Cadastralizing or coordinating the clam commons: Can competing community and government visions of wild and farmed fisheries be reconciled?

Abstract

This paper considers socio-political, ecological, and economic dimensions of local efforts to negotiate local control over state-sponsored development of clam aquaculture in one region of British Columbia, Canada. Aquaculture is conceptualized as a type of cadastralization, following James Scott's characterization of state efforts to make the productivity of landscapes more measurable for purposes of rent generation and taxation. The discussion invites a rethinking of community resistance to development as less about the notion of development itself than about the terms under which it occurs, since the community engages in its own form of cadastralization as a negotiating strategy. The concept of cadastralization enriches common property theory approaches to ownership and management by highlighting the key role of technological innovations in allowing global market forces to more easily penetrate local property relationships. At the same time it enables new forms of resistance and assertion of local visions of development. ►Clam tenures let states extract more value from land and download costs onto users. ►Clam farming tenure systems allow non-locals to gain control over beaches. ►Clam farming plans ignore local ecological, economic, and social conditions. ►Locals want clam farming experiments without sacrificing important wild fisheries. ►Mapping of landscape values is used by locals to balance wild and farmed fisheries