IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v69y2010i5p1094-1103.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Institutional and ecological interplay for successful self-governance of community-based fisheries

Author

Listed:
  • Basurto, Xavier
  • Coleman, Eric

Abstract

The goal of this paper is to improve our understanding of the role of institutional arrangements and ecological factors that facilitate the emergence and sustainability of successful collective action in small-scale fishing social-ecological systems. Using a modified logistic growth function, we simulate how ecological factors (i.e. carrying capacity) affect small-scale fishing communities with varying degrees of institutional development (i.e. timeliness to adopt new institutions and the degree to which harvesting effort is reduced), in their ability to avoid overexploitation. Our results show that strong and timely institutions are necessary but not sufficient to maintain sustainable harvests over time. The sooner communities adopt institutions, and the stronger the institutions they adopt, the more likely they are to sustain the resource stock. Exactly how timely the institutions must be adopted, and by what amount harvesting effort must be diminished, depends on the ecological carrying capacity of the species at the particular location. Small differences in the carrying capacity between fishing sites, even under scenarios of similar institutional development, greatly affects the likelihood of effective collective action.

Suggested Citation

  • Basurto, Xavier & Coleman, Eric, 2010. "Institutional and ecological interplay for successful self-governance of community-based fisheries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(5), pages 1094-1103, March.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:5:p:1094-1103
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921-8009(09)00502-3
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Ghazala Mansuri, 2004. "Community-Based and -Driven Development: A Critical Review," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 19(1), pages 1-39.
    2. Edella Schlager & William Blomquist & Shui Yan Tang, 1994. "Mobile Flows, Storage, and Self-Organized Institutions for Governing Common-Pool Resources," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 70(3), pages 294-317.
    3. Edella Schlager & Elinor Ostrom, 1992. "Property-Rights Regimes and Natural Resources: A Conceptual Analysis," Land Economics, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 68(3), pages 249-262.
    4. Xavier Basurto & Elinor Ostrom, 2009. "Beyond the tragedy of the Commons," ECONOMICS AND POLICY OF ENERGY AND THE ENVIRONMENT, FrancoAngeli Editore, vol. 0(1), pages 35-60.
    5. Cinti, A. & Shaw, W. & Cudney-Bueno, R. & Rojo, M., 2010. "The unintended consequences of formal fisheries policies: Social disparities and resource overuse in a major fishing community in the Gulf of California, Mexico," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 328-339, March.
    6. Ransom A. Myers & Boris Worm, 2003. "Rapid worldwide depletion of predatory fish communities," Nature, Nature, vol. 423(6937), pages 280-283, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Octavio Aburto-Oropeza & Heather M. Leslie & Austen Mack-Crane & Sriniketh Nagavarapu & Sheila M.W. Reddy & Leila Sievanen, 2017. "Property Rights for Fishing Cooperatives: How (and How Well) Do They Work?," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 31(2), pages 295-328.
    2. Anne-Sarah Chiambretto & Hubert Stahn, 2017. "Voluntary Management of Fisheries under an Uncertain Background Legislative Threat," AMSE Working Papers 1712, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    3. Richter, Andries & Dakos, Vasilis, 2015. "Profit fluctuations signal eroding resilience of natural resources," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 12-21.
    4. Quérou, N. & Tomini, A., 2013. "Managing interacting species in unassessed fisheries," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 93(C), pages 192-201.
    5. Musson, Anne, 2012. "The build-up of local sustainable development politics: A case study of company leaders in France," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 75-87.
    6. Kaplan, Katherine A. & Ahmadia, Gabby N. & Fox, Helen & Glew, Louise & Pomeranz, Emily F. & Sullivan, Patrick, 2015. "Linking ecological condition to enforcement of marine protected area regulations in the greater Caribbean region," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 186-195.
    7. Luo, Yaping & Wu, Jianxian & Xu, Ying, 2022. "Can self-governance tackle the water commons? — Causal evidence of the effect of rural water pollution treatment on farmers' health in China," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    8. Aburto-Oropeza,Octavio & Leslie,Heather M. & Mack-Crane,Austen & Nagavarapu,Sriniketh Suryasesha & Reddy,Sheila M.W. & Sievanen,Leila, 2016. "Property rights for fishing cooperatives : how (and how well) do they work ?," Policy Research Working Paper Series 7662, The World Bank.
    9. Coleman, Eric A., 2010. "Implications of external validity for research on polycentric and complex adaptive systems," IAMO Forum 2010: Institutions in Transition – Challenges for New Modes of Governance 52713, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Central and Eastern Europe (IAMO).
    10. Esther Blanco, 2011. "A social-ecological approach to voluntary environmental initiatives: the case of nature-based tourism," Policy Sciences, Springer;Society of Policy Sciences, vol. 44(1), pages 35-52, March.
    11. Feng, Xiaolong & Qiu, Huanguang & Liu, Mingyue & Tang, Jianjun, 2024. "Innovation of grassland ecological governance systems: Synergy between government regulation and grassroots governance," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 217(C).
    12. Silva, Monalisa R.O. & Lopes, Priscila F.M., 2015. "Each fisherman is different: Taking the environmental perception of small-scale fishermen into account to manage marine protected areas," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 347-355.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Edwards, Steven F. & Link, Jason S. & Rountree, Barbara P., 2004. "Portfolio management of wild fish stocks," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(3), pages 317-329, July.
    2. Liu, Jing & Qin, Tianbao, 2018. "A Comparative Analysis of Fishing Rights From a Transaction Cost Perspective," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 153(C), pages 89-99.
    3. Talbot-Jones, Julia & Bennett, Jeff, 2019. "Toward a property rights theory of legal rights for rivers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 164(C), pages 1-1.
    4. Elinor Ostrom, 2014. "A Polycentric Approach For Coping With Climate Change," Annals of Economics and Finance, Society for AEF, vol. 15(1), pages 97-134, May.
    5. Jongwook Kim & Joseph T. Mahoney, 2002. "Resource-based and property rights perspectives on value creation: the case of oil field unitization," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 23(4-5), pages 225-245.
    6. Finkbeiner, Elena M. & Basurto, Xavier, 2015. "Re-defining co-management to facilitate small-scale fisheries reform: An illustration from northwest Mexico," Marine Policy, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 433-441.
    7. Paavola, Jouni, 2007. "Institutions and environmental governance: A reconceptualization," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(1), pages 93-103, June.
    8. Poteete, Amy R. & Ostrom, Elinor, 2008. "Fifteen Years of Empirical Research on Collective Action in Natural Resource Management: Struggling to Build Large-N Databases Based on Qualitative Research," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 176-195, January.
    9. Paavola, Jouni & Adger, W. Neil, 2005. "Institutional ecological economics," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(3), pages 353-368, May.
    10. Elinor Ostrom, 2003. "How Types of Goods and Property Rights Jointly Affect Collective Action," Journal of Theoretical Politics, , vol. 15(3), pages 239-270, July.
    11. G.Ananda Vadivelu, 2011. "Evolution of Property Rights Regimes in the Groundwater Economy of India-Constraints on Moving Towards a Common Property Regime," Working Papers id:4432, eSocialSciences.
    12. Helen M. Haugh & Alka Talwar, 2016. "Linking Social Entrepreneurship and Social Change: The Mediating Role of Empowerment," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 133(4), pages 643-658, February.
    13. Bergstén, Sabina & Stjernström, Olof & Pettersson, Örjan, 2018. "Experiences and emotions among private forest owners versus public interests: Why ownership matters," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 79(C), pages 801-811.
    14. David Aubin & Frédéric Varone, 2013. "Getting Access to Water: Property Rights or Public Policy Strategies?," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 31(1), pages 154-167, February.
    15. Gani, Azmat & Scrimgeour, Frank, 2014. "Modeling governance and water pollution using the institutional ecological economic framework," Economic Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 363-372.
    16. Rakotonarivo, O. Sarobidy & Bredahl Jacobsen, Jette & Poudyal, Mahesh & Rasoamanana, Alexandra & Hockley, Neal, 2018. "Estimating welfare impacts where property rights are contested: methodological and policy implications," Land Use Policy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 71-83.
    17. Araujo, M. Caridad & Ferreira, Francisco H.G. & Lanjouw, Peter & Özler, Berk, 2008. "Local inequality and project choice: Theory and evidence from Ecuador," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(5-6), pages 1022-1046, June.
    18. Rémy Herrera & Poeura Tetoe, 2013. "The Papua Niugini Paradox. Land property archaism and Modernity of peasant resistance ?," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-00786274, HAL.
    19. Leibbrandt, Andreas & Lynham, John, 2018. "Does the allocation of property rights matter in the commons?," Journal of Environmental Economics and Management, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 201-217.
    20. Speirs, Douglas C. & Greenstreet, Simon P.R. & Heath, Michael R., 2016. "Modelling the effects of fishing on the North Sea fish community size composition," Ecological Modelling, Elsevier, vol. 321(C), pages 35-45.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:ecolec:v:69:y:2010:i:5:p:1094-1103. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/ecolecon .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.