Governing The Coastal Commons

Coastal communities depend on the marine environment for their livelihoods, but the common property nature of marine resources poses major challenges for the governance of such resources. Through detailed cases and consideration of broader global trends, this volume examines how coastal communities are adapting to environmental change, and the attributes of governance that foster deliberate transformations and help to build resilience of social and ecological systems. Governance here reflects how communities, societies and organisations (e.g. fisher cooperatives, government agencies) choose to organise themselves to make decisions about important issues, such as the use and protection of coastal commons (e.g. fishery resources). The book shows how a governance approach generates insights into the specific forms and arrangements that enable coastal communities to steer away from unsustainable pathways. It also provides an analytical lens to consider important questions of power, knowledge and legitimacy in linked social-ecological systems. Chapters highlight examples in which communities are engaging in deliberative transformations to build resilience and enhance their well-being. These transformations and efforts to build resilience are emerging through multi-level collaboration, shared learning, innovative policies and institutional arrangements (such as new property rights regimes and co-management), methodologies that engage with indigenous cultural practices, and entrepreneurial activities, including income and livelihood diversification. Case studies are included from a range of countries including Canada, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, the South Pacific and Europe. The authors integrate theory with practical examples to improve coastal marine policy and governance, and draw upon emerging concepts from social-ecological resilience and transformations, adaptive governance and the scholarship on the commons.

Coastal communities depend on the marine environment for their livelihoods, but the common property nature of marine resources poses major challenges for the governance of such resources. Through detailed cases and consideration of broader global trends, this volume examines how coastal communities are adapting to environmental change, and the attributes of governance that foster deliberate transformations and help to build resilience of social and ecological systems. Governance here reflects how communities, societies and organisations (e.g. fisher cooperatives, government agencies) choose to organise themselves to make decisions about important issues, such as the use and protection of coastal commons (e.g. fishery resources). The book shows how a governance approach generates insights into the specific forms and arrangements that enable coastal communities to steer away from unsustainable pathways. It also provides an analytical lens to consider important questions of power, knowledge and legitimacy in linked social-ecological systems. Chapters highlight examples in which communities are engaging in deliberative transformations to build resilience and enhance their well-being. These transformations and efforts to build resilience are emerging through multi-level collaboration, shared learning, innovative policies and institutional arrangements (such as new property rights regimes and co-management), methodologies that engage with indigenous cultural practices, and entrepreneurial activities, including income and livelihood diversification. Case studies are included from a range of countries including Canada, Japan, Brazil, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa, Thailand, the South Pacific and Europe. The authors integrate theory with practical examples to improve coastal marine policy and governance, and draw upon emerging concepts from social-ecological resilience and transformations, adaptive governance and the scholarship on the commons.

Coastal Governance provides a clear overview of how U.S. coasts are currently managed and explores new approaches that could make our shores healthier. Drawing on recent national assessments, Professor Richard Burroughs explains why traditional management techniques have ultimately proved inadequate, leading to polluted waters, declining fisheries, and damaged habitat. He then introduces students to governance frameworks that seek to address these shortcomings by considering natural and human systems holistically. The book considers the ability of sector-based management, spatial management, and ecosystem-based management to solve critical environmental problems. Evaluating governance successes and failures, Burroughs covers topics including sewage disposal, dredging, wetlands, watersheds, and fisheries. He shows that at times sector-based management, which focuses on separate, individual uses of the coasts, has been implemented effectively. But he also illustrates examples of conflict, such as the incompatibility of waste disposal and fishing in the same waters. Burroughs assesses spatial and ecosystem-based management’s potential to address these conflicts. The book familiarizes students not only with current management techniques but with the policy process. By focusing on policy development, Coastal Governance prepares readers with the knowledge to participate effectively in a governance system that is constantly evolving. This understanding will be critical as students become managers, policymakers, and citizens who shape the future of the coasts.

This book explores the types of conflicts that occur over marine and coastal resources, the underlying causes, and attempts to prevent them. Despite the emergence of various marine and coastal governance approaches to address the effects of human activities within the marine environment, conflict continues. In this book, the author outlines the reasons conflicts can, and do, arise in the marine and coastal environment. Drawing on case studies from both the northern and southern hemispheres, the book takes a broad view of how we interact with our environment, of how and why conflict is perpetuated as a political and cultural phenomenon, and how this varies or remains constant across space and place. The case studies explore not only the underlying perceptions and needs of those involved in marine and coastal conflict and the types of conflicts that arise in oceanic and coastal areas, but also the underpinning reasons for these conflicts. Marine and coastal resource conflicts have the potential to derail conservation efforts and blue growth policies, as well as the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. Thus, it is imperative we understand the drivers and exacerbating factors of marine and coastal conflict. Arguing that there is an urgent need for renewed thinking and focus on conflict prevention, the author develops a theory of marine and coastal conflict which allows us to understand those factors and the means to help prevent such conflicts arising in the first place. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of coastal and marine science and environmental management as well as those working in the field of marine resource management, including coastal zone managers and fisheries managers.

This comprehensive Handbook serves as a unique synthesis and resource for understanding how analytical frameworks developed within the literature assist in understanding the nature and management of commons resources. Such frameworks include those related to Institutional Analysis and Development, Social-Ecological Systems, and Polycentricity, among others. The book aggregates and analyses these frameworks to lay a foundation for exploring how they apply according to scholars across a wide range of disciplines. It includes an exploration of the unique problems arising in different disciplines of commons study, including natural resources (forests, oceans, water, energy, ecosystems, etc), economics, law, governance, the humanities, and intellectual property. It shows how the analytical frameworks discussed early in the book facilitate interdisciplinarity within commons scholarship. This interdisciplinary approach within the context of analytical frameworks helps facilitate a more complete understanding of the similarities and differences faced by commons resource users and managers, the usefulness of the commons lens as an analytical tool for studying resource management problems, and the best mechanisms by which to formulate policies aimed at addressing such problems. Chapter 26 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 3.0 license. https://s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/tandfbis/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9781138060906_oachapter26.pdf

Commons—lands, waters, and resources that are not legally owned and controlled by a single private entity, such as ocean and coastal areas, the atmosphere, public lands, freshwater aquifers, and migratory species—are an increasingly contentious issue in resource management and international affairs. Protecting the Commons provides an important analytical framework for understanding commons issues and for designing policies to deal with them. The product of a symposium convened by the Scientific Committee on Problems of the Environment (SCOPE) to mark the 30th anniversary of Garrett Hardin's seminal essay “The Tragedy of the Commons” the book brings together leading scholars and researchers on commons issues to offer both conceptual background and analysis of the evolving scientific understanding on commons resources. The book: gives a concise update on commons use and scholarship offers eleven case studies of commons, examined through the lens provided by leading commons theorist Elinor Ostrom provides a review of tools such as Geographic Information Systems that are useful for decision-making examines environmental justice issues relevant to commons Contributors include Alpina Begossi, William Blomquist, Joanna Burger, Tim Clark, Clark Gibson, Michael Gelobter, Michael Gochfeld, Bonnie McCay, Pamela Matson, Richard Norgaard, Elinor Ostrom, David Policansky, Jeffrey Richey, Jose Sarukhan, and Edella Schlager. Protecting the Commons represents a landmark study of commons issues that offers analysis and background from economic, legal, social, political, geological, and biological perspectives. It will be essential reading for anyone concerned with commons and commons resources, including students and scholars of environmental policy and economics, public health, international affairs, and related fields.

Issues of sustainability and increased competition over coastal resources are changing practices of resource management. Societal concerns about environmental degradation and loss of coastal resources have steadily increased, while other issues like food security, biodiversity, and climate change, have emerged. A full set of social, ecological and economic objectives to address these issues are recognized, but there is no agreement on how to implement them. This interdisciplinary and "big picture book" – through a series of vivid case studies from environments throughout the world – suggests how to achieve these new resource management principles in practical, accessible ways.

Tackles one of the most enduring and contentious issues of positive political economy: common pool resource management.