Environmental Stress, Economic Risk and Institutional Change: Inshore Fishing and Community-Based Management in Southern Thailand

Abstract

"Theoretical propositions about the emergence and evolution of common property regimes suggest that individuals will conserve (or at least manage) natural resources when they believe the risks of maintaining existing relations are unacceptably high. Individuals, it is argued, are more likely to overcome problems of malfeasance and free riding when they share both an interest in the new institutional arrangement and a legacy of successful cooperation. A contradictory proposition argues that individuals will ignore or fail to implement rules of resource conservation when the stakes of survival are most extreme. Implicit here is an assertion that the costs and risks of survival are so great that they preclude participation in all but the most vital forms of social interaction. This paper considers these debates by exploring the conditions under which villagers in Southern Thailand implemented and enforced rules of restricted access in a traditional inshore fishery. Particular emphasis is placed on the ways in which socio-economic differentiation affects the willingness and ability to bear the costs of enforcing and maintaining rules of common property. The principal methodology was a case study (conducted between 1997 and 1998) of a coastal community in Southern Thailand, where villagers started enforcing rules of regulated fishing in 1995. Using household surveys, key informant interviews and secondary sources, the study provides convincing evidence that increasing resource pressures encouraged members of this village community to implement and enforce rules of common property. Variations in status and wealth, however, had a profound impact on the extent to which villagers at the lower end of the socio-economic spectrum could participate in this important socio-political activity. Because they lacked the boats and engines that were essential for monitoring and enforcing the enclosed fishing area, poor villagers were effectively excluded from the act of 'protecting' the village, an act that carried tremendous status within the village community. An important implication here is that individuals who were most vulnerable to the risk of economic misfortune were also least able to participate in (and benefit from) the implementation and enforcement of common property."