Community-Based, Co-management for Governing Small-Scale Fisheries of the Pacific: A Solomon Islands’ Case Study

Abstract

The discourse on solutions to address small-scale fisheries concerns in the Pacific tends to focus heavily on community-based forms of co-management. Decentralizing governance to the community level permits responsiveness and specificity to local dynamics, not possible through hierarchical governance. It also allows for proper recognition of the (often legally backed) customary rights of local resource owners, common throughout the Pacific. Partnerships between communities and governments, NGOs or research organizations draw together knowledge, expertise and institutions to develop and implement co-management arrangements. In exploring Solomon Islands as a case study we find that interactions between community-based, co-management (a form of co-governance), and self-governance (particularly customary institutions) are fundamental for contextualizing and ‘fitting’ management to the community level – and that this helps to account for the exceptionally high social and ecological diversity and complexity of Solomon Islands. Community-based, co-management represents a hybrid of traditional and contemporary, local and higher level images, instruments and actions. Interactions between community-based, co-management and hierarchical governance can bolster and inform local management and governance solutions. This is particularly true (and necessary) for pressures (e.g., population growth and commercial, export-orientated exploitation) that extend beyond the local scale or have not before been encountered by customary institutions. While these relations can increase governability, they can also be contradictory and undermining, particularly when objectives are dynamic and differ across scales. Finding the ‘best mix’ of governance modes and responses is a moving and elusive target. Nonetheless, we conclude that while community-based, co-management is an appropriate and fitting mode for increasing the governability of Pacific small-scale fisheries in some contexts, in its current form it alone is not up to the task of realizing fisheries sustainability objectives. We recommend that small-scale fisheries policy more explicitly seeks, and tests, new forms of governance interactions amidst the diversity and complexity of Pacific small-scale fisheries.