Institutional arrangements and fisheries management in Bangladesh

Abstract

"Malthusian assumption bore enormous influence on ecologists to use population growth as a key variable in resource analysis and management and attribute decline of the resource to population size. Recent analyses have renewed the challenge against the assumption arguing that institutional arrangements are the determining factor in resource exploitation. Variously defined, the institutional arrangements comprise 'operational rule' or 'allocation' of property rights that determines the entry to a resource and the pattern of exploitation. The entry is subject to mutual agreement or relations of power and authority between competing interests. This paper takes this view to the open fisheries management in Bangladesh by revealing the pattern of capturing property rights. According to state rule, property rights should go to fishers' co-operatives but in practice they are captured by lessees. With the transfer, neither the state nor fishers retain any power over the lessees to limit the level of exploitation of the fisheries."