Cooperative management

Cooperative Management

What is it?
Cooperative management, also co-management, tries to achieve more effective and equitable systems of resource management. In cooperative management, representatives of user groups, the scientific community, and government agencies should share knowledge, power, and responsibility.
Cooperative management is closely allied with collaborative management, participatory management, community management, joint management, and stakeholder management.
For Basic Background See:
Sven Jentoft. 1985. "Models of fishery management. the cooperative approach." Marine Policy 9:322-331.
Bonnie McCay. 1988. "Muddling Through the Clam Beds: Cooperative Management of New Jersey's Hard Clam Spawner Sanctuaries," J. Shellfish Res., 7(2), p. 327.
Fikret Berkes. 1997. "New and Not-So-New Directions in the Use of the Commons: Co-Management." The Common Property Resoruce Digest 42:5-7.

Two Major Types of Cooperative Management

1. small communities managing their own resources, anthropologists cite many examples
   
   • Fikret Berkes, 1989, Common Property Resources: Ecology and Community-Based Sustainable Development.
   • G. Borrini-Feyerabend. 1996. Collaborative Management of Protected Areas: Tailoring the Approach to the Context.
   • John Cordell (ed.), 1989, A Sea of Small Boats, Cambridge, MA: Cultural Survival Press.
   • Christopher L. Dyer and James R. McGoodwin, 1994, Folk Management in the World's Fisheries: Lessons for Modern Fisheries Management, Niwot: University of Colorado Press.
   • Bonnie McCay and James M. Acheson, 1989, A Question of the Commons, Tucson: University of Arizona Press.
   • James R. McGoodwin, 1990, Crisis in the World's Fisheries, Stanford: Stanford University Press.
   • Evelyn Pinkerton, 1989, Co-operative Management of Local Fisheries, Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press.
   • Kenneth Ruddle, 1994, A Guide to the Literature on Traditional Community-Based Fishery Management in the Asia-Pacific Tropics. Rome: FAO isheries Circular Number 869, FIPP/C869.
   • David Western and R. Michael Wright (eds). 1994. Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-based Conservation.
2. government and local communities working together
   
   • Japanese fishing cooperatives - Kenneth Ruddle and Tomoya Akimichi. 1984. Maritime Institutions in the Western Pacific, (Osaka: National Museum of Ethnology).
   
   
   • CAMPFIRE - Simon Metcalfe. 1994. "The Zimbabwe Communal Areas Management Porgramme for Indigenous Resources (CAMPFIRE)." Pp. 161-191 in David Western and R. Michael Wright (eds), Natural Connections: Perspectives in Community-based Conservation.
   • Alaskan Eskimo Whaling Commission - Milton M.R. Freeman, 1989, The Alaska Eskimo Whaling Commission: Successful Co-Management under Extreme Conditions, pp. 137-153 in Pinkerton.
   
   
   • Maine Lobster Fisheries - Acheson, J.M. 1972. Territories of lobstermen. Natural History 81:60-69; Acheson, J.M. 1975a. Fisheries management and social context: the case of the Maine lobster fishery. Transactions of the American Fisheries Society 104(4):653-668, and Acheson, J.M. 1975b. The lobster fiefs: economic and ecological effects of territoriality in the Maine lobster industry. Human Ecology 3:183-207.
   Compares the effectiveness of perimeter-defended and nucleated lobster territories.
   
   • Norwegian - See Svein Jentoft, "Fisheries Co-management: Delegating Government Responsibility to Fishermen's Organizations," Marine Policy, 13(2):137-154.
   
   
   • Puget Sound Salmon Management - Fay G. Cohen, 1989, Treaty Indian Tribes and Washington State: The Evolution of Tribal Involvement in Fisheries Management in the U.S. Pacific Northwest; Fay G. Cohen, 1986, Treaties on Trial, Seattle, University of Washington Press; Vine Deloria, 1977, Indians of the Northwest. Once there was a decision of catch shares, the State and Indians cooperated

Cooperative management developed as a response to the notion of the tragedy of the commons:

Social scientists accuse Hardin of not understanding how the English commons worked to promote community management. They have reviewed the economic history the commons. in an effort to determine just how the English commons actually worked?

F. Berkes, D. Feeny, B.J. McCay, and J.M. Acheson. 1989. "The benefits of the commons," pp. 91-93, Nature, 340 (July 13).

Hardin's Commons/The Real Commons, Susan S. Hanna, pp. 158-163, In "The Eighteenth Century English Commons: A Model for Ocean Management," Ocean & Shoreline Management 14 (1990).

Hanna's critique says:

• communities could manage commons
• community management was flexible
• community management differentiated access
• the community base of management was destroyed with enclosure, which was when private property came to the commons

Anthropological Critique of the idea that communities cannot manage resources makes the points:

• open access and common property are not the same
• examples where common property management works

First Use of Co-Management in Fisheries

Bay of Fundy - John F. Kearney. 1987. "The Transformation of the Bay of Fundy Herring Fisheries 1976-1978: An Experiment in Fishermen-Government Co-Management," in Atlantic Fisheries and Coastal Communities: Fisheries Decisions-Making Case Studies (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press), pp. 22-55.

Critique of Cooperative Management

• involves users
• can improve biological knowledge
• can improve enforcement
• uses local knowledge in decision making
• can reduce enforcement costs
• can improve education
• empowers local communities
• works best in small-scale communities
• works best for homogeneous communities
• territorial boundaries must be clear
• usually focuses on a preferred species
• emphasizes sustainability
• requires devolving power from center to local groups
• requires faith that local cultures practice conservation
• requires trust between center and local groups
• requires placing property rights with the local community