The context of policy design for existing community-based fisheries management systems in the Pacific Islands

Community-based fisheries management is being widely promoted as an alternative to centralized systems based on the familiar bioeconomic models that have manifestly failed to prevent a near catastrophic overexploitation of fish stocks worldwide. The Pacific Island Region probably contains the world's greatest concentration of still-functioning traditional community-based systems for managing coastal-marine fisheries and other resources. It has been frequently asserted that many such traditional systems provide both a firm foundation for future coastal fisheries management in the Pacific Islands Region, as well as a conceptual framework for managing fisheries elsewhere. Although now seemingly self-evident to fisheries development "experts", such assertions remain largely unverified. Whereas it is a relatively straightforward task to distil basic "design principles" from a sample of systems, it is far more complex to analyze the multi-sectoral national environment in which they function, especially when their history is taken into account. In other words, it is far less widely appreciated that many contemporary community-based fisheries management systems are the end products of a long process of change and adaptation to external pressures and constraints. In this article I address some of the broader contextual issues that should be appreciated in policymaking with respect to a potential modern role for traditional management systems in general, and in the analysis of a future role for any given system. First, the principal external factors that have caused change in systems are described and exemplified. The recognition of the potential role of existing community-based fisheries systems, and attempts to act on it: is summarized for some Pacific Island nations, with a focus on the complex problem of reconciling customary and statutory legal systems. In the final section I examine three principal national policy alternatives regarding the potential role of existing local fisheries management systems, together with three main criteria for determining whether or not a system can be adapted to fulfill modern requirements. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.