This publication contains reports of ten case studies of freshwater fisheries in southern Africa which were conducted in five medium-sized lakes in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. Five of the case studies focus on the biological and environmental effects of fishing while the remaining five are concerned with historical and sociological analysis.

Co-management is a highly dynamic, evolving, adaptive, and forward looking process. This edited volume covers theoretical background and includes supporting lessons learnt from field experiences. The book has case studies from both North and South America (co-management of fisheries, resilience in near-shore waters of the Great Lakes basin, water level management in Lake Ontario, and case studies from Chile and Brazil), Europe (Tisza river, coastal management and examples of rivers from the Netherlands and from Uzbekistan), Africa (Lake Victoria) and Asia (Pushkar Lake in India).

Within the field of management of natural resources, this book focuses on the various approaches of policy formulation and implementation. The question central to this book is how to co-operate with people, the various categories of residents as well as non-residents, in the rural areas: in a top-down, a participatory or a contractual (co-management) way. On the basis of a comparative analysis of 12 case studies in the book, these three approaches are thoroughly discussed and their internal and external constraints examined. The book starts with an editorial chapter, discussing the recent administrative and political developments in Africa as well as the new opportunities, which they offer for policies in the field of environment, and development. The question is brought up whether the recent processes of decentralization, democratization, and empowerment of local organizations have indeed created new opportunities or that they have only superficially changed the political culture of the countries concerned. In the concluding chapter of the book, the approaches are contrasted to each other as logical models, each with its own potentiality and limitations. Conclusions are formulated why the top down approach must result in improvization to escape from failure, and why the participatory approach risks to end up into a mixed balance. Special attention is given to the conditions and the prospects for the contractual or co-management approach, which has been introduced into Africa only recently. Under certain conditions, this approach seems rather promising.

During the last decade, there has been a shift in the governance and management of fisheries to a broaderapproach that recognizes the participation of fishers, local stewardship, and shared decision-making.Through this process, fishers are empowered to become active members of the management team,balancing rights and responsibilities, and working in partnership with government. This approach iscalled co-management.This handbook describes the process of community-based co-management from its beginning, throughimplementation, to turnover to the community. It provides ideas, methods, techniques, activities, checklists,examples, questions and indicators for the planning and implementing of a process of community-basedco-management. It focuses on small-scale fisheries (freshwater, floodplain, estuarine, or marine) indeveloping countries, but is also relevant to small-scale fisheries in developed countries and to themanagement of other coastal resources (such as coral reefs, mangroves, sea grass, and wetlands). Thishandbook will be of significant interest to resource managers, practitioners, academics and students ofsmall-scale fisheries.

The third and main section of the document discusses ways of increasing the contribution of small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security through nine main entry points. First, the paper revisits conventional fisheries policies and legislation and makes suggestions on how those can be made more pro-poor. Next, the paper emphasizes the importance of capacity building and highlights how cross-sectoral interventions can greatly improve the livelihoods of fish-dependent communities. The paper then proposes a series of broad pro-poor or pro-small-scale fisheries principles, before discussing in greater detail three of the main management instruments adopted in fisheries: (i) property right approaches; (ii) co-management; and (iii) protected areas. The next two sub-sections discuss markets and how to make them work for the poor, and the important issue of pro-poor financing systems and subsidies.

For two decades the idea of governments and fishers working together to manage fisheries has been advocated, questioned, disparaged and, most importantly, attempted in fisheries from North and South America through Europe, Africa, Asia and Oceania. This book is the first time these experiences have been pulled together in a single volume, summarized and explained. The Fisheries Co-management Experience begins with a review of the intellectual foundations of the co-management idea from several professional perspectives. Next, fisheries researchers from six global regions describe what has been happening on the ground in their area. Finally, the volume offers a set of reflections by some of the best authors in the field. The end result describes both the state-of-the-art and emerging issues for one of the most important trends in natural resources management.

The overarching objective of this report was to determine, from current evidence and experiences from the region, a view of co-management application and performance. Among the findings of the review are: (1) Co-management is associated with positive trends across a range of social, ecological and governance indicators; (2) While overall trends in co-management performance are positive, between years the outcomes experienced by fishers and community members vary substantially between positive experiences and improvements and negative experiences and declines; (3) There is substantial variation in the systems to which co-management is applied and the degrees of inclusion, agency, influence and authority of managing partners; (4) Impacts of co-management on environmental and resource condition, and on the livelihood and economic conditions are determined as much by macro-level drivers of change as by co-management; (5) Initiatives associated with improved or alternative livelihoods were frequent; (6) A history of institutional and policy change created conditions enabling co-management arrangements; (7) Co-management is associated with improvements to representation and inclusion of resource users and beneficiaries; (8) National and international commitments have been made to progress gender equity, women’s empowerment, and socially inclusive processes and outcomes; but substantial challenges remain in meeting them; (9) Co-management is generally associated with higher levels of buy-in and compliance by resource users; (10) Monitoring and evaluation should move towards best practice impact evaluation techniques; (11) Co-management arrangements for fisheries are widespread, diverse, dynamic and supported by a range of institutional structures and organizations.

Those who are involved with fishing and fisheries resource management—including fishermen, their communities, production, processing, distribution, and marketing industries, and various government and non-governmental organizations—confront the contradictions arising from the appropriation, allocation, and distribution of fisheries and marine resources in a variety of ways. The authors call into question the assumptions of policy prescriptions to common resource problems by examining the experiences of people and societies confronted with and adapting to these resource appropriation, allocation, and distribution problems. They suggest that tragedies of resource depletion and institutional failure to deal with them are not characteristic of human nature, but rather are by products of particular cultural practices, institutions, and assumptions. The detailed, empirical ethnographic study of these relationships holds great potential for informing those who are making future policy decisions as well as contributing to the theories of human behavior and cooperation to solve such problems.

How do states succeed or fail in managing crises together? Kornprobst examines the structures and processes of cross-national crisis co-management.