Governing the Coastal Commons ─ Communities, Resilience and Transformation

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. This volume examines, through detailed cases and analysis of broader global trends, how coastal communities are adapting to environmental change, and the attributes of governance that are required to build resilience and well-being.

Governance here includes an increasingly integrated system of formal and informal rules (institutions), rule-making systems, and actor-networks at all levels of human society, from local to global. It is shown how a governance framework 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, legitimacy and linked social-ecological systems. The book highlights examples in which communities are engaging in deliberative transformations to build resilience and enhance their well-being. These transformations 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 wide range of countries, including Canada, Japan, Indonesia, Mexico, South Africa and Thailand. 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.

Derek Armitage is Associate Professor and Director of Environmental Change and Governance Group, in the Faculty of Environment, University of Waterloo, Canada.?

Anthony Charles is Professor and Director, School of the Environment, Saint Mary’s University, Halfax, Nova Scotia, Canada.?

Fikret Berkes is Distinguished Professor and Canada Research Chair, Natural Resources Institute, University of Manitoba, Canada.