Co-management regimes are institutional innovations that hold the promise of achieving sustainable common-pool resource governance. However, the transition to such institutional regimes in coastal resource systems has faced challenges in many countries. This article examines the processes and outcomes of such institutional changes in coastal fisheries in Ghana, where the transition to co-management was unsuccessful. Combining theoretical perspectives from legal pluralism in legal anthropology and ideational theories of institutional change within institutional economics, the paper uses process tracing to examine the role of ideology and historical institutional dynamics of the resource context in the institutionalization and failure of co-management arrangements for governing coastal fisheries. The study finds that ideological conflicts and historical legacies of legal pluralism hindered the practice and outcomes of coastal fisheries co-management in Ghana. The article argues for particular attention to the historical institutional dimensions and underlying worldviews of the resource context in institutional interventions for sustainability in coastal resource systems.

Delegated protected area management (transferring management responsibilities from a public to a private partner) has been promoted to give impetus to ailing protected areas in West and Central Africa. Since their inception in 2005, the number of partnerships has increased to 20 protected areas covering c. 250,000 km2, an area similar to that of the UK. A review of the lessons learnt from these first 15 years shows that delegated management has improved day-to-day management of these protected areas. There remain, however, challenges with funding and with the capacity of national managerial staff, and also concerns regarding human rights. Based on an analysis of these challenges, I develop five recommendations to guide more mature delegated management: governments should (1) ensure an enabling legal–procedural environment; and (2) prepare delegated management contracts systematically; (3) private partners should render themselves dispensable through capacity building of national managerial staff and by initiating sustainable financing mechanisms; (4) governments and private partners alike should respect human rights and build coalitions with communities; (5) governments, private partners and funders should strive to delegate non-core management tasks, such as tourist guiding and reception, community development and research, to specialized locally-based individuals and organizations. Although these recommendations have a specific West–Central African perspective, they have relevance for the increasing number of delegated management initiatives elsewhere in Africa and beyond.

Globally, there is a trend towards conserving biodiversity by promoting co-management with multiple stakeholders at landscape scales. Environmental policies emphasize stakeholder engagement in decision-making, yet landscape conservation is typically a bureaucratic–scientific endeavour. Building trusting relationships with stakeholders is key to negotiations that minimize trade-offs and maximize synergies. Incorporating shared stakeholder objectives improves co-management, as they act as incentives for participation and trust development. We explored the degree of alignment between the bottom-up stakeholder objectives and top-down management objectives of a landscape-scale conservation initiative on the West Coast of South Africa. We categorized stakeholders into six affiliations representing governmental, private and community organizations, and using a social-ecological inventory we identified ten shared objectives. Of these objectives, three were shared between all affiliations, namely biodiversity conservation, socioeconomic development and coordination of the landscape approach. The first two aligned with the top-down landscape management objectives and the latter did not. The importance of coordinating landscape approaches in multi-stakeholder landscape-scale initiatives is crucial to long-term success, and we recommend that it be formally included as a landscape management objective. Exploring the alignment between bottom-up and top-down objectives can highlight overlooked functions of co-management and can reduce the transaction costs of sustaining conservation efforts in the long term.

Legislation emerging from Treaty of Waitangi settlements provide Māori, the Indigenous people of Aotearoa New Zealand, with new opportunities to destabilize and decolonize the colonial knowledge, processes and practices that contribute towards negative material and metaphysical impacts on their rohe [traditional lands and waters]. In this article we focus our attention on the Nga Wai o Maniapoto (Waipa River) Act 2012 and the Deed of Settlement signed between the Crown (the New Zealand government) and Ngāti Maniapoto (the tribal group with ancestral authority over the Waipā River) as an example of how the law in Aotearoa New Zealand is increasingly stretched beyond settler-colonial confines to embrace legal and ontological pluralism. We illustrate how this Act serves as the foundation upon which Ngāti Maniapoto are seeking to restore, manage, and enhance the health of their river. Such legislation, we argue, provides a far higher degree of recognition of Māori rights and interests both as an outcome of the settlement process and by strengthening provisions under the Resource Management Act 1991 regarding the role of Māori in resource management. We conclude by suggesting that co-governance and co-management arrangements hold great potential for transforming river management by recognizing and accommodating ontological and epistemological pluralism, which moves Aotearoa New Zealand closer to achieving sustainable and just river futures for all.

Around the world, Indigenous peoples seek increased control of traditional lands. In northern Canada, such control may be afforded by claims-based co-management regimes. Such regimes are a common, and sometimes celebrated, component of treaty federalism. In Norway, Europe's only Indigenous people, the Sami, now participate in a land-management regime: the Finnmark Estate (FeFo). We explore whether FeFo is, in effect, claims-based co-management and whether Sami thus enjoy the sort of guaranteed shared rule envisioned in treaty federalism. We compare FeFo to Canadian co-management in three dimensions: novelty, independence and Indigenous influence. We conclude FeFo is indeed claims-based co-management. But FeFo falls short of the treaty-federal ideal, for reasons possibly including bureaucratic capture, fragile legitimacy, conflicting interpretations of the Sami interest and conflicting views on the merits of shared rule.

Policymakers in the UK have promised to deliver personalised employability services for vulnerable jobseekers. However, unemployed people often describe their engagement with state-funded services as defined by: the offer of low cost, standardised job search services; and pressure to accept any job, irrespective of quality or appropriateness. This article argues that more progressive, co-produced alternatives are possible. We draw on an evaluation of local, third sector-led services targeting lone parents (LPs) in five local government areas in Scotland. Our research involved more than 100 in-depth interviews with both service providers and LPs. We find that partnership-oriented co-governance mechanisms facilitated collaborative approaches to the management of services and processes of co-production. LPs expressed positive views of the personalised services that were co-produced. We conclude that a commitment to collaboration and co-production may be more effective in promoting personalised services that are responsive to the needs of vulnerable groups.

Caribou (tuktuit) are embedded in northern life, and have been part of Inuit culture and seasonal rounds for generations. In Inuit Nunangat (Inuit homelands), tuktuit are the most prevalent of country foods consumed, and remain interconnected with Inuit values, beliefs and practices. Despite co-management mandates to consider Inuit and scientific knowledge equally, the intertwined colonial legacies of research and wildlife management render this challenging. In Uqsuqtuuq (Gjoa Haven, Nunavut), community members identified the importance of documenting Inuit knowledge in order to be taken more seriously by researchers and government managers. To address this priority we worked with Uqsuqtuurmiut (people of Uqsuqtuuq) to articulate which types of tuktuit are found on or near Qikiqtaq (King William Island), provide a historical perspective of tuktuit presence/absence in the region, and describe seasonal movements of tuktuit on and off the island. In reflecting on potential intersections of our work with the Government of Nunavut strategy “Working Together for Caribou”, we identify several considerations in support of Qanuqtuurniq (information and knowledge acquisition): defining information needs, recognising and valuing Inuit knowledge, and developing and implementing credible research. By sharing lessons from our collaborative process we aim to contribute to broader cross-cultural research and co-management efforts in Nunavut.

Few studies exist about the extent to which co-management in protected areas contributes to conflict prevention or mitigation and at what level of the conflicts such collaborative efforts are possible. Following varying degrees of conflict, Mole National Park, Ghana, embarked on a collaborative community-based wildlife management programme in 2000. Using Glasl's conflict escalation model, we analysed the contribution of co-management to mitigating and preventing conflicts from escalating. We conducted a total of 22 interviews with local traditional leaders, Park officials and local government officials, and 26 focus group discussions with farmers, hunters, women and representatives of co-management boards, selected from 10 of the 33 communities surrounding the Park. Our findings indicate that co-management can help mitigate or prevent conflicts from escalating when conflicting parties engage with each other in a transparent manner using deliberative processes such as negotiation, mediation and the use of economic incentives. It is, however, difficult to resolve conflicts through co-management when dialogue between conflicting parties breaks down, as parties take entrenched positions and are unwilling to compromise on their core values and interests. We conclude that although co-management contributes to successful conflict management, factors such as understanding the context of the conflicts, including the underlying sources and manifestations of the conflict, incorporating local knowledge, and ensuring open dialogue, trust and transparency between conflicting parties are key to attaining sustainable conflict management in protected areas.

In many fisheries around the world, the failures of centralized, top-down management have produced a shift toward co-management—collaboration and sharing of decision making between government and stakeholders. This trend has led to a major debate between two very different co-management approaches—community-based fishery management and market-based individual transferable quota management. This paper examines the debate over the relative merits of these models and undertakes a socioeconomic analysis of the two approaches. The paper includes (1) an analysis of differences in the structure, philosophical nature, and underlying value systems of each, including a discussion of their treatment of property rights; (2) a socioeconomic evaluation of the impacts of each system on boat owners, fishers, crew members, other fishery participants, and coastal communities, as well as the distribution of benefits and costs among fishery participants; and (3) examination of indirect economic effects that can occur through impacts on conservation and fishery sustainability. The latter relate to (a) the conservation ethic, (b) the flexibility of management, (c) the avoidance of waste, and (d) the efficiency of enforcement. The paper emphasizes the need for a broader approach to analyzing fishery management options, one that recognizes and properly assesses the diversity of choices, and that takes into account the interaction of the fishery with broader community and regional realities.

Despite increased engagement of Indigenous representatives as participants on consultative panels charged with processes of natural resource management, concerns have been raised by both Indigenous representatives and management agencies regarding the ability of Indigenous people to have quality input into the decisions these processes produce. In order to determine how to more effectively engage Australian Aboriginal peoples in the management process, this article describes the results of interviews with Elders of the Bundjalung Nation and other community representatives who represent their community's interests on natural resource management boards within their traditional country. Community representatives identified the factors they considered important in understanding natural resource management and administrative processes and where training would enable them to make a significant contribution to the consultation process. It also highlighted a need for non-Indigenous managers to gain a greater understanding of Indigenous knowledge systems and protocols.

Increasing the chances that resource users engage in and comply with management regulations is a continual problem for many conservation initiatives globally. This is particularly common when resource users perceive more personal costs than benefits from specific management actions. Analysis of interviews with managers and fishers from 22 landing sites along the coast of Kenya indicated how key stakeholders perceived the scale of benefits and costs from different management strategies. Potential underlying causes of divergent perceptions towards different management tools were evaluated, including marine protected areas, no-take fisheries closures, gear use, minimum size of fish caught and species restrictions. The analysis identified three distinct opinion groups: (1) a group of nine landing sites that scaled their preference for most management restrictions neutral to low, with exceptions for minimum sizes of captured fish and gear restrictions; (2) a group of eight landing sites that scaled their preference for the above and species restrictions and closed season higher, and were more neutral about closures and marine protected areas; and (3) a group containing four landing sites and the managers’ offices that rated their preference for the above and closed areas and marine protected areas as high. Logistic regression was used to examine whether these groups differed in wealth, education, age, perceptions of disparity in benefits, dependence on fishing and distance to government marine protected areas. The most frequent significant factor was the resource users’ perceived disparity between the benefits of the management to themselves and their communities, with the benefits to the government. Consequently, efforts to reduce this real or perceived disparity are likely to increase adoption and compliance rates. Most widespread positively-viewed restrictions, such as gear use and minimum size of fish, should be promoted at the national level while other restrictions may be more appropriately implemented at the community level.

How can the governance of environment and resources be devolved in a way that incorporates effective user participation and feedback learning? Approaches that use the idea of adaptive management or learning-by-doing, combined with co-management, are particularly promising. Using an interdisciplinary literature covering many types of resources, and a conceptual model with three phases (communicative action, self-organization and collective action), the paper identifies some of the major processes leading to adaptive co-management. These include deliberation, visioning, building social capital, trust and institutions, capacity-building through networks and partnerships, and action-reflection-action loops for social learning. Such adaptive co-management is not simply a theoretical possibility but something that has been documented in a number of forestry, fisheries, wildlife, protected area, and wetland cases from both developed and developing countries. However, the experience with the decentralization reforms of the 1990s is largely negative for a number of reasons. Effective devolution takes time, requiring a shift in focus from a static concept of management to a dynamic concept of governance shaped by interactions, feedback learning and adaptation over time. Sharing of governance responsibilities and an ability to learn from experience are among the emerging trends in environmental management.

Conflicts between resource users and managers are common and well documented on Mafia Island (Tanzania), where there has been a history of unresolved conflict over marine conservation initiatives. The perceptions of fisheries and park restrictions among resource users and managers were evaluated to try to understand the underlying causes of these conflicts. Responses concerning management preferences of government officials employed by the Mafia Island Marine Park (MIMP), personnel of the fisheries department, and heads of households in three villages in and out of the Park were compared. The largest differences in perceptions were found between villagers and managers, but all respondents agreed that minimum fish lengths and gear restrictions were beneficial and that benefits increased along the scale of the individual – community – national government. Villagers and government officials differed most in their perceptions towards area-based management, spatial and temporal closures, and species restrictions. Perceptions of management restrictions and benefits were only weakly correlated with the socioeconomic status of the villagers, but more strongly correlated with their living in or out of the Park and their family's economic options. The most negative perceptions towards restrictions were found in villages near fisheries closures, where there was a heavy reliance on marine resources and a higher numbers of jobs per household, but less reliance on cash crops, animal husbandry and tourism. The lack of these three options appears to have produced lower levels of support for MIMP and associated restrictions, and might be overcome by (1) using gear and minimum size restrictions more than fisheries closures and (2) increasing access to tourism, cash crops, animal husbandry and salaried employment, rather than simply increasing livelihood diversity.

Ecotourism can capture biodiversity values and provide incentives for conservation, and many integrated conservation and development projects include an ecotourism component. One key assumption behind this strategy is that ecotourism businesses can achieve financial viability. This paper presents a financial case study of the well-known community-based ecotourism lodge ‘Casa Matsiguenka’, owned by an indigenous Matsigenka population in Manu National Park (Peru), only the second such project to be thoroughly analysed in the literature. Built and financed from 1997 to 2003 with German official aid, the lodge's revenues have only just exceeded operating costs and have not covered the costs of infrastructure replacement, thereby failing to secure long-term business sustainability. Wages and income from handicraft sales have covered about a third of individual cash needs in the two participating communities, but communal income from lodge operating profits (for example to pay for community infrastructure, health care or education) has been minimal. The lodge's difficulties are attributed largely to a flawed business plan in which the lodge has sold its services to its own competitors, a group of ecotourism agencies that have used their lobbying power to create a cartel in Manu. In a narrow analysis, the return on investment for this project has been approximately one-third of what could have been achieved to date by merely investing the start-up grant monies in a bank account and paying the interest directly to the Matsigenka communities in exchange for conservation actions. Broader analysis indicates the modest income and slow pace of business so far has permitted gradual social and economic adaptation on the part of culturally conservative indigenous communities. Moreover, the lodge project has generated processes of social and political organization, and sustained positive contact with Peruvian national society, which can be counted among its successes. The lodge has helped produce dialogue between the Park administration and the Matsigenka communities, a process that could ultimately result in co-management agreements that help to resolve people-park conflicts in the Park.

In conservation efforts where genuine community involvement is aimed at, communication should be a two-way affair in which the local voice can be truly heard. In developing countries especially, however, this voice tends to be smothered by the power and prestige that usually lies with the supra-local conservation agencies. This paper explores how fictional storytelling, a communication medium as old as mankind, may enable local people to respond in freedom to the issue of conservation. Stories that end by posing a dilemma to the audience are generally used in Cameroon to initiate discussion. First trials in Cameroon used this format to tell a story of animals that found themselves at risk of extinction and sent out a delegation to the human world to plea for a ‘last home’. Although enjoyed by researchers and audience alike, this story appeared to suffer from several technical and structural shortcomings. In order to overcome these, empirical research (for example the gathering of some 600 stories in the field) and theoretical considerations led to the design of a second-generation story that retained the dilemma format but carried fewer implicit messages and introduced a third, adjudicating party. This story was tried out in 13 villages in Central and North Cameroon with full success, both in terms of process (the elicitation of focused and rich debate) and in terms of content (the clarity of arguments and underlying assumptions). If led by the principles developed in this paper, fictional storytelling is a worthy addition to the methodological repertoire of all conservation professionals who wish to communicate conservation to local communities in a manner that is structurally balanced and substantively open.

Illegal logging is a threat to tropical forests in protected areas, yet the factors motivating it need to be better understood. Here, rural household participation in timber felling in the Barisan I Nature Reserve (West Sumatra) was described, the household contextual factors relating to this participation analysed and the importance of these activities to the household income assessed. Nearly 19% of the sampled households cut or hauled timber in the Reserve, and the demand for cash encouraged participation. Alternative livelihoods such as livestock raising and agroforestry intensification outside the Reserve could reduce the need for timber felling. Knowledge about legal status of the Reserve did not affect the odds of a household engaging in timber harvesting, but greater awareness of the Reserve resulted in lower levels of income from timber. Development policy that seeks to provide livelihood alternatives to timber felling households could reduce dependence on timber and contribute to forest conservation in the Reserve. Moreover, conservation outcomes should improve if control over the protection and enforcement of the Reserve is co-managed between the government and the local communities.

Traditional ecological knowledge (TEK) has become a focus of increasing attention by natural resource managers over the past decade, particularly in the context of the shared management authority between resource users and government agencies (co-management). Little work has been done on how TEK can be successfully integrated with science and applied in contemporary science-based resource management institutions, and the efficacy and legitimacy of co-management and associated attempts to document TEK or integrate it with science have recently been questioned. The cooperative research programme of one co-management group, the Alaska Beluga Whale Committee (ABWC), was studied to describe how TEK and science are integrated and applied in the research process, document perceptions and attitudes of native hunters and scientists towards TEK and science, and identify organizational characteristics that facilitate knowledge integration. Hunters and TEK played a variety of roles in ABWC's research programme, including hypothesis generation, sample collection and data interpretation. Hunters and scientists defined TEK similarly, but differed in their views of science, which hunters often perceived as a tool of state control. Despite political undercurrents, the ABWC displayed several indicators of successful knowledge integration. Organizational characteristics that facilitated integration included a membership structure fostering genuine power-sharing and a range of opportunities for formal and informal interactions among hunters and scientists leading to long-term relationships and an organizational culture of open communication and transparency in decision-making. Given the importance of long-term relationships between scientists and hunters for successful knowledge integration, this study raises questions about (1) the potential for meaningful integration in short-term projects such as environmental impact assessment and (2) the use of TEK documentation studies in the absence of other forms of active participation by TEK- holders.