Institutional constraints to fishers' resilience: Community based fishery management in Bangladesh

Abstract

Community based fishery management (CBFM) formulates various formal and informal institutions (developing community organizations, decision-making, and traditional fishing rules) for sustainable fishery management in Bangladesh. Although these rules are intended to managing fisheries for a long-term use, constraints to enforcing these rules or absence of mechanisms to address these constraints hamper fishers’ resilience. This paper aims to examine such constraints to fishers’ resilience in Langalkata Ozurbeel (local name of the fishery), Sunamganj, Bangladesh. Based on key informant interviews, this paper finds that non-participatory community based organizations and weak coordination among stakeholders appear to be enduring constraints to developing fishers’ resilience. Fishers’ resilience is largely constrained by power relations that mostly exclude fishers from the fishery management. Conflict between fishery users or with the community and the absence of interactive learning are also important constraints to fishers’ resilience. It seems that rules-in-practice fail to develop fishers’ capacity to cope and adapt to these constraints and continue their activities to maintaining the fishery.