Human institutions—ways of organizing activities—affect the resilience of the environment. Locally evolved institutional arrangements governed by stable communities and buffered from outside forces have sustained resources successfully for centuries, although they often fail when rapid change occurs. Ideal conditions for governance are increasingly rare. Critical problems, such as transboundary pollution, tropical deforestation, and climate change, are at larger scales and involve nonlocal influences. Promising strategies for addressing these problems include dialogue among interested parties, officials, and scientists; complex, redundant, and layered institutions; a mix of institutional types; and designs that facilitate experimentation, learning, and change.

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The Struggle to Govern the Commons

▪ Abstract Contemporary policy analysis of the governance of common-pool resources is based on three core assumptions: (a) resource users are norm-free maximizers of immediate gains, who will not cooperate to overcome the commons dilemmas they face; (b) designing rules to change incentives of participants is a relatively simple analytical task; and (c) organization itself requires central direction. The chapter shows that these assumptions are a poor foundation for policy analysis. Findings from carefully controlled laboratory experiments that challenge the first assumption are summarized. A different assumption that humans are fallible, boundedly rational, and norm-using is adopted. The complexity of using rules as tools to change the structure of commons dilemmas is then discussed, drawing on extensive research on rules in field settings. Viewing all policies as experiments with a probability of failure, recent research on a different form of general organization—that of complex adaptive systems—is appl...

Coping with tragedies of the commons

general and multidisciplinary evaluations of co-management regimes and the conditions for social, economic and ecological success within such regimes are lacking. Here we examine 130 comanaged fisheries in a wide range of countries with different degrees of development, ecosystems, fishing sectors and type of resources. We identified strong leadership as the most important attribute contributing to success, followed by individual or community quotas, social cohesion and protected areas. Less important conditions included enforcement mechanisms, long-term management policies and life history of the resources. Fisheries were most successful when at least eight co-management attributes were present, showing a strong positive relationship between the number of these attributes and success, owing to redundancy in management regulations. Our results demonstrate the critical importance of

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Leadership, social capital and incentives promote successful fisheries

▪ Abstract This review asks the question: What new avenues of social science enquiry are suggested by new ecological thinking, with its focus on nonequilibrium dynamics, spatial and temporal variation, complexity, and uncertainty? Following a review of the emergence of the “new ecology” and the highlighting of contrasts with earlier “balance of nature” perspectives, work emerging from ecological anthropology, political ecology, environmental and ecological economics, and debates about nature and culture are examined. With some important exceptions, much social science work and associated popular and policy debates remain firmly wedded to a static and equilibrial view. This review turns to three areas where a more dynamic perspective has emerged. Each has the potential to take central elements of new ecological thinking seriously, sometimes with major practical consequences for planning, intervention design, and management. First is the concern with spatial and temporal dynamics developed in detailed and s...

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New Ecology and the Social Sciences: What Prospects for a Fruitful Engagement?

The problem of fit is about the interplay between the human and ecosystem dimensions in social-ecological systems that are not just linked but truly integrated. This interplay takes place across temporal and spatial scales and institutional and organizational levels in systems that are increasingly being interpreted as complex adaptive systems. In 1997, we were invited to produce one of three background papers related to a, at that time, new initiative called Institutional Dimensions of Global Environmental Change (IDEG), a research activity of the International Human Dimensions Program of Global Environmental Change (IHDP). The paper, which exists as a discussion paper of the IHDP, has generated considerable interest. Here we publish the original paper 10 years later with an extended introduction and with reflections on some of the issues raised in the original paper concerning problems of fit.

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The Problem of Fit between Ecosystems and Institutions: Ten Years Later

For twenty-five years, policies to restrict access to fisheries have been dominant topics in fishery economics. During this period, economists have accumulated an extensive theoretical literature on restricted access. The adoption of new restricted access programs, and the maturing of existing programs, has generated an increasing body of practical experience with restricted access. The present work conducts an empirical survey of this experience and attempts to find themes that support or contradict the economic theories of restricted

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3146619

Entry Restrictions in the Fishery: A Survey of the Evidence

This FAO Fisheries Technical Paper documents 32 case studies and four syntheses (Canada, Japan, New Zealand and the United States of America) on the role of industry in the governance and management of fisheries. The studies are drawn from ongoing practice in Europe, North America, Japan and Australasia. The types of fisheries cover those for crustaceans, fish, molluscs and echinoderms. In general the scale of the fisheries tends to be small, which has been one of the reasons attributed to their success. In all but one case it is clear that well-defined fishery rights have contributed to the success of the programmes though the initiative for development and adoption of the programmes covers a range of institutional causes. The case studies are intended to inform and provide potential models that may be used in other fisheries. Townsend, R.; Shotton, R.; Uchida, H. (eds). Case studies in fisheries self-governance. FAO Fisheries Technical Paper. No. 504. Rome, FAO. 2008. 45 p.

Case studies in fisheries self-governance

In most fisheries, a number of species are unintentionally caught as bycatch while attempting to catch the targeted species. While much of the bycatch problem is technological in nature due to imperfect selectivity of the fishing gear, fisher behaviour also plays a major role. How, when and where fishers choose to fish can influence catch composition and thereby the quantity of bycatch. Behavioural changes can be encouraged through the development of an appropriate set of incentives — both economic and social — to avoid bycatch and reduce discarding. In this paper, a number of alternative incentive-based bycatch management systems are reviewed. The potential applicability of these systems to quota species, non-commercial species and threatened or conservation-dependent species (such as turtles, seals, dolphins) is reviewed, and examples of their application are presented. The review concludes that incentive-based approaches can reduce the level of bycatch and discarding in most fisheries.

Ralph E. Townsend

Papers

Entry Restrictions in the Fishery: A Survey of the Evidence

Case studies in fisheries self-governance

Use of Incentive-Based Management Systems to Limit Bycatch and Discarding

Fisheries self-governance: corporate or cooperative structures?

Chaotic dynamics in a multiple species fishery: a model of community predation