Co-management in Trao Reef marine reserve, Vietnam : a transaction costs approach

Abstract

Humans are getting more dependent on marine and coastal resources. This has led to increased fishery exploitation and in many cases overexploitation with habitat degradation. This threatens coastal and marine resources all over the world. The current management approaches have failed to control fishing capacity and conflict in sharing fisheries resources due to population growth, poverty and a lack of awareness raising. The management and governance of small-scale fisheries is ready for worldwide reform. In recent years, Marine protected areas (MPAs) are becoming a popular tool for management and conservation of marine resources. Co-management is a recommendation as a solution of governance for marine protected areas. Co-management is a process that involves democratization and decentralization mechanisms through collaboration and power-sharing between resource users and government officials (Pomeroy and Rivera-Guieb, 2006) This paper highlights the co-management of an MPA in Trao Reef locally managed marine reserve, which was established in 2001 to protect and rehabilitate fisheries resources in general and the coral reef in particular. In addition, this paper demonstrates one way to approach co-management which include the transaction-costs, the method for measuring the transaction costs in fisheries co-management system. Transaction costs are defined as “the cost of transacting, which consists of the costs of measuring the valuable attributes of what is being exchanged and the costs of protecting rights and policing and enforcing agreements” (North 1990). The study is based on fisheries management, co-management, transaction-cost literature and secondary and primary data. The reduction of transaction-costs in the last stage of co-management regime is used to choose alternative institutional arrangements for managing a fishery for public policy decisions. This study is also the first paper to mention transaction-costs in fisheries co-management in Viet Nam.