Abstract
One of the key issues facing fishery managers, policy-makers and researchers has been acknowledging local institutions and rule systems for managing common pool resources. In this paper, we discuss local institutions and rule systems of community fisheries from two oxbow lake Fisheries in Southern Bangladesh. Both of the fisheries have been under private and state management systems resulting in different management outcomes. Control of fishers and stocking for production enhancement have been key management options of the lakes, but progress has not been satisfactory due to higher associated costs of management and uneven resource benefits distribution. On the other hand, community fisheries have focused on sharing benefits, controlling access, avoiding conflict and maintaining ecosystem health. Community fisheries have been managed through local rules and management practices above and beyond government regulations. Taking community fisheries in Bangladesh as a model fisheries and examining local rules as an effective means of controlling fisher access to a common resource, we explore here the impacts of local rules that have had different levels of governance outcomes in relation to state and private systems. Data were collected using semi-structured interviews (40 individuals) and group meetings (one for each site covering 15–20 individuals). Reviews of secondary records also support the analysis. Findings of this study highlight the advantages of local rules and also raise questions about how differential property rights and lack of negotiation power of local communities have constrained the success of community fisheries. At the group level, the capacity of local fishers to make their own rules and implement them locally is a critical factor for community fisheries systems.
Highlights
This study was conducted in two oxbow lakes of Southern Bangladesh that are treated as small-scale fisheries systems
Comanagement arrangements of small-scale fisheries are typically aimed at enhancing fisheries production with the participation of local users (Thompson et al 2003)
Community-Based Organizations” (CBOs) have applied a number of mechanisms to manage fisheries based on local rules to address social concerns and ecological issues
Summary
This study was conducted in two oxbow lakes of Southern Bangladesh that are treated as small-scale fisheries systems. Small-scale fisheries are often a lowtechnology driven fishing approaches that are used mostly by subsistence fishers in developing countries for meeting their livelihood needs or protein requirements for their family (Kooiman et al 2005; Bavinck et al 2013; Weeratunge et al 2013). This type of fishery is typically operated in coastal wetlands, inland lakes, and rivers where fishers use traditional harvesting techniques such as smalltraps, scoop nets, arrows and harpoons, cast nets and drag nets with or without small fishing boats for transportations (FAO 2014). Brook users within the fisheries systems (e.g. agricultural uses of wetlands) similar to many other common pool resources such as forests (Nayak and Berkes 2008) or freshwater (Gunderson et al 2006)
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