Collective action in a tropical estuarine lagoon: adapting Ostrom’s SES framework to Ciénaga Grande de Santa Marta, Colombia

Luz Elba Torres-Guevara ,Achim Schlüter ,María Claudia López

doi:10.18352/ijc.623

Abstract

The paper contributes to the social-ecological systems literature by adapting and using Elinor Ostrom’s Social-Ecological System (SES) framework in the context of a coastal ecosystem. We modified the SES framework in the case of the Cienaga Grande de Santa Marta (CGSM), an estuarine lagoon in the Caribbean coast of Colombia. The ecological importance of CGSM and its species is undeniable. This paper aims to understand why collective action for a sustainable use of CGSM’s fishery resources has not taken place. In order to respond to that question, we created new variables within the social, economic, and political settings of the SES framework. The results show that the fishers’ fear of the indiscriminate and strong violence that illegal armed groups have inflicted on them since the 1960s and the economic development in the Colombian Caribbean region help explain the lack of collective action.

Highlights

Artisanal fishing is the main source of livelihood for millions of households in coastal areas of developing countries and plays a crucial role in food security and poverty alleviation (FAO and World Fish Center 2008)
In the field we realized that in order to achieve a comprehensive understanding of this fishery, we needed to look at the variables of the social, economic, and political setting
We developed a list of questions based on the second- and third-tier variables in the social, economic, and political settings present

Summary

Introduction

Artisanal fishing is the main source of livelihood for millions of households in coastal areas of developing countries and plays a crucial role in food security and poverty alleviation (FAO and World Fish Center 2008). In the fisheries management literature, it is possible to identify some key factors that influence sustainable management, such as a high dependence on the resource, the presence of property rights, the possibility for communities to develop their own rules, moderate or high levels of trust and reciprocity, local leadership, and local ecological knowledge (Ostrom 1990; Schlager et al 1994; Basurto et al 2013; Frey and Rusch 2013; Orensanz et al 2013) Other factors such as open-access regimes, big fisheries, large groups of users with severe heterogeneity of interests, the lack of rules or norms to manage the resource, and top-down management are stated as responsible for institutional and ecological failure of a system (Ostrom 1990; Schlager et al 1994; Acheson 2006; Poteete et al 2010; Basurto et al 2013)

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