Centralised and community-based fisheries management strategies: case studies from two fisheries dependent archipelagos

Using data collected in the coastal fisheries of the Solomon Islands and Shetlands the paper compares and contrasts centralised and community-based management systems. The research focuses on the interaction between privatised and community held access to common property resources. The research shows that the evolution of management controls and access arrangements in coastal fisheries is not a uni-directional process. Indeed the process might better be modelled as an equilibrium, sensitive to the external pressures of the global trade and overall sectoral policy. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.