The Role of Public-Private Cooperation in the Management of Estuarine Fisheries: Learning from the Kerala Model of Co-Management

Abstract

"Traditional communities have come back to the centre of policy making once again as many countries of the world of late have recognized their role and relevance in the management of natural resources (Balland and Platteau, 1996; Agarwal and Gibson, 1999; Berkes, 2003;Ostrom, 1990). Despite this general consensus, the manners in which communities are recognized, incorporated and permitted to manage their own resources vary considerably across countries. Most often, the central agencies do not provide enough space for local communities to participate in resource management. At the same time, top down governance fails to mobilize cooperation of local communities to deliver sustainable livelihoods that ensure fair and equitable distribution of resources across generations among men and women. There are however exceptions to this general failure where local states and communities cooperate in the management of resources. The objective of this paper is to present the history and present structure of such a co operative arrangement in the management of fisheries in Cochin estuary. We shall highlight how the local state (Grama Panchayath) and communities together share the responsibility to allocate fisheries to various fishing groups and private entrepreneurs in the northern side of the Cochin estuary. The study also focuses on the role of various traditional management institutions to ensure resource sustainability and equitable distribution. The paper is organized as follows. After sketching the ecological/environmental setting of the study area in section 1, the paper narrates the history of management in section 2. Section 3 describes how local Panchayath took over fisheries management and explains how it manages fisheries with the help of private entrepreneurs and local fishing communities. This section also narrates the benefits accrued to various parties in joint management and the various formal (state and local state level) and informal (non state) rules and regulations that govern various organizing practices in the study area. Section 4 explains the nature of conflicts in the area with respect to the sharing of resources and presents how these are resolved and section 5 discusses the limitations of this local cooperative arrangement. A conclusion follows."