Alaska's community development quota program: A complex institution affecting rural communities in disparate ways

Abstract

The Western Alaska Community Development Quota (CDQ) program created six regional CDQ groups, each of which were given fisheries quota to manage on behalf of qualifying rural Alaskan communities. Since its inception in the 1990s, the program has created dozens of jobs and millions of dollars' worth of revenue and is widely considered an example of successful community development. However, in mixed economies like those of the rural Alaskan villages covered by the CDQ program, economic metrics often fail to capture changes in non-economic factors of critical importance to residents. To address this lacuna, we examined how CDQ has influenced community well-being in four communities associated with four different CDQ groups. Interviews and focus groups in these communities indicated that CDQ's influence on well-being varied greatly. In some communities, CDQ increased local autonomy and, hence, well-being. In other communities, residents felt disenfranchised; control of their resources rested in urban board rooms to which they struggled to gain access. These findings indicate that power dynamics built into the design of the CDQ program have important ramifications for community well-being and that future development programs in fisheries management could benefit from better understandings of socio-cultural concepts such as well-being, in both program design and assessment stages.