Changing property regimes in the aquatic environments of the Lower Mekong Basin in Southern Laos and Northern Thailand

Abstract

This paper principally deals with changing aspect of aquatic property regimes in tropical Southeast Asia to understand how local hegemony plays an important role both of freshwater resource use and local development, with special reference to migratory fish (white fish) and non-migratory fish (black fish) in various aquatic environments. In tropical Southeast Asia, freshwater resources have deteriorated to a great degree. This is due to anthropogenic alteration of the environment owing to industrial and agricultural development, and uncontrolled and mismanaged exploitation of resources. To protect from environmental degradation and resource depletion, both the government and local communities have tackled the problem, adopting various sets of formal and informal measures. In this paper, case studies of freshwater resource use in Laos and Thailand and its change over time are examined. In the Lower Mekong Basin of southern Laos, 68 fish conservation zones (FCZs) were established as sanctuaries in 63 fishing communities with a support of international agencies during the period of 1993 and 1997. As migratory fish did not increase except some cyprinid species, and thus it turned to be partly a failure, some local communities converted FCZs’ sanctuary to a common property for a limited social purpose since around 2000s. In one community, FCZ was auctioned for public use only for a few days and then open to community members. In paddy field system in Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia (eg., Thailand and Cambodia), fishing in paddies is open access while ponds used to be a common property and were used for communal fishing (phaa nong) mainly for non-migratory fish. Since around 2000s, communal ponds in some communities of Laos and Thailand have come to be privatized so as to contrive to raise funds for community development, although big ponds tend to be maintained as a common property. Also, some individuals claimed an exclusive use of the pond for aquaculture or lotus harvest. Elsewhere, ponds were auctioned for a few days’ exclusive use, and then were open to public. The change from communal to privatized property through a sale, a one-sided occupation, or auction system (as temporal privatization), does not simply suggest a collapse of community solidarity, but generally a rise of social hegemony to realize community development by collecting funds. These examples clearly show that property regimes are not fixed but flexible, depending on the increasing social demand as in the cases of FCZs in the Lower Mekong Basin, and of privatization of ponds in Laos and Thailand. Whether community's decision is appropriate or not in terms of social development and resource management, is a question of sustainable community fishery in Southeast Asia.