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Journal Article Can Partnerships and Community-Based Conservation Reverse the Decline of Coral Reef Social-Ecological Systems?(2014) Frey, James Barclay; Berkes, Fikret"The marine aquarium trade has played an important role in shaping the ecological state of coral reefs in Indonesia and much of the Asia-Pacific. The use of cyanide by ornamental fishers in Buleleng District, Bali, in the 1980s and 1990s has resulted in a precipitous decline in the ecological health of reefs. Cyanide-free harvesting techniques were introduced after 2000, along with reef restoration measures. This paper examines social and ecological processes in the fishing village of Les, Bali, in ending the use of cyanide and the resulting ecological restoration. An emphasis on conservation-development (with livelihood objectives) was important in securing interest and cooperation across stakeholder groups. Adaptive approaches to governance and knowledge co-production were also important. The strategy used at Les is now being exported to other communities across Indonesia, and provides a promising example of a marine resources-based conservation-development initiative that may be implemented at other, similar communities."Journal Article Commonisation and Decommonisation: Understanding the Processes of Change in the Chilika Lagoon, India(2011) Nayak, Prateep Kumar; Berkes, Fikret"This article examines the processes of change in a large lagoon system, and its implications for how commons can be managed as commons in the long run. We use two related concepts in our analysis of change: commonisation and decommonisation; 'commonisation' is understood as a process through which a resource gets converted into a jointly used resource under commons institutions that deal with excludability and subtractability, and 'decommonisation' refers to a process through which a jointly used resource under commons institutions loses these essential characteristics. We analyse various contributing issues and dynamics associated with the processes of commonisation and decommonisation. We consider evidence collected through household and village level surveys, combined with a host of qualitative and quantitative research methods in the Chilika Lagoon, the largest lagoon in India, and one of the largest lagoons in Asia. We suggest that in order to keep the Chilika commons as commons will require, as a starting point, a policy environment in which legal rights and customary livelihoods are respected. With international prawn markets stabilised and the 'pink gold rush' over, the timing may be good for a policy change in order to create a political space for negotiation and to reverse the processes causing decommonisation. Fishers need to be empowered to re-connect to their environment and re-invent traditions of stewardship, without which there will be no resources left to fight over."Journal Article Bridging Knowledge Systems to Enhance Governance of Environmental Commons: A Typology of Settings(2015) Rathwell, Kaitlyn Joanne; Armitage, Derek; Berkes, Fikret"We offer a typology of settings to bridge scientific and indigenous knowledge systems and to enhance governance of the environmental commons in contexts of change. We contribute to a need for further clarity on how to incorporate diverse knowledge systems and in ways that contribute to planning, management, monitoring and assessment from local to global levels. We ask, what settings are discussed in the resource and environmental governance literature to support efforts to bridge indigenous and scientific knowledge systems? The objectives are: 1) to offer a typology that organizes various settings to bridge knowledge systems; and 2) to elaborate on how these settings function independently and in concert, using examples from a diverse literature in addition to field research experience. Our focus is on indigenous and scientific knowledge, but the typology offers lessons to bridge diverse knowledge systems more generally, and in ways that are sensitive to a moral, political and process-based approach. The typology includes specific methods and processes, brokering strategies, governance and institutional contexts, and the arena of epistemology. We describe each setting in the typology, and provide examples to reflect on the function and potential outcomes of different settings. Insights from our synthesis can inform policy and participatory action."Journal Article Sustainability Policy Considerations for Ecosystem Management in Central and Eastern Europe(2016) Berkes, Fikret"Here I discuss Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries as a region undergoing rapid change, resulting from the collapse of the Soviet Union and admission of some of the states into the European Union. These events brought changes in governance and ecosystem management, triggering impacts on land use and biodiversity. What are some of the policy options toward sustainability in the face of these political, governance, and socioeconomic changes? Some policy considerations for ecosystem management and sustainability include taking a social–ecological systems approach to integrate biophysical subsystems and social subsystems; paying attention to institutions relevant to shared resources (commons) management; and using resilience theory to study change and guidance for governance. Documented experience in CEE seems to indicate shortcomings for both the centralized state management option and the purely market-driven option for ecosystem management. If so, a 'smart mix' of state regulations, market incentives, and self-governance using local commons institutions may be the most promising policy option to foster ecosystem stewardship at multiple levels from local to international."Journal Article Exploring Social Capital in Chile's Coastal Benthic Comanagement System Using a Network Approach(2012) Marin, Andres; Gelcich, Stefan; Castilla, Juan C.; Berkes, Fikret"Comanagement success relies on the proper administration of resources and on the capacity of users to establish and maintain positive social relationships with multiple actors. We assessed multifunctional relationships of small-scale artisanal fisher organizations engaged in a coastal benthic resources comanagement system in Chile to explore bridging and linking social capital, using an egocentric network approach. The formal leaders of 38 small-scale fisher organizations were surveyed to investigate (1) similarities and differences in social capital among fisher organizations and regions, and (2) possible effects of social capital levels on comanagement performance. Results show that the best performing fisher organizations are those with higher levels of linking and bridging social capital. Positive and strong correlations exist between linking social capital levels and comanagement performance variables. Importantly, fisher organizations considered to manage resources successfully consistently presented high levels of linking social capital, irrespective of variability in bridging social capital. Using egocentric networks allows understanding actors’ differences in the comanagement social structure, thus providing critical insights for improving comanagement systems."Journal Article Resource Degradation, Marginalization, and Poverty in Small-Scale Fisheries: Threats to Social-Ecological Resilience in India and Brazil(2014) Nayak, Prateep K.; Oliveira, Luiz E.; Berkes, Fikret"In this study we examine poverty in local fisheries using a social-ecological resilience lens. In assessing why 'fishery may rhyme with poverty', Christophe Béné suggests a typology of impoverishment processes, which includes economic exclusion, social marginalization, class exploitation, and political disempowerment as key mechanisms that accelerate poverty. We extend his analysis by exploring these four mechanisms further and by intertwining them with processes of environmental change and degradation. Our goal is to understand poverty in local fisheries as a process rooted in social and institutional factors as influenced by ecological dynamics. We argue that understanding poverty will require a focus on the social-ecological system (SES) as a whole, and addressing poverty will mean rebuilding not only collapsed stocks but the entire social-ecological system, including restoring relationships between resources and people. Information from two cases, the Chilika Lagoon on the Bay of Bengal in India, and the Paraty region on the southeastern coast of Brazil, is used to understand how fishery social-ecological systems come under pressure from drivers at multiple levels, resulting in a range of impacts and pushing the system to a breaking point or collapse. We analyze elements of what it takes for the whole system to break down or collapse and push fishers into poverty and marginalization. The Chilika SES has already broken down, and the Paraty SES is under pressure from multiple drivers of change. The two cases help contrast key dynamics in the social, cultural, economic, political, and environmental spheres, for lessons on system collapse and recovery. Rebuilding fisheries may be examined as a process of building and strengthening resilience. The challenge is to make the fishery social-ecological system more resilient, with more flexibility and options, not only within fishing activities but also within a range of other sectors."Journal Article Can Small-Scale Commercial and Subsistence Fisheries Co-Exist? Lessons from an Indigenous Community in Northern Manitoba, Canada(2016) Islam, Durdana; Berkes, Fikret"Subsistence (or food) fisheries are under-studied, and the interaction between subsistence and commercial fisheries have not been studied systematically. Addressing this gap is the main contribution of the present paper, which focuses on how to deal with the challenge of overlapping commercial and subsistence fisheries. The study was conducted in Norway House Cree Nation, with qualitative data collection and questionnaire surveys. Commercial fishing in Norway House takes place during spring/summer and fall seasons, whereas subsistence fishing takes place throughout the year. Commercial fishing mostly occurs in the open waters of Lake Winnipeg; subsistence fishing in rivers adjacent to the reserve and in smaller lakes inland. How do fishers and the community deal with overlaps and potential conflicts between the two kinds of fisheries? The main mechanism is the separation of the two temporally and spatially. In the remaining overlap areas, conflict resolution relies on monitoring of net ownership and informal communication. The first mechanism is regulatory but really de facto co-management in the way it is implemented. The second is consistent with Cree cultural values of respect, reciprocity and tolerance."Journal Article Drama of the Commons in Small-Scale Shrimp Aquaculture in Northwestern, Sri Lanka(2015) Galappaththi, Eranga Kokila; Berkes, Fikret"Aquaculture, and shrimp aquaculture in particular, can have major social and environmental impacts. However, aquaculture remains an understudied area in commons research. Can aspects of commons theory be applied to solve problems of aquaculture? We examined three coastal community-based shrimp aquaculture operations in northwestern Sri Lanka using a case study approach. These shrimp farms were individually owned by small producers and managed under local-level rules designed by cooperatives (samithis). The common-pool resource of major interest was water for aquaculture ponds, obtained from an interconnected common water body. We evaluated the shrimp farming social-ecological system by using Ostrom’s design principles for collective action. Key elements of the system were: clearly defined boundaries; collaboratively designed crop calendar, bottom-up approach involving community associations, multi-level governance, and farmers-and-government collaborative structures. Together, these elements resolved the excludability and subtractability problems of commons by establishing boundary and membership rules and collective choice rules."Journal Article Community-based Enterprises: The Significance of Partnerships and Institutional Linkages(2010) Seixas, Cristiana Simao; Berkes, Fikret"Community-based institutions used to be driven by local needs, but in recent decades, some of them have been responding to national and global economic opportunities. These cases are of interest because they make it possible to investigate how local institutions can evolve in response to new challenges. A promising set of cases comes from the UNDP Equator Initiative, a program that holds biennial searches to find and reward entrepreneurship cases that seek to reduce poverty and conserve biodiversity at the same time. What can we learn from these local entrepreneurship cases that seem to be playing at the global level? Here we focus on partnerships and horizontal and vertical linkages in a sample of ten Equator Initiative projects. We find that successful projects tend to interact with a large array of support groups, typically 10–15 partners. Based on information from on-site research, these partners include local and national NGOs; local, regional and (less commonly) national governments; international donor agencies and other organizations; and universities and research centres. These partners provide a range of services and support functions, including raising start-up funds; institution building; business networking and marketing; innovation and knowledge transfer; and technical training. These findings indicate that a diverse variety of partners are needed to help satisfy a diversity of needs, and highlight the importance of networks and support groups in the evolution of commons institutions."Journal Article Innovating through Commons Use: Community-based Enterprises(2010) Berkes, Fikret; Davidson-Hunt, Iain J."Community-based enterprises are of interest to commons researchers because they offer a means to study how local institutions respond to opportunities, develop networks, new skills and knowledge, and evolve. Nevertheless, the relationship between commons and community-based enterprises has received little attention, with a few exceptions. Therefore, we decided to organize a conference session and explore this relationship in more detail. We invited a diverse array of scholars and practitioners active with indigenous enterprises, community development, community forestry, ecotourism and conservation-development projects. This Special Issue includes peer-reviewed and edited versions of seven of the papers (plus two additional invited papers) presented at the two panels on 'Innovating through commons use: community based enterprises', at the 12th Biennial Conference of the International Association for the Study of the Commons in Cheltenham, England."