DRAFT
Making adaptive co-management more than a marriage of convenience: Reconciling
theory and practice in the management of fisheries in the Mekong Region
Robert Arthur, Ph.D. is a Natural Resource Management Scientist and Wetlands Alliance Programme
coordinator for the WorldFish Center, Cambodia.
Richard Friend, Ph.D. is the Fisheries Research Theme Leader of the M-POWER Research Network,
Thailand.
Melissa Marschke, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor in the School of International Development and Global
Studies, University of Ottawa, Canada.
Abstract
Our interest lies in the role of research in contributing to how small-scale fisheries in the Mekong region
can be better managed and sustained to ensure that the needs and aspirations of the people associated with
these fisheries are met. As elsewhere, fisheries in the Mekong region face a crisis of governance. Given
this situation, adaptive co-management appears particularly appealing as a management mechanism since
this approach emphasizes experimenting, adapting, learning and resilience (Armitage et al. 2008b). But
what does adaptive co-management (ACM) mean for the practice of fisheries management within the
Mekong region? We argue that in spite of its rhetoric, the underpinning current of ACM thinking remains
an essentially managerial approach to development and resource management that takes the politics out of
what we see as fundamentally challenges of governance and power sharing.
Thus, we are proposing an approach to adaptive co-management that hinges on agency and learning – and
are aware that even by proposing this kind of approach we are making a political statement of what
resource management should be. This requires a new agenda, one in which contestation and struggle are
recognised as a constructive and unavoidable part of the process rather than as external threats. If
resource management change is to take place and if policy is meant to support people in working towards
greater sustainability, a far greater emphasis need to be given to engaging in local processes and creating
appropriate learning platforms. Perhaps the most important promise of adaptive co-management is its
potential to create the conditions under which management is possible.
Introduction
The management of the Mekong region fisheries is at a critical juncture. Hugely
important to local livelihoods and economies, their development potential is contested
and has yet to be realised. Fisheries are widely portrayed as facing a number of threats,
including over-fishing (Wong et al. 2007, Allan et al. 2005), environmental degradation
(Salayo et al. 2008), hydropower and other such infrastructure development (Ringler and
Cai 2006) and climate change (Ficke et al. 2007). Meanwhile, fisheries science and
management is struggling to address these threats and, perhaps even more pressing, to
demonstrate the significant developmental benefits arising from managed fisheries
(Friend et al. in press). One response in dealing with such challenges is for fisheries
researchers and managers to consider adaptive, multi-layered governance models that can
potentially respond to such dynamics and be inclusive of fishers themselves in fisheries
management. This explains, in part, why adaptive co-management is gaining in currency
(e.g. Armitage et al. 2007; Armitage et al. 2008b).
The objective of this paper is to examine the potential for adaptive co-management in the
Mekong region. As researchers engaged in development practice, our work is in
1
understanding how the Mekong fisheries can best be managed in order to meet the needs
and aspirations of the people associated with these fisheries. We have each been
involved in fisheries management and policy research in the region for some time and
have seen shifts in the types of management approaches that are recommended, with the
latest focus, and one that we are involved in, being about realising the promise of
adaptive co-management (e.g. Garaway and Arthur 2004; Armitage et al. 2008b). Thus,
in this paper we consider the usefulness of a concept such as adaptive co-management in
the context of the complex Mekong fisheries.
Our paper begins with an explanation of the Mekong fishery, before considering the roots
of adaptive co-management in the region. Specifically, we present a brief overview of
adaptive management and co-management to better understand how adaptive comanagement emerged as a potential management option. We pay particular attention to
what adaptive co-management is meant to do, and suggest that this approach runs the risk
of being too managerial unless particular attention is paid to agency and learning within
in the fisheries management process. We further argue that the most important promise
of adaptive co-management is actually its potential to create the conditions under which
management is possible. This article concludes with an analysis of the implications for
undertaking adaptive co-management in the Mekong region and several
recommendations for further research and deliberation.
This research stems from our work with other academics on the idea of adaptive comanagement (Armitage et al. 2008b) and in thinking about the practical implications of
this approach for fisheries management within the Mekong region. Our research drew on
a combination of fieldwork, interviews with fisheries managers, an extensive literature
review and our collective experiences working on natural resource management issues in
the Mekong region. Fieldwork includes freshwater and coastal fisheries sites in
Cambodia, Lao PDR, Thailand and Vietnam. This was supplemented with a synthesis of
the trends found in fisheries management and an analysis of the potential for adaptive comanagement in the Mekong region.
The Mekong region fisheries
Fisheries of the Mekong region (Cambodia, Thailand, Lao PDR and Vietnam) - inland
and coastal, wild and culture based - are important socially and economically (Baird
1996, Warren 2000, Ringler and Cai 2006; Salayo et al. 2008). For example, the overall
production of the Mekong capture fisheries is cited as being between 2 and 2.5 million
tonnes per year, with an estimated value of US$ 2 billion (MRC 2007). This is said to
constitute 2% of total global fish production and 17% of total global inland fisheries
production (Baran et al. 2006). In addition to the fisheries based on the main channel of
the Mekong River, and the larger, more visible examples such as Tonle Sap, there is a
great diversity and diffusion of small-scale fisheries in ponds, streams and rice fields
(Gregory and Guttman 1996), as well as to small-scale yet productive upland fisheries
(e.g. Degen et al. 2005). Aquatic resources from the fisheries systems of the Mekong
region are central to nutrition and food security, contributing between 27 and 78% of
animal protein in rural diets across the Mekong basin (Hortle and Bush 2003, Meusch et
2
al. 2003). Fisheries are also believed to be of particular importance to poor people partly
due to their nature as common property resources, acting as a component of diversified
livelihood strategies, and also as a safety-net and coping strategy (MRCS/WUP-FIN
2007).
The fisheries systems of the Mekong region also carry significant ecological importance.
The inland fisheries, for example, are based on a naturally highly variable system that
includes a huge number of different species with different life-cycles, highly seasonal
abundance, often migrating over large distances. From a purely biological perspective it
is difficult to understand natural productivity. Added to the variability of natural systems
(which are poorly understood) are the diverse ways in which people interact with the
natural system. People fish in different ways, generally not in a regular uniform, full time
‘professional’ manner (Marschke and Berkes 2006). People also employ different gears,
targeting a range of habitats, with different levels of intensity at different times of the
year (e.g. Deap et al. 2003). As such, the fisheries of the Mekong region represent
‘complex’ systems of dynamic, interlinked social and bio-physical elements across a
range of scales, characterised by contested values and interests, in which policy decisions
need to be made on limited information and the stakes are high (c.f. Funtowicz and
Ravetz 2003; van der Sluijs 2006; Verweij and Thompson 2006; Ramalingam et al.
2008).
This being noted, fisheries management in the Mekong region is characterised by a
somewhat paradoxical combination of state absence and ineffectiveness, with efforts at
state command and control (Sneddon 2007). These efforts are hampered by notoriously
weak environmental governance and hierarchical social and political structures that
provide little space for change (c.f. Ascher 2001; Blunt and Turner 2005). What is more,
we often see a general incompatibility of state interests and local interests and situations
where access to and control over natural resources has been, and remains, highly
contested (Sneddon 2007).
The main fisheries management approaches applied across the four Mekong countries has
been based on approaches towards conservation of stocks in order to maintain
production. There are only limited specific examples of the state adopting a rent-seeking
approach, and these are generally confined to the larger market oriented fisheries found in
the Tonle Sap and coastal fisheries. For many fisheries the approach has been based on
policy and legislation that has placed restrictions on gears through licences and
prohibitions, combined with the establishment of blanket closed seasons that broadly
correspond with breeding and spawning seasons. However, enforcement of such policies
has been highly variable, and in most cases ineffective, often causing tensions between
state agents and local fishers. Within this system there appears to be significant space for
political influence to determine access and control over resources (Sneddon 2007).
Thus, there is a growing recognition that state-led approaches, represented in its simplest
form as a combination of conservation objectives with policing approaches, have failed in
either protecting fishery resources or generating a shared interest in fisheries management
among fishers and the state. This acceptance of the failure of state-led approaches has
3
also been driven by financial, personnel and institutional constraints, including that
fisheries departments have sometimes themselves sought control over resources. This
reality of multiple, contested agendas within fisheries departments has created internal
tensions and influenced resource management outcomes. As a result, there has been an
increasing interest by fishers, some state officials and NGO activists in alternatives to
state-driven approaches. There have been a number of initiatives to support communitybased management and co-management, each with various degrees of success (e.g.
Fennell et al., 2008; Baird 2000), and most recently there appears to be an interest in the
idea of adaptive co-management for fisheries management.
The emergence of co-management and of adaptive management
Adaptive co-management has emerged from two strands of natural resource management
thinking: co-management and adaptive management (Armitage et al. 2008b). Comanagement is concerned with issues of sharing rights and responsibilities whereas
adaptive management is driven by the recognition of the uncertainty that is inherent in
natural systems and the need for management approaches that can deal with this. Thus
this merger – driven to a large extent by natural resource management thinking rather
than development studies or public administration – is a response to the challenges of
managing complex and dynamic natural resource systems. Let us examine each concept
in turn before a further consideration of adaptive co-management.
Co-management emerged as people-centered response to Hardin’s (1968) ‘tragedy of the
commons’ and to the failure of centralised ‘command and control’ approaches in resource
management (Berkes 2006). Much of this thinking stems from research in the area of
common pool resources (e.g., McCay and Acheson 1987; Ostrom 1990; Oakerson 1992).
Commons scholars have examined governance arrangements in diverse resource systems
with multiple user groups often at a local scale, but also at regional and global scales
(Ostrom et al. 2002; Dietz et al. 2003). The emphasis on rules of access, exclusion and
subtractability, and the identification of design principles or enabling conditions for the
management of common pool resources are major contributions (Ostrom 1990; Baland
and Platteau 1996; Agrawal 2002).
Theories for commons governance have continued to evolve (c.f. Armitage 2008),
including the area of co-management (e.g., Pinkerton 1989; Pomeroy et al. 2001). Comanagement is an institutional form that encourages a multi-level perspective and
involves sharing the rights and responsibilities for a particular resource among several
actors, usually involving some configuration of the state, resource users and civil society
(Pinkerton 1992; Armitage 2008). What is common across definitions of co-management
are the notions of shared responsibility and authority for decision making in the
management of natural resources (McCay and Acheson 1987; Sen and Nielsen 1996;
Pinkerton 1992; Berkes et al., 2001; Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2007). This body of
thinking arose as a critique of the state’s ability to understand and manage complex
common pool resources on its own while recognising the knowledge, skills and rights of
local resource users in terms of managing their own natural resources (Ostrom et al.,
1999).
4
Co-management arrangements do vary across settings. For example, the subject of
management could be a single resource, such as a catfish stock, or multiple resources,
such as those found within a marine protected area or reservoir. For fisheries managers,
co-management offers a management approach (or principles) that can potentially be
viable under a variety of conditions (e.g., political, social, cultural, economic, biophysical
and technological). Thus, co-management may represent a less prescriptive approach for
fisheries management than those that have previously been seen in the Mekong region in
terms of approaches to resource management and institutional arrangements. By the late
1990s, co-management approaches gained in currency in the Mekong region. In part, this
was because co-management was an attractive option given that fisheries departments
tended to be weak, poorly resourced, and the ‘messy’ institutional settings in which
management institutions may exist de facto within ‘communities’. While some of the
motivation is to take an ‘asset based’ approach that builds on these local institutions and
capabilities (Beck and Nesmith 2001), there is also undoubtedly attraction towards
transferring the responsibility and the costs of management, what Hara (2004) refers to as
‘instrumental co-management’. This fits in with the wider critique of decentralisation
processes in the region (c.f. Blunt and Turner 2005; Hughes 2006; Turner 2006).
As a result there is now a rhetorical policy commitment to community and comanagement of fisheries across all four Mekong countries, endorsed and promoted by the
state, and intergovernmental organisations such as FAO and SEAFDEC, local NGOs
(e.g., CBNRM LI) and academic-practioners (e.g., Pomeroy and Guieb 2005). This
process of community-state partnerships around fisheries management is given various
names i.e., community fisheries, community based natural resource management, comanagement or, in a few cases, adaptive co-management (Garaway and Arthur 2004;
Marschke and Berkes, 2006; Resurreccion, 2006, Fennell et al. 2008). These terms tend
to be used rather loosely, with some programs emphasising a strong governmental
presence and others advocating for mostly community involvement. In practice, perhaps
because of the less prescriptive nature of the approach, the terms ‘co-management’ and
‘community-based management’ can be unclear, and their application vague (e.g.
Pinkerton 2003).
Whilst co-management was emerging from failures of centralised management, the
literature on adaptive management was emerging in recognition of the challenges created
by the complex, dynamic and uncertain contexts in which natural resource management
takes place and the rigidity of state institutions in place to manage these. If not embraced,
these uncertainties can lead to what Charles (2001) describes as the “illusion of certainty”
and “fallacy of controllability” and unexpected, and often undesirable, outcomes (Ascher
2001; Lorenzen and Garaway 1998).
Since the 1970’s adaptive management has been advocated in situations where
management of complex systems must proceed despite uncertainties and difficulties in
predicting the results of management actions (e.g. Holling 1987; Walters 1986). Adaptive
management can potentially address such acknowledged uncertainties and enable
appropriate policies and management strategies to be identified (Gunderson et al. 1995;
5
Lee 1993; Holling 1987; Walters 1986). In its earliest form, adaptive management treated
policy and management as an experimental process with actions developed to test
alternative hypotheses aimed at reducing key uncertainties that have been identified. In
this way management can be specifically used to learn more about the resource system at
the same time as it is being managed, with management actions subsequently being
refined based on this learning.
This experimentation may be of two types, both based on contrasting variation in
management actions, either temporally or spatially. These are passive experimentation,
where the focus is on contrasting existing variation in the system such as spatial
differences in management, and active experimentation, where variation is deliberately
introduced into the system (Walters 1986). In both cases experimentation is led by
scientists and experts who construct the hypotheses that are tested and present these
results to decision makers. Worth noting, most examples of adaptive management stem
from the developed world in which governance mechanisms are in place to allow for such
dialogue among stakeholders and where such mechanisms as independent public
enquiries and expert panels are well established (e.g. Sainsbury 1988; McAllister et al.
1992).
Over the past three decades the definition of adaptive management has shifted becoming
less explicitly focused on experimentation (e.g. Walters 1986; Hilborn and Walters 1992)
and towards more of an iterative ‘learning’ or ‘learning-by-doing’ approach (e.g. Colfer
2005; Ruitenbeek and Cartier 2001). Ruitenbeck and Cartier (2001: 8), for example,
define adaptive co-management as “…a long-term management structure that permits
stakeholders to share management responsibility within a specific system of natural
resources, and to learn from their actions” whereas Folke (2006) suggests the approach is
a process by which institutional arrangements and ecological knowledge are tested and
revised in a dynamic, self-organising process of learning-by-doing.
This shift towards learning identifies the willingness of concerned stakeholders to come
together in some form of dialogue as an important aspect of management approaches.
Perhaps through recognising the difficulties and challenges of an explicitly experimental
approach implemented in a top down manner (e.g. Walters 2007), there is growing
interest in participatory approaches and learning in particular. One critique of this new
found emphasis on learning is that learning appears to be apolitical whereas learning is
neither value free nor apolitical (Armitage et al. 2008a). Moreover, coming together to
'learn' is assumed to occur through a sense of shared interest rather than through conflict
which is often the case when dealing with fisheries resources.
Within the Mekong region, adaptive management has not been heavily promoted. While
examples do exist of scientists, government managers and fishers working together on a
specific fisheries issues (e.g., Arthur 2004), these are few and far between. This is
partially because few government scientists have adopted this approach, as it is time
consuming and requires a strong commitment to fieldwork. The 'field' is often far from
provincial centers and in some of the more marginalised areas in the region. Moreover,
there are so many fisheries contexts that government scientists and state officials need to
6
be willing to embrace what they do not know, and to draw on local knowledge. This
presents its own challenges.
The promise of adaptive co-management
Adaptive co-management is a new term that brings together strands of thinking from the
co-management literature and the adaptive management literature to include elements of
shared management authority and iterative learning (Armitage et al 2008b). Adaptive comanagement is described as “an emergent and self-organising process facilitated by rules
and incentives of higher levels, with the potential to foster more robust social-ecological
systems” (Res. Alliance 2008). Key features of adaptive co-management include: (a)
learning-by-doing; (b) synthesis of different knowledge systems; collaboration and power
sharing; (d) management flexibility. Although definitions of adaptive co-management
vary, embedded in this concept are ideas of collaboration and learning (Armitage et al.
2008a; Olsson et al. 2004). In the context of the Mekong region, this approach holds an
appeal within the fisheries management, scientific and research communities, partly
because of the complexity of the fisheries, the diverse range of stakeholders and the often
unexpected outcomes from previous fisheries policies and practices (Lorenzen and
Garaway 1998; Marschke and Nong 2003; Fennell et al. 2008).
Adaptive co-management is proposed as a long-term approach, engaging actors
associated with a resource management process in joint learning-by-doing across both
scale and level (e.g. Armitage et al. 2008b; Berkes et al. 2007; Lebel et al. 2005;
Garaway and Arthur 2004). This is presented as a way of harnessing all available assets
to learn and adapt (Armitage et al. 2007). Rather than being focused on optimisation or a
particular target, learning becomes a platform for developing ‘adaptive capacity’ and
‘resilience’ (e.g. Walker et al. 2004), assuming that good policy and more appropriate
management outcomes will result. Both the management and learning processes may take
on different forms according to the specific policy and management context (Armitage et
al. 2008a; Garaway and Arthur 2004; Borrini-Feyerabend et al. 2007). Because it is
contextually dependent, similarly to what is described in the co-management and the
adaptive management literature, the resulting adaptive co-management will look different
according to the context in which it is in practice.
While this is not necessarily problematic, there is a significant risk that it becomes much
more difficult to say what adaptive co-management is and what it is not. We are
concerned that adaptive co-management is in danger of becoming what Cornwall (2007)
terms a ‘buzzword and fuzzword’. Cornwall (2007: 472) aptly notes that “development’s
buzzwords gain their purchase and power through their vague and euphemistic qualities,
their capacity to embrace the multitude of possible meanings, and their normative
resonance”. The core terms – of co-management and adaptive – and the focus –
resilience and adaptive capacity - are intuitively appealing, and it is difficult to be against
any of these things. In other words, it is difficult to place the sanctity of this goal beyond
reproach (Cornwall 2007).
However this appeal, together with the difficulty in being able to define any of these
7
terms in a way that helps in practice, also means that much of what is suggested as the
promise of adaptive co-management may be left unfulfilled (c.f. Brand and Jax 2007).
This is a particular issue in the current context of fisheries in the Mekong region where
the fisheries have such a high importance and where there is widespread concern about
fisheries management, governance and the developmental contribution of fisheries.
Although adaptive co-management has appeared extensively in the literature of researchbased institutions, it is only now beginning to enter the discourse and into guidelines of
fisheries managers.
Perhaps it is not surprising that adaptation and resilience are currently in vogue, as these
emerging buzzwords fit with concerns over the effects of humans’ impacts on the natural
world and the shocks and stresses these produce, perhaps typified by shifts away from
mitigation in dealing with climate change. Co-management (and now adaptive comanagement) of natural resources, too, resonates in a particular way, especially with the
agendas of decentralisation and devolution. Buzzword or not, an area that is often missed
is the politics of resource governance (Walker 2007), as much of the management
literature has tended to focus on the practice of management (e.g. Andrew et al. 2007).
As a result, we argue, underpinning much of the current adaptive co-management
thinking is an essentially managerial approach to development and resource management
that downplays the political (and historically situated) dimensions of what we see as
fundamental challenges of governance and power. If this is how adaptive comanagement is carried out on the ground, then it is debatable how different this approach
really is as compared with the classic ‘command and control’ management methods.
Ironically, by focusing on concepts of learning as a central tenant within adaptive comanagement the political dimensions of fisheries management and the underlying
conflicts can be obscured.
No doubt, there are many issues and challenges associated with learning in complex
fisheries systems. Learning, as it is currently discussed in the resource management
literature, is vague, unclear and does not recognise the challenges of bringing mulitple
stakeholders with a vested, often entrenched interest in the fishery together (Armitage et
al. 2008a). Thus, explicit attention to learning in adaptive co-management represents a
necessary evolution if expected social, economic and ecological benefits are to be
realised (Armitage et al. 2008a). Learning is inextricably linked to the development of
relationships among the actors that constitute a particular management arrangement.
Although Armitage et al. (2008b) do recognise power asymmetries, there remains a
considerable gulf between the adaptive co-management literature and the literature on
power in the social sciences (Nadasdy 2007). As a result, key questions that are asked in
the social sciences are not being asked in the fisheries sector, namely: whose interests are
being served by a certain set of arrangements, or a certain goal or goals (Wiber 2007).
For example, while proponents of adaptive co-management are critical of top-down,
state-led management (c.f. Berkes 2006; Armitage et al. 2008b), there appears to be little
analysis of context within this literature. Without an explicit and careful attention to how
adaptive co-management may fit within pre-existing patterns of social, political,
8
economic, and cultural interactions, there is a risk of inadvertently overlooking how new
‘co’ types of institutional arrangements that are proposed may perpetuate older, socially
exploitative and environmentally deleterious patterns. Moreover, attention to the formal
and informal connections which at once shape, and are an outcome of, power relations is
necessary.
With regards to the practice of community-based management, co-management, adaptive
management or adaptive co-management (these ideas do blur together in practice), with
the exception of a few papers focusing on resource management committee practices,
analysis appears to be geared towards endorsing policy reforms or critiquing such
reforms often using data gathered from short field visits, or consists of ‘quick and dirty’
evaluations (Fennell et al. 2007). What is never questioned is if this type of policy
approach, as practiced, could ever really support local resource management needs, or
how to create a supportive environment to ensure that policy is reflexive and pertinent to
ever-changing local contexts.
Managerialism: a real issue for fisheries management
Taking a managerial approach towards fisheries management is problematic since this
takes the problems of development policy as accidents or as the results of poor policy and
practice, rather than considering them in their full historical and political context. Thus
poverty and environmental degradation are presented as technocratic challenges rather
than political challenges, and are placed outside of their structural context. As a result,
complexity is simplified to a ‘manageable’ degree, applying a management, problem
solving discourse to the framing of the problem, identifying solutions and legitimising
specific actors.
Within this approach, as we see it in the fisheries world, there are critical assumptions
about the linkages between policy, research and practice. The way in which research
influences policy outcomes has often been founded on a notion of a ‘plausible promise’,
i.e. that good scientific information leads to better policy and practice outcomes. This
manifests itself in fisheries management in simple assumptions that the role of research in
fisheries management and policy is diagnosis, assessment and monitoring and making
policy recommendations for ‘decision makers’ to implement. This is a linear model that
denies the true complexity of policy processes, and that does not acknowledge ways in
which policy is contested, even within organisations themselves, and the extent to which
outcomes are ultimately unpredictable.
For the scientific community, adopting a linear model of policy change, the problem
becomes one of an information gap to be filled by scientific facts to be generated by
scientists and experts (Brock 2002). Science and policy becomes biased towards ‘puzzlesolving’, offering simple solutions and models that, it is suggested, will generate
successful outcomes for what are actually complex and multi dimensional issues (e.g.
Verweij et al. 2006; Ackoff 1974). The role of research, institutions, participation and
empowerment are seen as instrumental and considered as a means to an end of improved
policy outcomes (e.g. Barnett 2008). And the workings and practice of science and the
construction of scientific truth are taken at face value, and outside of its own social and
9
political context. Given the significance of claims to scientific truth and neutrality for
legitimising policy actors and actions, there is a need for a more reflective look at how
science and research operate within these areas.
The managerial approach to fisheries and role of research within it lacks a meaningful
conceptual framework for dealing with social or institutional change. This reinforces
notions of the supremacy of science and of experts, without adequate consideration of the
contested nature of development management and policy. This linear model of policy and
of science does not stand up to closer scrutiny and indeed there is frustration that
recommendations are not taken up by the decision makers in the way that they should.
However, much of this frustration is aimed at the perceived failings of the policy and
management institutions (e.g. Walters 2007; Christie et al. 2006) and the weakness of
scientists in communicating with policy makers rather than something more
fundamentally wrong with the approach itself. Challenging the assumptions about the
approach is no trivial matter. Many of the key assumptions are contained within
persuasive and persistent discourses about both the nature of research and the fishery that
perpetuate these assumptions and that are rarely subject to critical review (e.g. Friend et
al. in press).
While managerial approaches have their place, they make less sense in the sorts of
complex, messy and highly politicised contexts that characterise so many of the Mekong
fisheries. In this sort of situation development challenges, contested spaces, and power
struggles within and between stakeholder groups cannot be resolved simply through
negotiation, facilitation and improving communication to result in socially just
predictable outcomes (e.g. Wollenberg et al. 2007; Ascher 2001). In these situations,
there is no way that they are going to work in the ways in which they were intended.
Even so, we see that these sorts of approaches are being suggested as a means to manage
complex natural systems (e.g. Rammel et al. 2007; Utne 2006).
We would argue that, from our experience in the context of fisheries management in the
Mekong, managerial approaches to adaptive co-management and the linear role of
science and research within it need to be re-examined. Fisheries face a crisis of
governance not merely a crisis of management and addressing this means moving beyond
formulaic approaches couched in the politically neutral language of management and
science. In addition to often idealising how policy and management processes function,
as well as the capacity to use information within them in the intended way (e.g. Christie
et al. 2006), the focus on diagnosis and recommendations is too limited. Not only does
the diagnosis typically fail to fully account for the development context, including in
particular the history and politics of a situation that can be so vital in enabling or
preventing change, but this role results in outputs that are too descriptive. As a result, this
helps us only to provide a snapshot of the current situation but not to account for or to
encourage change. In rapidly changing systems such as fisheries in the Mekong there is
the danger that such an analysis and the recommendations that it produces, once
completed, will already be out of date.
This linear model of information to policy change has been heavily criticised in policy-
10
related disciplines (e.g. Court et al. 2005; van der Sluijs 2006; Shore and Wright
1997).Yet there has been little introspection among the fisheries science community of
the role of science and agency of scientists, with some notable exceptions (Wilson
XXXX). Many of the research projects that have operated with a stated objective of
influencing policy, have been unaware of the policy and institutional contexts in which
they have been operating or of what policy itself is (Friend 2002). While there has been
considerable scientific research undertaken on fisheries (and in particular the fish) in the
Mekong, scientists have rarely braved the murky waters of policy arenas and institutional
functioning. Taking on board the discourse of adaptive co-management we feel requires
us to do so.
Despite the recognition of messiness and complexity in fisheries as social-ecological
systems (Armitage et al. 2008b; Andrew et al. 2007), there is little corresponding
recognition of such messiness and complexity in detailing how science should engage in
order to have influence. We still fall back on managerial approaches and their attendant
tool kits, methods, and preconditions – as if the ‘problems’ of management and policy are
accidents of policy, or the result of perturbations. For example, one feature common to
adaptive co-management (e.g. Armitage et al. 2008b); co-management theory (e.g.
Pomeroy et al. 2001) and common property theory (e.g. Ostrom 1990; Argawal 2002, is
the existence of conditions for success required to achieve successful outcomes. Within
the diverse set of fisheries in the Mekong region there do exist a number of discrete
fisheries that meet the conditions of collective action and adaptive co-management:
within these cases it has been possible to implement forms of adaptive co-management
(Arthur 2004; Marschke and Nong 2003; Garaway and Arthur 2002).
However these examples are far from representative of the majority of fisheries in the
Mekong region. Much more common are the complex fisheries described in the
introduction that do not meet such conditions. That is, in the Mekong region rather few
‘conditions for successful co-management’ exist at this point. For example, one
condition for success is having a well-defined resource system. This is nearly impossible
given the mobility of aquatic species. Likewise, a context in which ‘participants share
and draw on a plurality of knowledge’ is difficult to create given the often hierarchical
nature of relationships within the Mekong region. Creating situations where power
relations are explicitly dealt with and local and scientific knowledge is combined is both
time-consuming and difficult (Arthur and Garaway 2006).
Does this mean then that adaptive co-management is not appropriate to such situations?
After all, Armitage et al. (2008b) have recognised that adaptive co-management is not a
governance panacaea and will not be appropriate in all cases, and Borrini-Feyerabend et
al. (2007) note that under some conditions co-management and sharing power will fail.
Well, we hope not, and we would argue that, for us, in our context, with the importance
of the fisheries and with so many of the fisheries of the Mekong region not meeting these
criteria, the most important promise of adaptive co-management is actually its potential
to create the conditions under which management is possible.
Shifting the goalposts of adaptive co-management
11
A major challenge for adaptive co-management is to consider the role for science and
research that emphasises the ‘adaptive’ and ‘co’ elements as compared to the
management aspect. This requires a new research and development agenda: an agenda
that recognises management as a governance challenge and therefore political, about
power and in which contestation and struggles are recognised and seen as a constructive
and unavoidable part of the process, rather than as external threats. This agenda needs to
also accept that in a complex context characterised by non-linear dynamics, linear models
of research to policy may not be adequate or appropriate ().
For us, working in a development context, we recognise that the purpose of adaptive comanagement is change through learning and in determining who does what, yet we have
found few good discussions regarding our role as researchers within the adaptive comanagement process. This is surprising considering that one implication of taking on
board the discourse of adaptive co-management is that researchers are players in the
process, and also required to be adaptive. Moreover, research cannot just be research as
usual rather that we need to explore new roles (e.g. Wollenberg et al. 2007; Arthur and
Garaway 2006).
What attracted us to notions of adaptive co-management is that the concept is intuitively
appealing, implying a recognition of messiness and complexity, highlighting
unpredictable outcomes of planned interventions – and that people can potentially
influence change (i.e., agency). However as a practical approach it still remains fairly
poorly defined (e.g. Andrew et al. 2007). We want to revitalize this concept of adaptive
co-management by reframing what the role of science and scientists can be in generating
change. In doing so we will highlight the role of people as ‘agents of change’ (c.f. Friere
1971) or even ‘drivers of change’ (c.f. Garaway 2001), recognising that it is not just the
external environment that drives change. In fact, following Stacey (2002), Stacey (2003)
and Ascher (2001) we consider that change manifests itself at the local level and that this
is where we see the impact of interactions with the environment and with institutions and
policies. Hence we are drawn to the crucial aspects of agency, knowledge and power in
management.
In complex systems like the fisheries of the Mekong we have found a positive role for
research and learning that is not about describing and understanding stakeholders and
institutions (c.f. Andrew et al. 2007) and providing expert advice, but is, instead, about
research as a transformative process. Research is not limited to providing answers to
specific questions, but the whole process of questioning, testing ideas and practice,
review and analysis that is so crucial to meeting the key elements of co-management, i.e
adaptive (reflection and change) and co-management (roles and responsibilities, authority
and power). However we do not see this as necessarily being a means to address conflict
and achieve “co-evolution of stakeholder preferences”, shared goals and compromise
decisions (c.f. Rammel et al. 2007).
It is important to avoid the temptation to try to ‘fix’ the system. We need to accept it is,
and will continue to be, a complex and messy context in which our understanding and
12
influence is limited. We believe that the emphasis should be on responsive, flexible and
non-linear research processes that are about finding ‘clumsy solutions’, emergent
innovation and ‘muddling through’ (c.f. Wollenberg 2007; Verweij and Thompson 2006;
Stacey 2003; McCay 2002). People are able to ‘participate’ in different stages of
research, but they do so actively and with agency, for different purposes, and with
different outcomes – and with different insights. This is not always a happy
straightforward process, nor is it entirely predictable – there is often conflict – but when
dealing with inequitable power relations there will be some element of conflict.
This aspect of agency is a crucial one. Actors are capable, even within severely restricted
social spaces, of formulating decisions, acting upon them, and innovating or
experimenting’ (Long p.25) as well as in interpreting policies and even resisting them.
This is an important shift from managerial attitudes that tend to characterise these actors
as passive recipients (c.f. Bartlett 2008). In addition we have also recognised our own
agency. Even as ‘scientists’ or ‘researchers’ we are not neutral or without our own
agendas and nor will the conclusions from our work not suffer also from interpretation
(c.f. Yearley 1998). Following on from this, while the importance of institutions in
adaptive co-management has been highlighted (e.g. Armitage et al. 2008b), the creation
and development of institutions needs to be recognised itself as a political process in
which individual actors will often work to advance their own cause and in which the
outcomes will reflect the political influence of those involved (e.g. Arce and Fisher 2007;
Young 2002). The same will be true of the relationships within alliances and networks
(e.g. Gill and Butler 2003). People, as actors with agency, therefore come to be at the
centre of an adaptive co-management approach.
In each of our experiences we found that the research process became increasingly
engaged with local people and their needs and aspirations and evolved, becoming
something different over time. The shifting spaces – institutional and discursive – that
this engagement produces creates new interfaces, opportunities and fault lines for change.
Getting actors at these interfaces involved in doing ‘research’ not merely describing
institutional linkages itself creates new spaces, and changes the quality of these
relationships. We would argue that adaptive co-management needs to engage at these
interfaces and using a process of ‘research’ (asking questions, testing hypotheses,
experimenting, reflecting) in order to create opportunities for social change. Through this
the nature of research is changed, and so does what it means to be a ‘researcher’.
No doubt, there are challenges for doing so in the Mekong as governance and policy
processes lack transparency and accountability, and scientific knowledge is intimately
linked to state power in development and natural resource management. Within this
region, elements of democracy appear to mix with authoritarian and traditional practices,
such as a lack of rule of law and widespread patronage (Hughes 2006). Thus, we need to
think through more critically what the role of science and research should be and how the
process of science research can broaden the policy arena to allow for mediating conflict
in order to meet the expectations of adaptive co-management. This is of critical
importance as we work in a context where fishers are already marginalised in policy
processes, and where poor fishers are the most marginal of the marginalised.
13
We are not saying that this approach is straightforward. In our Mekong context this
process is indeed challenging. We recognise the political dimension of what we are
putting forward. The superior knowledge of the state is often key to its legitimacy
particularly when dealing face to face with rural constituents. Some actors can be
expected to actively fight against the kind of engagement we are proposing as it
challenges their role as expert. Where rural people are often illiterate, with limited formal
education, the notion of dialogue and sharing does not make sense unless people are
equipped. The authority of the expert is rarely challenged even when it is clearly wrong.
We would argue, from our experience, that engaged, participatory research processes can
broaden the policy arena, allowing different voices to be legitimately heard, counterbalancing this authority and expertise in order to be both adaptive, and for management
to be truly a process of co-management.
Conclusions
Given the potential popularity of this approach among development agencies (bi-lateral
and multi-lateral), researchers, government and non-governmental organisations, greater
specificity and clarity concerning the meanings and outcomes ascribed to research-policy
interfaces, learning, power and agency is necessary. So what does this mean for us as
scientists/researchers engaged in promoting adaptive co-management? The recent
attention on adaptive co-management as a potential model for resource governance has
provided us with a useful and timely opportunity to stop and reflect on the way that
fisheries management has been approached in the Mekong Region. Importantly, this
enabled us to consider the implications of the development of adaptive co-management as
an approach to manage complex Mekong fisheries systems. Thus, we offer a number of
conclusions in this regard.
Firstly, we have realised that the focus of much of the practical implementation has
emphasised steps in implementation and far less discussion on roles of us as researchers.
Lessons-learned, frameworks, guidelines, tool kits however useful are not enough for this
kind of approach because, despite our best intentions, this can easily lead the nascent
practitioner towards a managerial approach to implementation, the very thing we suggest
we should be seeking to avoid. This is all the more important because we do not yet
really know what works, partly because is so little written on co-management and
participatory research outside of projectised implementation.
Secondly, we need to be engaged not just in promoting adaptive co-management within
the scientific and policy communities or using it as a lens through which to view and
interpret our work, but also engaged in experiments in social change, with research itself
acting as a transformative process (political and reflexive), self-aware of our role and
motivations – open to critical review from the ‘intended beneficiaries’ – not neutral
experts standing outside the system and process. Where our experiences have led us is to
something similar to ‘‘post-normal science’’ (Funtowicz and Ravetz, 1991). Explicitly
non-linear science and research in which science is recogised as value laden and where
the focus is on an inclusive process of generating knowledge and learning rather than on
14
finding solutions or recommendations (Frame and Brown 2008; Ramos-Martin 2003).
Engaging in this sort of self-aware transformative process frames the kinds of questions
we should be asking, and the kinds of things we should be doing. As a result we should
be more critical of the assumptions, arguments and discourses that shape policy
approaches as a result, building on recent work addressing policy (Johnson 2006, Roe
1991, Verweij et al. 2006, Shore and Wright 1997, Hajer and Versteeg 2005).
Thirdly, there is a relative absence of critical reflection on the elements of adaptive comanagements potentially progressive program. Are its foundational concepts such as
resilience and learning sufficiently elaborated so as to really stimulate new dynamic
social arrangements (Wiber 2007; Brand and Jax 2007)? The risk of not reflecting on this
approach is that adaptive co-management will merely re-enforce status quo arrangements
that continue to undermine human ecology rather than challenge them.
Fourthly, we need to be careful of jumping onto a fuzzword bandwagon. Adaptive comanagement seems to provide an answer to the rigidity of co-management structures and
a response to past failings, but it can also be a smokescreen for things we do when we’re
not sure what is we are doing. For both the research and development communities it can
become a justification for further experimentation in contexts that are poorly understood,
and where outcomes of practice are uncertain and unpredictable. If our emphasis is on
transformative, reflective (therefore transparent and accountable) social processes – and
we recognise the big obstacle is power relations – then this is what we should be
targeting, but being realistic, and probably less ambitious, about what can be achieved. If
we don’t do this the risks are that we have a poorly defined approach that can only be
implemented in specific cases, and even so, with unpredictable, and perhaps undesirable,
outcomes.
To conclude, our interest in adaptive co-management is in the specific context of
developing countries, going through rapid change, in which access to and control over
resources is at the heart of natural resources management, and which are themselves
fundamental governance and political challenges. In this context we have found that,
similarly to Eyben (2008), it makes sense for us to explicitly recognise agency (including
knowledge and power), institutions and discourses and to frame adaptive co-management
as a self-aware research process that is engaged at the interface between policy and
practice at the local level.
Reframed in this way, we suggest that adaptive co-management does have the potential to
achieve some of this by providing both a means for people to engage in dialogue over
complex issues, to learn and develop relationships and potential also for an exploration of
the way in which science and researchers can support these dialogue processes.
References – To be completed
Ackoff 1974
15
Agrawal, A. 2002. The regulatory community: decentralization and the environment in
the Van Panchayats (Forest Councils) of Kumaon, India. Mountain Research and
Development 21(3): 208-211.
Allan, J.D., Abell, R., Hogan, Z., Revenga, C., Taylor, B.W., Welcomme, R.L. and
Winemiller, K. (2005) 'Over-fishing of inland waters' BioScience 55(12): 1041-1050
Andrew et al. 2007
Arce, A. and Fisher, E. 2007 Creating Natural Knowledge: agriculture, science and
experiments. In: P. Sillitoe (ed.) Local science vs. global science: approaches to
indigenous knowledge in international development. Berghahn Books, New York
Armitage, D. 2008. Governance and the commons in a multi-level world. International
Journal of the Commons (2) January: 7-32
Armitage, D., Marschke, M., and Plummer, R. 2008a. Adaptive Co-Management and
the Paradox of Learning. Global Environmental Change, 88: 86-98.
Armitage, D., Plummer, R., Berkes, F., Arthur, R., Charles, A., Davidson-Hunt, I.,
Diduck, Al, Doubleday, N., Johnson, D., Marschke, M., McConney, P., Pinkerton, E.,
Wollenberg, E. 2008b. Adaptive co-management for social-ecological complexity.
Front Ecol Environ, 6, doi:10.1890/070089.
Arthur, R.I. 2004. Adaptive learning and the management of small water body fisheries: a
case study in Lao PDR. PhD Thesis, University of London. 437 pp.
Arthur, R.I. and Garaway, C.J. 2006. Role of researchers in support of fisheries comanagement. Proceedings of 13th Biennial IIFET Conference: Rebuilding fisheries in an
uncertain environment. Portsmouth, UK .
Ascher, W. 2001. Coping with complexity and organizational interests in natural
resource management. Ecosystems 4: 742-757.
Baird, I. G. 1996. Inland community fisheries in southern Laos. Naga, The ICLARM
Quarterly January 1996: 13-15.
Baird, I.G. 2000. 'Integrating community-based fisheries co-management and protected
areas management in Lao P.D.R.: opportunities for advancement and obstacles to
implementation'. Evaluating Eden Series. Discussion Paper No. 14, IIED, London, U.K.,
22 pp.
Baland, J.M. and Platteau, J.P, 1996. Halting the Degradation of Natural Resources: Is
there a role for rural communities? Clarendon Press, Oxford.
16
Baran E., Jantunen T. and Chong C. K. (2006) Values of inland fisheries in the Mekong
River Basin. WorldFish Center, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. 75 pages
Bartlett, A. 2008. No more adoption rates! Looking for empowerment in agricultural
development programmes. Development in Practice. 18 (4&5): 524-539
Beck, T. and Nesmith, C. 2001. Building on poor people’s capacities: The case of
common property resources in India and West Africa. World Development 29 (1): 119133.
Berkes, F. 2006. From community-based resource management to complex systems.
Ecology and Society 11(1): 45. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art45/.
Berkes, F., Armitage, D. and Doubleday, N. 2007. Synthesis: adapting, innovating,
evolving. In: Armitage, D., Berkes, F. and Doubleday, N. (eds.) Adaptive comanagement: collaboration, learning and multi-level governance. UBC Press, Vancouver.
Berkes, F., R. Mahon, P. McConney, R. Pollnac and R. Pomeroy 2001. Managing smallscale fisheries: alternative directions and methods. IDRC, Ottowa, Canada.
Blunt, P., and Turner, M. 2005. Decentralization, Democracy and Development in a PostConflict Society : Commune Councils in Cambodia, Public Administration and
Development, 25: 75-87.
Borrini-Feyerabend, G. Pimbert, M. Farvar, T. Kothari, A. and Renard, Y. 2007. Sharing
Power: A Global Guide to Collaborative Management of Natural Resources. Earthscan,
472p.
Brand, F. S., and Jax, K. 2007. Focusing the meaning(s) of resilience: resilience as a
descriptive concept and a boundary object. Ecology and Society 12(1): 23. [online] URL:
http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol12/iss1/art23/.
Brock 2002
Charles, A.T. 2001. Sustainable fishery systems. Blackwell Science, Oxford, UK.
Christie, P., Fluharty, D.L., White, A.T., Eisma-Osorio, L. and Jantulan, W. 2006.
Assessing the feasibility of ecosystem-based fisheries management in tropical contexts.
Marine Policy.??
Colfer, C.J.P. 2005. The complex forest: communities, uncertainty and adaptive
collaborative management. Resources for the Future Press, Washington.
Cornwall, A. 2007. Buzzwords and Fuzzwords: deconstructing development discourse
17
Development in Practice Vol. 17 (4&5) pp. 471- 484.
Court, J., Hovland, I. and Young, J. (eds.) 2005 Bridging research and policy in
development: evidence and the change process. ITDG Press, Rugby.
Deap, L., Degen, P., van Zalinge, N. 2003. Fishing gears of the Cambodian Mekong.
Inland Fisheries Research and Development Institute of Cambodia (IFReDI), Phnom
Penh, Cambodia Fisheries Technical Paper Series Volume IV, 269p.
Degen, P., Chap Piseth, P. Swift & Hang Mary 2005. Upland Fishing and Indigenous
Punong Fisheries Management in Mondulkiri Province, Cambodia FAO/WCS: Phnom
Penh, Cambodia.
Dietz T, Ostrom E, and Stern P. 2003. The struggle to govern the commons. Science 302:
1907–12.
Eyben, R. 2008. Conceptualising policy practices in researching pathways of women’s
empowerment. Pathways Working Paper 1. Institute of Development Studies,
University of Sussex.
Fennel, D., Plummer, R., and Marschke, M. 2008. Is Adaptive Co-Management Ethical?
Journal of Environmental Management, 88: 62-75.
Ficke, A.D., Myrick, C.A. and Hansen, L.J. 2007. Potential impacts of global climate
change on freshwater fisheries. Reviews in Fish Biology and Fisheries. 17:581–613.
Folke, C. 2006. Resilience: the emergence ofa perspective for social-ecological systems
analysis. Global Environmental Change, 16(3): 253-267.
Frame, B. and Brown, J. 2008. Developing post-normal technologies for sustainability.
Ecological Economics 65: 225-241.
Friend, R.F., Arthur, R.I. and Keskinen, M. (in press) Songs of the Doomed: The
continuing neglect of capture fisheries in hydropower development in the Mekong in: F.
Molle and M. Kakönen (eds.) Contested Waterscapes in the Mekong Region:
Hydropower, Livelihoods and Governance Earthscan, London.
Freire, F. 1971. Pedagogy of the oppressed. New York: Herder & Herder.
Funtowitz, S.O. and Ravetz, J.R. 1993. Science for the post-normal age. Futures 25, 739755.
Garaway 2001
Garaway, C.J. and Arthur, R.I. 2004. Adaptive learning: a practical framework for the
implementation of adaptive co-management. Lessons from selected experiences in South
18
and Southeast Asia. MRAG Ltd, London, UK. Available from HYPERLINK
"http://www.fmsp.org.uk" www.fmsp.org.uk.
Garaway, C.J., Arthur, R.I., Chamsingh, B., Homekingkeo,P., Lorenzen, K.,
Saengvilaikham, B., and Sidavong, K., 2006. A social science perspective on
enhancement outcomes: lessons learned from inland fisheries in southern Lao PDR.
Fisheries Research 80 (1) pp. 37-45.
Gill and Butler 2003
Gregory, R & H. Guttman 1996. ‘Poor in all but fish: A study of the collection of
ricefield foods from three villages in Svay Teap District, Svay Rieng’ Working Paper 5,
AIT AquaOutreach Project Asian Institute of Technology: Bangkok, Thailand.
Gunderson, L.H., C.S. Holling and S.S. Light (eds.) 1995. Barriers and bridges to the
renewal of ecosystems and institutions. Columbia University Press. New York.
Hajer, M., and W. Versteeg 2005. ‘A Decade of Discourse Analysis of Environmental
Politics: Achievements, Challenges, Perspectives’ Journal of Environmental Policy &
Planning (7) 3: 175-184.
Hara, M. 2004. Beach village committees as a vehicle for community participation: Lake
Malombe/Upper Shire River Participatory Programme In: C. Fabricius, E. Koch, H.
Magombe and S. Turner (ed). Rights, resources and rural development: communitybased natural resource management in southern Africa. Earthscan, London
Hardin, G 1968. ‘Tragedy of the Commons’ Science vol 162: 1243-1248.
Hilborn, R. and C.J. Walters 1992. Quantitative fisheries stock assessment. Chapman and
Hall, New York.
Holling, C.S. (ed.) 1987. Adaptive environmental assessment and management. John
Wiley and Sons, Chichester.
Hortle K.G. and Bush S.R. 2003. Consumption in the Lower Mekong Basin as a measure
of fish yield. Pp. 76-82 in FAO New approaches for the improvement of inland capture
fishery statistics in the Mekong Basin. FAO-RAP publication 2003/1. FAO, Bangkok,
Thailand. 145 pp.
Hughes, C. 2006. Cambodia. IDS Bulletin, 37(2): 67-78.
Johnson, D.S. 2006. Category, narrative and value in the governance of small-scale
fisheries Marine Policy 30: 747-756.
Lamberts, D. 2006. The Tonle Sap Lake as a productive ecosystem, International Journal
of Water Resources Development, Vol. 22, No. 3, pages 481–495.
19
Lee, K. 1993. Compass and gyroscope. Island Press, Washington.
Lebel, L., P. Garden, and M. Imamura. 2005. The politics of scale, position, and place in
the governance of water resources in the Mekong region. Ecology and Society 10(2): 18.
[online] URL: http://www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol10/iss2/art18/
Lorenzen, K. and C. J. Garaway 1998. How predictable is the outcome of stocking? In: T.
Petr (ed.) Inland fishery enhancements. Rome, FAO Fisheries Technical Paper 374: 133152.
Lorenzen, K., Juntana, J, Bundit, J. and Tourongruang, D. 1998. Assessing culture
fisheries practices in small waterbodies: a study of village fisheries in north east
Thailand. Aquaculture Research, 29. pp. 211-224.
Long
Marschke, M. and Nong, K. 2003. Adaptive Co-management: Lessons from coastal
Cambodia. Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 24(3): 369-383.
Marschke, M., and Berkes, F. 2006, Exploring Strategies that Build Livelihood
Resilience: A case from Cambodia. Ecology and Society. 11(1): 42. [online] URL:
http:www.ecologyandsociety.org/vol11/iss1/art42,
McAllister, M.K., R.M. Peterman and D.M. Gillis 1992. Statistical evaluation of a largescale fishing experiment designed to test for a genetic effect of size-selective fishing on
British Columbia pink salmon (Oncorhynchus gorbuscha). Canadian Journal of
Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences 49: 1294-1304.
McCay, B. 2002. Emergence of institutions for the commons: contexts, situations, and
events. In: Ostrom, E., Dietz, T., Dosak, N., Stern, P.C., Stovich, S., Weber, E.U. (Eds),
2002. The Drama of the Commons, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C., pp.
361-402.
McCay, B. and Acheson, J. (eds.) 1987. The question of the commons: the culture and
ecology of communal resources. University of Arizona Press, Tuscon.
Meunch, E., Yhoung Aree, J., Friend, R. and Funge-Smith, S.J. 2003. The role and
nutritional value of aquatic resources in the livelihoods of rural people: a participatory
assessment in Attapeu Province, Lao PDR. Publication 2003/11 FAO Regional Office,
Bangkok, Thailand.
MRC 2007. Annual Report 2007 Mekong River Commission: Vientiane, Lao PDR
MRCS/WUP-FIN 2007
20
Nadasdy, P. 2007. Adaptive Co-Management and the Gospel of Resilience. In:
Armitage, D., Berkes, F. and Doubleday, N. (eds.) Adaptive co-management:
collaboration, learning and multi-level governance. UBC Press, Vancouver.
Oakerson, R. J. 1992. Analyzing the commons: a framework. In D.W. Bromley and R.
Feeny (eds.) Making the commons work: theory, practice and policy. San Francisco, ICS
Press.
Olsson, P., Folke, C. and Berkes, F. 2004 Adaptive comanagement for building resilience
in social-ecological systems. Environmental Management 34(1): 75-90.
Ostrom, E. 1990. Governing the commons: evolution of institutions for collective action.
Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Ostrom, E., et al. 1999. Revisting the Commons: Local lessons, global challenges.
Science 284: 278.
Ostrom, E., Dietz, T., Dosak, N., Stern, P.C., Stovich, S., Weber, E.U. (Eds), 2002. The
Drama of the Commons, National Academy Press, Washington, D.C.,
Pinkerton, E. (ed.) 1989. Cooperative management of local fisheries: new directions for
improved management and community development. UBC Press, Vancouver.
Pinkerton, E. 1992. Translating legal rights into management practice: overcoming
barriers to the exercise of co-management. Human Organization 51: 330-341.
Pinkerton, E. 2003. Toward specificity in complexity: understanding co-management
from a social science perspective. In: D.C. Wilson, J. Raajaer Nielsen and P. Degnbol.
The fisheries co-management experience: accomplishments, challenges and prospects.
Kluwer, Netherlands.
Pomeroy, R.S., B.M. Katon and I. Harkes 2001. Conditions affecting the success of
fisheries co-management: lessons from Asia. Marine Policy 25: 197-208.
Pomeroy and Gueib 2005
Ramalingam et al 2008
Rammel, C., Stagl, S. and Wilfing, H. 2007. Managing complex adaptive systems – a coevolutionary perspective on natural resource management. Ecological Economics 63: 921.
Ramos-Martin, J. 2003. Empiricism in ecological economics: a perspective from
complex systems theory. Ecological Economics 46: 387-398.
21
Res Alliance 2008. Factsheets. Accessed at www.resalliance.org on Oct 2, 2008.
Resurreccion, B., 2006. Rules, Roles and Rights : Gender, Participation and Community
Fisheries Management in Cambodia’s Tonle Sap Region , Water Resources Development,
22, 3 : 433-447.
Ringler, C. and Xai, X. 2006. Valuing Fisheries and Wetlands Using Integrated
Economic-Hydrologic Modeling – Mekong River Basin. Journal of Water Resources
Planning and Management, Nov/Dec: 480-487.
Roe, E 1991. Development Narratives, or Making the Best of Blueprint Development.
World Development Vol. 19, No 4 pp. 287-300.
Ruitenbeek, J. and Cartier, C. 2001. The invisible wand: adaptive co-management as an
emergent strategy in complex bio-economic systems. CIFOR Occasional Paper No. 34,
Bogor, Indonesia.
Sainsbury, K.J. 1988. The ecological basis of multispecies fisheries, and management of
a demersal fishery in tropical Australia. In J.A. Gulland (ed.) Fish population dynamics
(second edition). John Wiley and Sons Ltd.
Salayo, N., Garces, L., Pido, M., Viswanathan, K., Pomeroy, R., Ahmed, M., Siason, I.,
Seng, K., Masae, A. 2008. Managing excecc capacity in small-scale fisheries:
Perspectives from stakeholders in three Southeast Asian countries. Marine Policy, 32:
692-700.
Sen, S. and Nielsen, J.R. 1996. Fisheries co-management: a comparative analysis, Marine
Policy. 20(5) pp. 405-418
Shore, C., and S. Wright (eds) 1997. Anthropology of Policy: Critical perspectives on
governance and power Routledge: London
Sneddon, C. 2007. Nature’s materiality and the circuitous paths of accumulation:
dispossession of freshwater fisheries in Cambodia. Antipode, 167-193.
Stacey 2002
Stacey 2003
Turner, M. 2006. From Commitment to Consequences: Comparative experiences of
decentralization in the Philippines, Indonesia and Cambodia. Public Management
Review 8(2): 254-272.
Utne, I.B. 2006. Systems engineering principles in fisheries management. Marine Policy
30: 624-634.
22
van der Sluijs, J. 2006. Uncertainty, assumptions and value commitments in the
knowledge base of complex environmental problems. In: A.G. Pereira, S.G. Vaz and S.
Tognetti (eds.) Interfaces between science and society. Greenleaf Publishing, Sheffield.
Verweij, M. and Thompson, M. (eds.) 2006. Clumsy solutions for a complex world.
Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke. 255p.
Verweij, M. Thompson, M. and Engel, C. 2006 Clumsy conclusions: how to do policy
and research in a complex world. P. 241-249 in: M. Verweij and M. Thompson (eds.)
Clumsy solutions for a complex world. Palgrave McMillan, Basingstoke. 255p.
Walker 2007
Walker, B., Carpenter, S., Anderies, J., Abel, N., Cumming, G., Janssen, M., Lebel, L.,
Norberg, J., Peterson, G. and Pritchard, R. 2002. Resilience management in socialecological systems: a working hypothesis for a participatory approach. Conservation
Ecology 6 (1): 14.
Walters, C.J. 1986. Adaptive management of renewable resources. Macmillan, New
York.
Walters, C.J. 2007. Is adaptive management helping to solve fisheries problems? Ambio
36 (4): 304-307
Warren 2000
Wiber, M. 2007. Power, Property and Panarchy: Opening the Black Box of Cultural
Capital. In: B. Tapang (Ed.), Cordillera in June, Essays Celebrating June Prill-Brett,
Anthropologist. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press, pp. 215-257.
Wilson xx
Wollenberg, E., Iwan, R., Limberg, G., Moelino, M., Rhee, S. And Sudana, M. (2007)
Facilitating cooperation during times of chaos: spontaneous orders and muddling through
in Malinau District, Indonesia. Ecology and Society 12 (1): 3.
Wong, CM, C.E. Williams, J. Pittock, U. Collier, and P Schelle (2007) 'World’s top 10
rivers at risk' WWF International. Gland, Switzerland.
Yearley, S (1988) Science, Technology and Social Change. Unwin Hyman: London.
Young O. 2002. Institutional interplay: the environmental consequences of cross-scale
interactions. In: Ostrom E, Dietz T, Dolsvak N, et al. (Eds). The drama of the commons.
Washington, DC: National Academy Press.
23