Co-management of coral reef fisheries: a critical evaluation of the literature

In many parts of the world, inshore marine resources are being increasingly managed through collaborative arrangements between communities, governments, civil society and other groups. However, co-management of fisheries has had a mixture of successes and failures. Theorists and applied researchers have suggested a series of preconditions or factors thought to improve the chances of successful common-pool resource management. These include common property institutional design principles and their contextual conditions. Using a variety of web-based English keyword searches, published literature on community-based management and co-management of coral reefs was systematically reviewed with the view of determining if and how studies were evaluating these management systems as well as the extent to which critical aspects of common property theory were investigated and tested. Based on a screening of 600 and full evaluation of 157 journal articles, four measures of ecological conditions and five measures of contextual condition improvement were examined or could be evaluated with the data presented in 38 papers, which examined 49 co-management projects. Fewer than half of the 49 studies met the inclusion criteria of the analyses for documenting key design principles or contextual conditions. Additionally, most projects did not systematically report on contextual conditions, common property design principles and measures of success. The analysis demonstrates the large theoretical and empirical gaps in the evaluation of these management systems and begs for a more scientific, critical and multivariate approach

Human dimensions of conserving Kenya’s coral reefs\ud

We conducted a socio-economic assessment in nine coastal communities in Kenya to identify key socio-economic factors affecting inshore coral reef fisheries. Communities varied considerably in regards to their dependence on marine resources. Smaller communities had more than 60% of households engaged in the fishery, but the proportion of fishers was relatively small in the communities close to highly urbanized areas. Households that fished generally ranked fishing as their most important occupation.\ud \ud There was an array of marine resource governance structures either instituted or in development at the study sites. Four communities bordered established marine protected areas\ud (MPA) and two communities bordered a proposed MPA, and the level of appreciation of protected areas was lowest near the established areas. Despite legal prohibitions, a large\ud proportion of fishers at one site adjacent to each established MPA engaged in destructive fishing methods, particularly beach seining. There was poor understanding of the factors that influence fisheries and the means to improve them and the marine environment