Rivera-Guieb, Rebecca, Graham, Jennifer, Marschke, Melissa, and Gary F Newkirk. 2004. "Different Gardens, Different Blossoms: An Analysis of the Experience with Community Based Coastal Resource Management in the Philippines, Viet Nam And Cambodia." Presented at "The Commons in an Age of Global Transition: Challenges, Risks and Opportunities," the Tenth Conference of the International Association for the Study of Common Property, Oaxaca, Mexico, August 9-13.

Abstract

"Community Based Coastal Resource Management (CBCRM) initiatives in Southeast Asia have emerged from a range of donor-funded projects, government programs and civil society initiatives. Numerous social, political and cultural factors contribute to how CBCRM efforts unfold. Community-based management may be endorsed at different scales i.e. by local communities or at a national level, leading to different types of resource management institutions and policies. Impacts, therefore, vary within and across scales. Questions arising from these experiences include probing broad factors that facilitate CBCRM processes, while understanding context-specific realities.

"This paper will examine the experiences of CBCRM in the Philippines, Viet Nam and Cambodia, drawing upon the authors' experiences working in the region. Specifically, factors such as the impacts of decentralization processes, scale, sustainability and equity issues will be probed. CBCRM processes appear to be unfolding differently in each context, resulting in varying degrees of local power (ranging between communities to government dominance in the scale of management arrangements). Are the benefits from CBCRM processes widely shared? Key factors contributing to the success of CBCRM include working at multiple scales, nurturing local initiatives and a political commitment to this type of approach. However, successes are modulated by each social and cultural context, which are perhaps even locally specific.

"In order to assess the context-specific impacts of CBCRM, a series of questions will be explored. For example, 'people power' and a strong decentralization mandate has been associated with CBCRM in the Philippines, facilitating considerable public participation linked to an advocacy agenda involving civil society actors whose alliances and networks form, collapse and regroup regularly. Do such decentralization processes give real power to local governments and communities or is this just an offloading of responsibilities? This situation differs from Cambodia where CBCRM is far newer; however, CBCRM appears to be proliferating within a hierarchical context where decentralization processes are just beginning. A key question for government agencies in the Cambodian context, for instance, is what role communities might play in community-based management. In contrast, Viet Nam presents a challenging situation for CBCRM: it is difficult to get local participation in community-based management, and state control governance remains pervasive.

"Insights from the Philippines, Vietnam and Cambodia will enable a better analysis of factors that can contribute towards successful CBCRM initiatives. Further questions to be probed include: what is sustainable about these CBCRM processes? Is scaling up having a concept adopted as national policy, as with recent policy shifts and legislation? Or does real scaling up take place when there is popular support for CBCRM and mechanisms in place at the local level to ensure its implementation? In order to assess these and other factors, we will consider various ways to evaluate the impacts of CBCRM, including an analysis of the social- ecological changes achieved through CBCRM in each context."