Journal
INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE COMMONS
Volume 9, Issue 1, Pages 347-368Publisher
IGITUR, UTRECHT PUBLISHING & ARCHIVING SERVICES
DOI: 10.18352/ijc.500
Keywords
Commons; community-based management; farmer associations; institutions; shrimp aquaculture; small-scale aquaculture; Sri Lanka
Categories
Funding
- Canada Research Chairs Program
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Aquaculture, and shrimp aquaculture in particular, can have major social and environmental impacts. However, aquaculture remains an understudied area in commons research. Can aspects of commons theory be applied to solve problems of aquaculture? We examined three coastal community-based shrimp aquaculture operations in northwestern Sri Lanka using a case study approach. These shrimp farms were individually owned by small producers and managed under local-level rules designed by cooperatives (samithi). The common-pool resource of major interest was water for aquaculture ponds, obtained from an interconnected water body. We evaluated the shrimp farming social-ecological system by using Ostrom's design principles for collective action. Key elements of the system were: clearly defined boundaries; collaboratively designed crop calendar, bottom-up approach involving community associations, multi-level governance, and farmers-and-government collaborative structures. Together, these elements resolved the excludability and subtractability problems of commons by establishing boundary and membership rules and collective choice rules.
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