The Role of Regional Government in Sustainable Use of Common Pool Resources: The Case of Polar Bear Management

Abstract

"This paper examines the role of three regional governments in the management of polar bears. In Nunavut, Canada a quota system has been used to control harvest, but the increasing de facto role of harvesters, who do not unanimously subscribe to conservation concerns, threatens the management structure. In Nunavik, Canada, no controls of polar bear harvest levels were instituted by higher levels of government and nor have grassroots organization developed such controls. In Greenland, Denmark, the conservation and economic need for quotas to be implemented by regional government has been recognized and quotas were introduced in January 2006. These three case studies show that regional governments must accept three roles for the sustainable use of polar bears. The first two are coordinating and the third is fostering. The coordinating roles are to provide a biologically appropriate level of management and to provide legal harvest control incentives to all resource users in order to offset economic incentives to over harvest. The fostering role is first to create local institutions, since these are not likely to develop as grassroots organizations, and then to assist harvesters in both understanding the conservation challenges and creating solutions."