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Abstract:
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"This research was carried out in Old Providence and Santa Catalina Islands (Archipelago of San Andres and Providence declared Biosphere Reserve -UNESCO 2002-) which are Colombian Caribbean insular oceanic territories. Archipelago's endemic species Black Crab (Gecarcinus ruricola) harvest is an important symbol of cultural identity and economic traditional practice on the islands. The purpose of the project was to understand the relations between behavioral norms of crab catchers and the biological conditions of the resource which in turn influence the decision making related with the management of the Black Crab as a common pool resource.
"Through integration of different methodological approaches such ethnographic tools; dynamic modeling, and experimental economics, the analysis is framed in four levels of the system. The first one is the description of the local appropriations related with the resource; the second is about biological conditions of the Black Crab population on the island; the third are the decisions that crab catchers make for its management; and the fourth level of the system is the legitimization of the local environmental agency's role as a formal regulating institution.
"As result there were found three scenarios that show the relations between the crab catchers and harvest activities. a) Relations under resource scarcity conditions, b) abundance resource conditions scenario and c) integration of local environmental agency's role and rules for the resource management. From this perspective was possible to understand a system in which despite of the high economic dependence of the catchers for the crabs since 30 years ago, the situation is far to be an unsustainability dilemma.
"Theoretically there are two options to interpret the system: a) the tragedy of the commons in which the resource will go to the extinction caused by poor management; and b) the system will be sustainable for two reasons. On one hand, self management processes, on the other hand because of the function of external rules for management. However, this situation describe a particular case in which crabs extraction for sale and consumption seems not to threaten the system, because exist other aspects that determine the operation of the Black Crab system.
"The catchers' motivations for resource management are determined by contextual aspects and many local attributes that has been maintain a sustainable dynamics of the system for more than 30 years. Although the existence of many reasons for over exploiting the crabs population, the inefficient self management process, and the difficulty for legitimate the external rules; the existence of local attributes like a time horizon, spatial dimension and the paternalistic vision of the state enforce the sustainability of the system.
"The challenge of the research is to do projections of the resource management, and serves as an incentive for the design of political and methodological proposals that contribute to understand the particular conditions of common pool resource management in local contexts."
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