Browsing by Author "Acheson, James M."

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Capturing the Commons: An Introduction
(1987) McCay, Bonnie J.; Acheson, James M.
"The 'tragedy of the commons' paradigm is a behavioral and ecological theory rooted in classical microeconomics about human response to resource decline. According to the theory of common property resources, all resources held in common or in the public domain, such as water, oceans, air, rivers, and public grazing land, are inexorably doomed to over exploitation. So-called 'common property resources' are owned by no one and thus are not protected by anyone. Why should those who use such resources conserve or protect them? The fish, wildlife, grasses, waters that are not exploited today will only be taken by someone else tomorrow. It is not just that they may be wasted by an uncaring public. Rather, common property users are said to be locked into a competitive system in which it is only rational that they get as much of the resource for themselves as quickly as they can. Escalating abuse ceases only when the resource is stripped bare or befouled beyond value."
Capturing the Commons: Devising Institutions to Manage the Maine Lobster Industry
(Manuscript Draft, 2001) Acheson, James M.
"The 21st century is opening on the specter of worldwide environmental disaster caused by human beings. Stocks of fish, forests, grasslands, agricultural land, wildlife, air quality and water quality have all been seriously degraded either by overexploitation, or pollution or a combination of the two. Marine fisheries are in particularly poor condition. According to FAO analysis 'sixty nine percent of the fish stocks in the world are exploited at a level at or beyond the level corresponding to MSY [Maximum Sustainable Yield]'."
Capturing the Commons: Social Changes in the Territorial System of the Maine Lobster Industry
(2000) Acheson, James M.; Brewer, Jennifer F.
"The Maine lobster fishery has been highly territorial for a number of decades. To go lobstering at all, people need to get a license from the state of Maine. They also need to gain admission to the groups fishing from a particular harbor, and once they have been admitted to such a group, they can only go fishing in the traditional territory of that group or 'gang.' Repeated violations of territorial boundaries are met with surreptitious destruction of lobstering gear. In the past, lobster fishing territories were relatively close to shore. Further offshore, the sense of territoriality was weak or non-existent. "The traditional lobster territorial system was a completely decentralized institution, unrecognized by the state, upheld by activities that were illegal from the point of view of the government. Changes in territorial boundaries, when they occurred at all, were the result of political competition between harbor gangs or the result of one harbor gang taking over the territory of an island when the islanders moved to the mainland. "In recent years, the widespread adoption of new, larger, and better equipped boats has made it possible for people to fish many more traps. Many, but not all, fishermen are now placing traps in offshore areas which had previously been fished by people from several harbors, if they were fished at all. This expansion of the area fished for lobsters is behind many of the current changes in the territorial system. "Changes in the territorial system have come about by three different processes, two of which involve the government. First, those fishing offshore areas discovered productive spots, to which they sought to lay claim by incorporation into the traditional territorial system. The process involved first occupying the spot for long periods and later defending it against other fishermen who sought to fish there. This process probably mirrors the way in which the traditional territories were established in the 19th century. "Second, two islands have sought to defend their traditional fishing territories from incursions of mainland fishermen by lobbying the state government to make those areas special conservation zones. In 1984, Swans Island was successful in creating such a zone, and in 1995 Monhegan followed suit. In both cases, the islanders agreed to abide by conservation rules in an area around the island that were far stricter than those imposed in the state as a whole, with the stipulation that the state wardens enforce those rules and prohibit people from other harbors from fishing in the zone. "Third, boundary change has come about as a result of the 1995 passage of the Lobster Zone Management law, true co-management law. Under this law, the coast was divided into zones and the lobster license-holders in each zone are empowered to pass management rules for the zones with a 2/3 vote on three contentious issues: the number of traps that can be used, the times that fishing can be done, and the number of traps that can be used on a single line. Even though the zone lines were drawn to coincide with existing territorial lines, the imposition of formal lines has resulted in a lot of conflict. In some cases, fishermen want to fish across the zone boundary in spite of the more restrictive zone rules in force in the other zone. In other cases, they have sought to change the zone boundaries with access to good fishing grounds in mind. "Two important features underlie these processes involved in boundary change. First, in all instances, people involved in these disputes have artfully constructed 'traditional' boundaries giving them more prime fishing bottom. Second, boundary change is generated as a byproduct of conflicts over access to lobsters. Conservation is a secondary concern. This substantiates Knight's contention that the primary source of norms is distributional conflicts."
Co-Management in the Maine Lobster Industry: A Study in Factional Politics
(2013) Acheson, James M.
"One of the most promising mechanisms to conserve fish stocks is co-management, a type of ICCA (Indigenous Peoples' and Community Conserved Territories and Area), in which responsibilities are shared by resource users and the government. In Maine, the lobster co-management system, established in 1995, divides the coast into seven zones. It permits license holders in each zone to recommend rules on four issues to the commissioner of the Department of Marine Resources. This article describes the history of the Maine lobster co-management system, emphasising the role of factional politics in determining the development of policies and rules. In the Maine co-management system, political outcomes depend on the power of factions of fishermen and the coalitions of those factions with government units at higher scales. Cross-scale cooperation is necessary. In the cases where such a cross-scale coalition existed, rules were passed and policies went into effect. In those cases where no such coalition existed, gridlock reigned. If we wish to understand the production of rules for the lobster industry, we must focus not only on the actions of different industry factions, but also on the byzantine relationships between lower levels of management (i.e., the zone councils and the Lobster Advisory Council) and higher scale institutions (i.e., legislature, Maine Department of Marine Resources, etc.). In this paper, special attention is paid to the reasons that stricter trap limits have not been devised, despite the fact that such limits would solve a variety of serious problems."
Competition, Cooperation, and Learning in the Marine Commons: Implications for Collective Action
(2010) Johnson, Teresa R.; Wilson, James; Acheson, James M.; Cleaver, C.
"Success or failure of governance of the marine commons can be traced to the complex interactions of the natural and the human systems. The coupled human and natural system dynamics that generate the preconditions for collective action, especially the adaptive dynamics that lead to the emergence of informal social and economic structure, are not well known. We hypothesize that competitive interactions among fishers seeking knowledge about resource conditions lead to the emergence of dynamic social patterns and informal structures that reflect the particular circumstances of the natural and social system; the scale and mechanisms of those patterns and structures in turn affect the feasibility and effectiveness of collective action and, through that, the sustainability of the natural system. We examine this hypothesis in the context of the Maine sea urchin fishery. Although currently very small, it was a classic gold rush fishery during the late 1980s and the 1990s until the population became depleted and fishable aggregations became sparse. We conducted semi-structured interviews with key informants from the Maine sea urchin fishery to understand the biophysical circumstances in which cooperation might be feasible and that might form the basis for collective action. We find that the biophysical conditions relevant to sustainable processes in the fishery occur at the scale of individual ledges, a much finer scale than current management. In spite of co-management, limited entry, and a number of input control mechanisms the relevant unit in the fishery, the ledge, is still an open access fishery."
The Development of the Maine Lobster Co-Management Law
(2004) Acheson, James M.
"In fisheries management circles, there is growing realization that traditional ways of managing marine resources are not working and that new approaches to management need to be tried. One of the most promising of these new approaches is co-management, where authority for managing fish stocks is shared between the industry and government agencies. This paper discusses the implementation of the new co-management system in the Maine lobster industry, which was initiated in 1995. The law has clearly been successful, in that lobster fishermen have been able to generate rules to constrain their own exploitive effort, which the legislature was unable to do. At the same time, a number of problems have come to the fore, not the least of which was the fact that passage of one regulatory measure caused problems for certain groups of fishermen who demanded remedial legislation. Thus, the co-management effort in Maine has moved ahead by solving a sequence of problems. But the fact that these problems are being solved places Maine in the forefront of jurisdictions experimenting with new ways to manage fisheries."
Evolution of the Maine Lobster Co-management Law
(2000) Acheson, James M.; Stockwell, Terry; Wilson, James
"In fisheries management circles, there is growing realization that traditional ways of managing marine resources are not working and that new approaches to management need to be tried. One of the most promising of these new approaches is co-management, where authority for managing fish stocks is shared between the industry and government agencies. This paper discusses the implementation of the new co-management system, which was initiated in the Maine lobster industry in 1995. "The law has clearly been successful; it has been framed in a way to allow lobster fishermen to be able to generate rules to constrain their own exploitative effort. At the same time, a number of problems have come to the fore, not the least of which was the fact that passage of one regulatory measure caused problems for certain groups of fishermen who demanded remedial legislation. Thus, the co-management effort in Maine has moved ahead by solving a sequence of problems. But the fact that these problems are being solved places Maine in the forefront of jurisdictions experimenting with new ways to manage fisheries. Those interested in fisheries management may want to recall the state's motto 'Dirigo' - 'I lead.'"
The Evolution of the Maine Lobster V-Notch Practice: Cooperation in a Prisoner's Dilemma Game
(2011) Acheson, James M.; Gardner, Roy
"The Maine lobster industry is experiencing record high catches because, in all probability, of an effective management program. One of the most important conservation measures is the V-notch program that allows fishermen to conserve proven breeding females by notching the tails of egg-bearing lobsters. Such marked lobsters may never be taken. Although thousands of lobster fishermen participate, it is a voluntary practice. The genesis of this practice is not easily explained, because V-notching poses a prisoners dilemma problem that gives fishermen an incentive to avoid the practice. The most common explanations for ways to overcome prisoners dilemma problems will not work in the case of the V-notch. An unusual combination of factors explains the V-notch program: (1) a strong belief among those in the industry that the V-notch is effective in conserving the lobster stock; (2) a low discount rate because the long-term gains from V-notching are higher than the one-time gain from defection; (3) a gain in reputation for those who V-notch. At the start of the 20th century, fishermen did not V-notch; by the end of the century, V-notching was common. We explain the change in strategies using a three-parameter evolutionary model that emphasizes the importance of culture change."
The Management of Common Property in a Mexican Indian Pueblo
(1990) Acheson, James M.
"The highland indian communities of Meso-America have a long history of communally owned property, which has been managed locally for centuries. In this paper, I would like to give a history of the institutions of communally owned forest and grazing lands as they have existed in communities of the Purepeche speaking area of Central Mexico and specifically in the community of Cuanajo, Michoacan, where I have done fieldwork, off and on, since 1966."
Ostrom for Anthropologists
(2011) Acheson, James M.
"Elinor Ostrom has devoted much of her career to understanding the conditions under which people have incentives to conserve or over-exploit commonpool resources (e.g. oceans, air, irrigation, unowned forests and grassland). While a growing number of anthropologists have taken an interest in this critically important topic, her work is not well known to many anthropologists. This paper describes three different aspects of Ostroms work which should be of interest to anthropologists. First is her analysis of collective action problems and the conditions under which people in local communities have devised rules and institutions to solve those dilemmas to conserve resources. Second is Ostroms discussion and classification of the complex rules used to manage resources. Third is her analysis of four kinds of goods (i.e. public goods, common-pool resources, toll goods and private goods) and the property regimes that produce them in different combinations. Last, I outline several directions in which her work seems to be going."
Search, Communication and the Preconditions for Collective Action in Three Fisheries
(2012) Wilson, James; Acheson, James M.; Johnson, Teresa R.
"In this article, we compare the Maine sea urchin, lobster and groundfish fisheries with the goal of giving another viewpoint on factors causing the differential success of management efforts in these three fisheries. In 1990 Elinor Ostrom published her famous list of the preconditions conducive to successful collective action. We argue that the preconditions she lists, especially those that are the self-organized product of individuals interactions with each other (not those that are principally a product of broader-scale formal governance) and with the environment, are sensitive to the costs individuals incur while learning about and adapting to complex natural and social environments. Our motivation is to address Ostroms admonition for 'further work to explain why some contextual variables enhance cooperation while others discourage it.' (Ostrom, 2000b). We focus our argument on the way different environments lead to different problems of learning and adaptation, and consequently, to the emergence of different social structure and dynamics that may or may not be conducive to collective action. We then turn to a quick description of the way the problem of learning and adaption affects informal social structure and the likelihood of collective action in three fisheries. We believe this focus on learning and adaptation leads to a better understanding of the ways natural and human systems interact and, thereby, adds to the literature concerning the success and failure of collective action in the commons."
Territories of the Lobstermen: Good Ocean Boundaries Make Good Neighbors... and Vice Versa
(1972) Acheson, James M.
"The rules for lobster fishing territories are especially critical because they control access to the lobsters and because they have important ecological implications at a time when some parts of the marine resource are being over exploited. "Growing up in an inland area of Maine, I was for a long time vaguely aware that territoriality existed among lobstermen. Only recently, however, did I find evidence of these territorial rules and investigate them systematically."
Varieties of Institutional Failure
(2000) Acheson, James M.
From pp. 1-3: "Over the course of the past thirty years a consensus has begun to emerge that management of resources is basically an institutional problem. If we get the right rules and governance structures, natural resources will be used wisely and conservation goals will be met. However, there is no agreement as to what institutions will accomplish these goals. We have managed to come up with a long list of institutional possibilities. Garrett Hardin began the list in 1968 with the publication of his "Tragedy of the Commons" article. Hardin saw the solution to the tragedy as intervention by government, which might have to be very autocratic and repressive to achieve its goals. His commitment to action by the government is shared by many bureaucrats and professional resources managers. They believe, deep down, that in the last analysis, only action by central governments, and by this they mean "top down" management, will suffice to save resources. A whole series of economists from the late 1950's to the 1970's, working on what had become known as the "common property problem," concluded that the primary cause of the destruction and inefficient use of natural resources was the absence of property rights. The solution, from their perspective, was to establish private property rights. Their insights have had no small effect on the management of natural resources. Fisheries management, for example, is essentially an exercise in establishing property rights or simulating property rights through the use of rules concerning licenses, limited entry regimes, ITQs Individual Transferable Quotas: and the like. "A group of anthropologists and other social scientist have reacted to the analysis of Hardin, and others such as A. Scott(1955), Gordon (1954), Cheung (1970), and Johnson (1972), by pointing out that it is "open access" that causes problems, not the fact that resources are owned by communities. Communally owned property can be very well managed. In the 1980's they produced a series of volumes documenting the large number of cases in which resources were managed well at the local level by communities around the world (Berkes, Feeney, McCay and Acheson 1989). This fed into a movement which is very much in vogue at present, namely the call to manage resources "from the bottom" up or by "co-management" regimes in which management responsibility is shared between the government and local level communities. "Last, but certainly not least, others have proposed that it is efficient markets that result in efficient use of natural resources and the conservation of those resources. The Political Economy Research Center (PERC) in Bozeman Montana has produced a number of studies showing how markets have solved resource problems and arguing that free markets can solve still others. A part of the agenda of the so called "Free Market Environmentalists" is to argue against excessive government intervention in resource management. "In summary, then, there are four very different kinds of basic kinds of institutions, which various sets of scholars have argued can solve resource management and conservation problems: (1) private property, (2) government, (3) communal management, and (4) markets. There is a tendency for social scientists and others to lionize one of these and argue that the solution to resource management problems is this particular one. "I would argue none of these is a general solution. All of the institutions I just described will fail to solve resource conservation problems under certain conditions. This is not to say that none of them work. But one of the key question facing resource management at present, is: Under what conditions will each of these different kinds of institutions work? When will they fail? This evening, I would like to concentrate on the failures. I plan to attack this problem by going from institutions about which we know a good deal to those we know little about. Lets begin with market failure and go on to the failure of private property regimes and then to failures of the government. Well end with the failure of communal governance structures."