities.

Fishers who violate the rules need to have sanctions imposed upon them. What constitutes an effective sanction will vary depending upon the nature of the group of fishers. In most cases, sanctions are likely to increase with the severity of the offence (Ostrom, 1992).

Conflicts may arise within the common property regime and between users. The intensity and frequency of conflicts are likely to be closely related to the perceived relative scarcity of the resource. Several factors can lead to conflict, including: (i) absence of recognized rules, (ii) divergence in the interpretation of the rules, and (iii) outright trespass of a rule. Part of the institutional process must include a mechanism for discussing and resolving what is and is not a rule violation and how to settle the dispute. This can be done formally or informally. In general, for monitoring and sanctions to be effective, the fisher must have a stake in institutional processes and be involved in monitoring and enforcement (Townsend and Wilson, 1987).

Common property regimes and their associated institutional arrangements need to be dynamic in order to adjust to new opportunities, internal growth, externalities and institutional dissonance (Ostrom, 1992). Institution building is a long-term process and often is based on trial and error. Allocation rules, for example, may need to change as a result of poor compliance. The structuring of institutions must be an ongoing process to meet the changing conditions.

Whether or not local, self-governing institutions can be developed is often dependent upon governmental policies. In countries which do not recognize the rights of local community organizations or do not create opportunities for communities to organize themselves in a de facto manner, it is more difficult for fishers to successfully find solutions to collective action problems. Many governments are not willing to give up management authority over resources or do not believe that self-governing organizations can be successful. There is no single answer for how to resolve these differences.

2.7. Community-based Management

Community-based management (CBM) is a central element of co-management. There is some debate over the similarities and differences between co-management and CBM. Community-based resource management, as explained by Korten (1987), includes several elements: a group of people with common interests, mechanisms for effective and equitable management of conflict, community control and management of productive resources, local systems or mechanisms for capture and use of available resources, broadly distributed participation in control of resources within the community, and local accountability in management. Sajise (1995) has defined community-based resource management (CBRM) as 'a process by which the people themselves are given the opportunity and/or responsibility to manage their own resources; define their needs, goals, and aspirations; and to make decisions affecting their well-being.' Sajise (1995) further states that:

CBRM as an approach emphasizes a community's capability, responsibility and accountability with regard to managing resources. It is inherently evolutionary, participatory and locale-specific and considers the technical, sociocultural, economic, political and environmental factors impinging upon the community.

CBRM is basically seen as community empowerment for resource productivity, sustainability and equity.

Ferrer and Nozawa (1997) state that:

community-based coastal resource management (CBCRM) is people-centered, community-oriented and resource-based. It starts from the basic premise that people have the innate capacity to understand and act on their own problems. It begins where the people are, i.e., what the people already know, and builds on this knowledge to develop further their knowledge and create a consciousness.

They further state that:

it strives for more active people's participation in the planning, implementation and evaluation of coastal resources management programmes. CBCRM allows each community to develop a management strategy which meets its own particular needs and conditions, thus enabling a greater degree of flexibility and modification. A central theme of CBCRM is empowerment, specifically the control over and ability to manage productive resources in the interest of one's own family and community. It invokes a basic principle of control and accountability which maintains that control over an action should rest with the people who bear its consequences.

Fellizar (1994) writes:

CBRM can be looked at in various ways. It can be a process, a strategy, an approach, a goal or a tool. It is a process through which the people themselves are given the opportunity and/or responsibility to manage their own resources; define their needs, goals and aspirations; and make decisions affecting their well-being. A strategy for achieving a people-centered development, CBRM has a decision-making focus in which the sustainable use of natural resources in a given area lies with the people in the local communities. CBRM is an approach through which communities are given the opportunity and responsibility to manage in a sustained way the community resources, define or identify the amount of resources and future needs, and their goals and aspirations, and make decisions affecting their common well-being as determined by technical, sociocultural, economic, political and environmental factors. It is a tool which facilitates the development of multilevel resource management skills vital to the realization of potentials of the community. Also, CBRM stands for people empowerment and achieving equity and sustainability in natural resource management. The key concepts are community, resources, management, access and control over resources, viable organizations and availability of suitable technology for resource management and utilization.

Rivera (1997) states that the CBCRM approach has several characteristics. It is consensus-driven and geared towards achieving a balance of interests. The emphasis is on communities and at its core is the community organization. It is a process of governance and political decision-making and it is geared towards the formation of partnerships and power-sharing. Rivera (1997) writes:

It can be argued that CBCRM is a politically negotiated process of making decisions on the ownership, control and overall policy directions of coastal resources. Questions of resource allocation, distribution of resource benefits and management arrangements among stakeholders will always have to be included. Moreover, CBCRMs central concern is the empowerment of groups and social actors and a sense of self-reliance at the micro-level that stimulates a more synergistic and dynamic linkage to the meso- and macro-levels. Further, it can be argued that CBCRM is the route to co-management. It is maintained that power issues are central to the formation of co-management schemes. Hence, partnerships between government and communities should take careful consideration of the capacities of communities in making and sustaining these partnerships.

Rivera states that in the Philippines, much of the work of non-governmental organizations (NGOs) on CBCRM can really be considered as co-management. Co-management is referred to by the NGOs as tripartite formation between government, community and the NGO. NGOs also refer to co-management as 'scaling-up', i.e. the recognition that the state cannot be ignored in sustaining local actions. The scaling-up efforts of NGOs include project replication, expansion of the geographic scale of management efforts (i.e. single community to multi-jurisdictional), building grassroots movements and influencing policy reform.

2.8. CBM and Co-management

The above definitions of community-based resource management show that while there are many similarities and differences between co-management and CBM, there are differences in the focus of each strategy. These differences centre on the level and timing of government participation in the process. CBM is people-centred and community-focused, while co-management focuses on these issues plus on a partnership arrangement between government and the local community of resource users. The process of resource management is organized differently too. Co-management has a broader scope and scale than CBM with a focus both inside and outside the community. The government may play a minor role in CBM; co-management, on the other hand, by definition includes a major and active government role.

Co-management often addresses issues beyond the community level, at regional and national levels, and of multiple stakeholders, and allows these issues, as they affect the community, to be brought more effectively into the domain of the community. CBM practitioners sometimes view government as an external player and adversary, to be brought into the process only at a late stage, if at all. This can lead to misunderstandings and lack of full support from government. Co-management strategies, on the other hand, involve government agencies, resource managers and elected officials early and equally, along with the community and stakeholders, developing trust between the participants.

When CBM is considered an integral part of co-management, it can be called community-based co-management. Community-based co-management includes the characteristics of both CBM and co-management; that is, it is people-centred, community-oriented, resource-based and partnership-based. Thus, community-based co-management has the community as its focus, yet recognizes that to sustain such action, a horizontal (across the community) and vertical (with external to the community organizations and institutions such as government) link is necessary. Community-based co-management is most often found in developing countries due to their need for overall community and economic development and social empowerment, in addition to resource management.

One variation of community-based co-management is traditional or customary co-management. Such systems are or were used to manage coastal fisheries in various countries around the world. Existing examples in Asia and the Pacific have been documented over a wide discontinuous geographical range (Ruddle, 1994). Many of these systems play a valuable role in fisheries management and will be useful into the future, locally and nationally. Traditional or customary co-management is a formal recognition of the informal systems as used, for example, in Vanuatu and Fiji. Co-management can serve as a mechanism to legally recognize and protect these traditional and customary systems and to specify authority and responsibility between the community and government. It also involves a definition of shared powers and authority.

Stakeholder-centred co-management seems to be more common in developed countries, where the emphasis is to get the users participating in the resource management process. It can best be characterized as government–industry partnership that involves user groups in the making of resource management decisions. This category of co-management focuses on having fishers and other stakeholders represented through various organizational arrangements in management. Unlike community-based co-management, little or no attention is given to community development and social empowerment of fishers. Examples of stakeholder-centred co-management can be seen in several countries in northern Europe and North America (Nielsen and Vedsmand, 1995; McCay and Jentoft, 1996).

It should be noted that co-management and integrated coastal management (ICM) share many similarities such as the coordination of various stakeholders at different levels and an active role of government (Christie and White, 1997).

2.9. Advantages and Disadvantages

The potential advantages of co-management include:

1. A more transparent, accountable and autonomous management system.

2. A more democratic and participatory system.

3. More economical than centralized management systems; requiring less to be spent on management administration and enforcement, in the long run.

4. Through involvement in management, fishers take responsibility for a number of managerial functions.

5. Makes maximum use of indigenous knowledge and expertise to provide information on the resource base and to complement scientific information for management.

6. Improved stewardship of aquatic and coastal resources and management.

7. Management is accountable to local areas. Fishing communities are able to devise and administer management plans and regulatory measures that are more appropriate to local conditions. (Localized solutions to local problems.)

8. By giving the fishers a sense of ownership over the resource, co-management provides a powerful incentive for them to view the resource as a long-term asset rather than to discount its future returns.

9. Various interests and stakeholders are brought together to provide a more comprehensive understanding of the resource.

10. Since the community is involved in the formulation and implementation of co-management measures, a higher degree of acceptability, legitimacy and compliance to plans and regulations can be expected.

11. Community members can enforce standards of behaviour more effectively than bureaucracies can.

12. Increased communication and understanding among all concerned can minimize social conflict and maintain or improve social cohesion in the community.

Despite all these advantages, co-management has several disadvantages and problems, including:

1. It may not be suitable for every fishing community. Many communities may not be willing or able to take on the responsibility of co-management.

2. Leadership and appropriate local institutions, such as fisher organizations, may not exist within the community to initiate or sustain co-management efforts.

3. In the short-run, there are high initial investments of time, financial resources and human resources to establish co-management.

4. For many individuals and communities, the incentive(s) – economic, social and/or political – to engage in co-management may not be present.

5. The risks involved in changing fisheries management strategies may be too high for some communities and fishers.

6. The costs for individuals to participate in co-management strategies (time, money) may outweigh the expected benefits.

7. Sufficient political will may not exist to support co-management.

8. Unease of political leaders and government officials to share power.

9. The community may not have the capacity to be an effective and equitable governing institution.

10. Actions by user groups outside the immediate community may undermine or destroy the management activities undertaken by the community.

11. Particular local resource characteristics, such as fish migratory patterns, may make it difficult or impossible for the community to manage the resource.

12. The need to develop a consensus from a wide range of interests may lengthen the decision-making process and result in weaker, compromised measures.

13. There may be shifts in 'power bases' (political, economic, social) that are not in the best interests of all partners.

14. There are those who feel that co-management is too costly and time consuming and that other alternatives, such as stricter regulations, may be better.

15. There is always a possibility of unbalanced and inequitable sharing of power between government and communities and the use of co-management by some political leaders solely for their own purposes.

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