Fishermen and 'The Tragedy of the Commons'

by

Ph.D.(McGill)
FIKRET BERKES,
Associate Professor, Institute of Urban and Environmental Studies,
Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario L2S 3Al,
Canada.

INTRODUCTION fishery, some of them belonging to new fishermen and

some belonging to existing fishermen who have turned into
Both natural and social scientists have reported from multiple boat-owners to increase their individual capaci-
divers regions of the world how certain local populations ties. With the increased fishing effort, the individual
have maintained viable systems of resource management catches offishermenper unit of fishing effort expended will
by successfully self-regulating resource harvesting activ- fall, and at some point over-fishing will occur—inevitably
ities. Their findings challenge many resource managers when the total yield exceeds the natural ability of the fish
who assume that unregulated resources would suffer a fate populations to renew themselves on a sustained basis.
which has come to be known as 'the tragedy of the com-
mons' (Hardin, 1968). It is an important point of the Hardin paradigm that the
decline comes about as a result of rational self-interest.
World-wide interest in traditional management prac- Each new boat that a fisherman adds, brings him a gain of
tices appears to have increased in recent years. For exam- almost +1. But as the effects of over-fishing will be shared
ple, UNESCO conducted the first two of a series of regional by all, his loss will be only a fraction o f - 1 . Thus, as a
meetings on this subject in 1983, and their Man and the rational decision-maker, the only sensible course for him is
Biosphere (MAB) Programme in Canada initiated in 1984 to add another boat. But this is the conclusion reached by
workshops on community resource management and self- all of the fishermen sharing the commons. To Hardin
regulation. Also, IUCN's Conservation for Development (1968) 'therein is the tragedy. Each man is locked into a
Office has been interested in traditional conservation prac- system that compels him to increase his (share) without
tices (e.g. Lamb, 1981), while the Eleventh International limit—in a world that is limited... Freedom in a commons
Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences in brings ruin to all.'
1983, and the Society for Applied Anthropology's Annual
Meeting in 1984, both featured sessions on the 'commons' Paradoxically, the course leading to the tragedy is not
problem in resource management. Moreover, the Fisheries accidental but deliberate. For example, the common-prop-
Department of FAO has been actively involved since 1980 erty approach to fish and game in North America was an
in questions of small-scale fisheries, territorial use-rights, intentional choice. It was advocated as an alternative to the
and community-level management, and this theme was inequities of the 'aristocratic approach' in Europe (H.A.
carried into the 1983-84 FAO World Conference on Regier, pers. comm. 1983).
Fisheries Management and Development. However, the common-property approach is not the
only assumption that is made in Hardin's (1968) paradigm.
The field has become multidisciplinary, with contribu- Stillman (1975) observed that there are three assumptions
tions from ecological anthropologists, human geographers, in the commons paradigm. For the tragedy to occur, three
biologist-ecologists, political theorists, and economists. It conditions must be fulfilled:
has also become very diverse, with studies focusing on such
topics as traditional fishing practices, conservation of graz- (a) The users must be selfish and they must be able to
ing lands, and communal water and soil conservation. pursue private gain even against the best interests of the
community as a whole.
This paper will focus on fisheries, perhaps most appro-
priately because the common-property resource theory was (b) The environment must be limited, and there must be
initially formulated for fisheries (Gordon, 1954). Hardin a resource use-pattern in which the rate of exploitation
(1968) developed 'the tragedy of the commons' idea to exceeds the natural rate of replenishment of the re-
illustrate his view that unrestricted freedom to produce source.
children would, in the long run, bring ruin to all in the form (c) The resource must be collectively owned by society
of population explosion. The parable he used, however, (common-property) and freely open to any user (open-
dealt with unrestricted grazing-rights in a hypothetical vil- access).
lage 'commons', and the collective tragedy caused by the However, as Stillman (1975) points out, if these three
rational individual greed of the cattle-owners. conditions are fulfilled, the tragedy becomes inevitable.
Within its parameters, the paradigm cannot be solved.
Thus, the paradigm is but a tautology. The solution of the
THE COMMONS PARADIGM AND ITS ASSUMPTIONS tragedy has to be sought beyond the assumptions of the
The parable can easily be adapted for fisheries. Consider paradigm. In the field offisherymanagement, as practised
a body of water which has a certain finite capacity for fish in some countries, resource managers attempt to do this by
production. If the first fisherman or the first few fishermen limiting the number offishinglicenses and by assigning to
find fishing profitable, their success will attract other fish- those fishermen who receive them a fish-catch quota with a
ermen. In this way, more and more boats will enter the set upper limit.

199
Environmental Conservation, Vol. 12, No. 3, Autumn 1985—© The Foundation for Environmental Conservation!—Printed in Switzerland.
200 Environmental Conservation
The interesting question is, can communities of fisher-
men self-regulate their fishing efforts or have practices
which otherwise violate one or more of the assumptions of
the model so that the tragedy would not occur? If the
answer is 'no', then government fishery managers should
assume that fishermen behave as anarchic villains bent
upon destroying their resource, and should accordingly
impose measures on those fishermen to prevent them from
damaging their own livelihood. If, however, the answer is
'yes', it would be important to know how those fishermen
escape the relentless workings of the tragedy. Perhaps gov-
ernment regulation could then take community-level self-
regulation into consideration.
Basically, the task is to find out the limitations of the
commons paradigm as a model for resource management.
To do this, the plan in this paper is to (a) test the assump-
tions of the commons paradigm against empirical case-
studies, (b) find out the conditions under which the tragedy
does indeed occur, and (c) explore the role of community-
level resource management and self-regulation within the
larger framework of resource management policy.
AN EMPIRICAL CRITIQUE OF THE ASSUMPTIONS
Individualism versus Community
The first of the assumptions, that of the supremacy of
individual self-interest, certainly holds true with most
industrial, large-scale fisheries. When factory fleets be-
longing to a number of nations were exploiting the offshore
stocks of eastern North America in the 1960s, each fleet
operated with the overriding objective of taking as large a
share of the yield as possible. One cannot talk of commu-
nity concerns with such fleets, except perhaps that they
have to keep themselves and their fishermen in business.
This is usually accomplished by moving from one stock to
another, and from one area to another, in search of stocks
which have not yet been depleted.
In small-scale fisheries where such mobility is not pos-
sible, the situation is different. There is evidence from
some small-scale, community-based fisheries that fisher-
men may voluntarily limit their take. A good example is
the Cornish oyster fishery at Fal River, reported by Cove
(1973). In an area in which several episodes of over-fishing
had occurred in previous decades, those oyster fishermen
employed simple technology, and used peer-group pres-
sure, to limit fishing effort and the yield.* For example, all
fishermen kept an eye on the amounts sold to buyers by
individual fishermen. 'If a boat had a catch that was higher
than the group average, there would be considerable com-
ment... Newcomers were warned by older fishermen not to
overwork' (Cove, 1973).
McCay (1980) discussed two kinds of self-regulation—
limited entry and a quota system—as practised by a New
York Bight region fishermen's cooperative at 'Gull Haven'.
Limited entry was partially achieved by limiting member-
* In response to a referee, here and elsewhere I am not assuming
that effort control occurred for reasons of biological conservation.
Traditional management, in my experience, is almost never based
purely on biological reasons, although R.E. Johannes (1978,1981)
certainly has documented biologically-based traditional manage-
ment.
ship to the cooperative. Quotas were established mainly for
one species of importance for the member fishermen, the
Whiting (Merluccius bilinearis). The cooperative manager
set a daily quota according to the amount that he could
arrange to sell at an acceptable price. When all the catches
came in, the proceeds were shared equitably among the
crews of the boats which had fished during that day, thus
reducing captains' incentives to fish hard, and mitigating
any tendency to over-capitalize in order to out-produce
other vessels.
Among Canadian trawl fisheries for Smelt (Osmerus
mordax) in eastern Lake Erie, a similar quota arrangement
existed. In this case, it was the fish-processer who set the
informal quota which was based on the amount that could
be handled and sold. Fishermen who landed more than
their share were forced to average out their catches with
other fishermen. This arrangement applied to the most
productive season, when boats were physically able to
bring in more fish than could be processed and sold (Berkes
& Pocock, 1981). Compared with fishermen in the western
end of Lake Erie, these eastern-end trawlermen used older,
medium-sized vessels, and discouraged one another from
investing in larger boats. The rationale for this, as stated by
spokesmen for the local fishermen's association, was that if
a few members obtained much larger and more efficient
boats, then the rest would have to follow suit, thus increas-
ing the cost of fishing for all and perhaps causing a drop in
the selling price of Smelt.*
Individualism is a phenomenon largely of the last two
centuries in western industrialized nations. According to
Ophuls (1977), it 'arose historically from circumstances of
abnormal abundance', and is likely to disappear as we
move into a steady-state economy.'... The traditional pri-
macy of the community over the individual that has char-
acterized virtually every other period of history will be
restored' (Ophuls, 1977). In this regard, the individualism
of the fishermen in the three studies referred to above was
being effectively limited for the good of the community.
Given that these examples come from three countries (UK,
USA, and Canada) in which individualism is something of
a national ideology, one may expect even more examples in
non-western traditional societies.
Perhaps the best examples of the supremacy of commu-
nity interest over individual interest comes from subsis-
tence and artisanal fisheries. The literature is replete with
examples of community-enforced fishing regulations and
practices. These range from the elaborate and well-defined
system of 'property' in the form of user rights to specified
salmon-streams in the Pacific north-west (Rogers, 1979;
Richardson, 1982), and reef and lagoon tenure systems in
Micronesia (Johannes, 1978), to simpler systems in which
few rules govern appropriate fishing behaviour and access
to the resource, as in the Cree Indian fisheries in eastern
subarctic Canada (Berkes, 1977). Among Cree fishermen,
* One wonders whether the possibility of over-fishing even
entered their minds, though it certainly did ours in Mounts Bay,
Cornwall, in the 1920s. Returning there some forty years later, we
were dismayed but scarcely surprised to find that our worst fears
had been justified, and that, for example, our favourite Pollock
(Pollack, locally called 'pullock', Pollachius virens), had become
reduced to a mere 'sprinkling of tiddlers'.—Ed.
 Berkes: Fishermen and 'The Tragedy of the Commons'
the use of 'proper' fishing methods and practices was
assured by the use of social pressure on those who did not
conform to the norms. People frowned upon or laughed at
those who, for example, did not provide sufficient room for
others' gill-nets, or those who used smaller-than-average
mesh-sizes. However, such social sanctions were rarely
used; they were not often needed. In five years of fishing at
a communally-used seine-fishing site, no fisherman was
ever seen even attempting to fish out of turn.
The Overexploitation Question
The second of the assumptions, that of the rate of exploi-
tation exceeding the rate of natural productivity, again
holds true for many industrial fisheries, such as the inter-
national whale fisheries. The accumulated fishing power
for valuable fisheries such as those of various tuna and
salmon, is such that only a few days offishingis allowed per
year in many of the fisheries. But even with less-valuable
stocks, resource collapse due to over-fishing is not uncom-
mon, while bottom-living (demersal) fish in the coastal
areas of the world, for example in the Mediterranean,
appear to be suffering from chronic overexploitation.
Community control over the fishing effort appears to be
very difficult to achieve in commercial fisheries in general.
If a given stock is not overexploited, this is probably related
to insufficient market demand rather than to community-
level controls. The above-mentioned Cornish oystermen
and Lake Erie smelt trawlermen may be among the excep-
tions.
Better examples of the violation of the second assump-
tion are provided by traditional societies. The Micronesian
system of interlocking rules and regulations to conserve
inshore fish was no doubt effective in conserving stocks for
many generations (Johannes, 1978). In many of these socie-
ties, such as those in the Canadian Subarctic, fishing effort
is spread out over a large area involving many stocks
(Berkes, 1977). The total exploitation-rate in one of the
study areas was of the order of 1% of the total biological
production or 10% of the readily exploitable biological
production (Berkes, 1981). The harvest was limited by
community need, and there was no commercial sale.
Subsistence use of the resource does seem to provide a
strong self-limiting principle (Berkes, 1977). Some believe
that non-industrial societies were limited by their ineffi-
cient technology, and were simply incapable of overexploi-
tation. While this may be true in some cases (for example,
with many open-ocean stocks), it is certainly not true in
others. Commercial salmon canneries depleted many Bri-
tish Columbia salmon stocks using, in their early history,
exactly the same technology as native Indians—the fish-
trap.
The second assumption is, in general, difficult to accept
or to reject. It cannot be known with certainty whether any
traditional societies directly controlled their fishing effort.
More likely,fishingeffort was indirectly controlled by com-
munity-level resource-tenure systems such as those involv-
ing territories. The contention that pre-industrial people
were incapable of over-fishing, for reasons of ineffective
technology and low population-densities, cannot be totally
rejected either.
201
Are Fish Resources Common-property and Open-access?
The third of the assumptions, that fish stocks are freely
open to any user is, in general, the most difficult assump-
tion to defend. There are still many parts of the world
where anyone can become a fisherman and fish anywhere,
subject to local restrictions. But such freedom in the com-
mons is rapidly being restricted. In practice, there are vir-
tually no major fish resources which are truly open-access.
Even the high-seas fleets which operated with few restric-
tions in the past, now have to observe the 200-miles' Exclu-
sive Economic Zones of coastal states as established by the
1982 Law of the Sea. Fishing in the coastal waters of many
of the major fishing nations is restricted by licensing; this is
true for many fisheries in Japan (Asada, 1973) and in
Canada. In the US, however, there has been much resist-
ance to the granting, by the use of licenses, of limited-
property rights to fish. However, as can be seen from the
Gull Haven fishery example (McCay, 1980) and from
Acheson's (1975) documentation of community-enforced
lobster fishing territories in Maine, there are informal
mechanisms by which limited-property rights are
created.
The literature on fishing rights in traditional fisheries, as
well as in non-traditional small-scale fisheries, is very large
and diverse. A distinction needs to be made between his-
torical practices/rights and those which are still viable and
current. For example, in one of the better-studied areas,
Micronesia, many of the marine tenure systems have col-
lapsed (Johannes, 1978). But they still persist in some areas,
or are being rejuvenated (Johannes, 1981). Similarly, many
of the historical practices on the north-west coast of North
America (Richardson, 1982) may have disappeared—but
not entirely, judging from the observations of Barsh (1982)
and from unpublished studies of the present Author.
Some of the literature on past and present examples of
access management mechanisms has been reviewed by
Andersen (1979) for Newfoundland, Johannes (1978) and
Klee (1980) for Oceania, Richardson (1982) for the north-
west coast of North America, and Pollnac (1976) and Ache-
son (1981) for various parts of the world. In Pollnac's
(1976) review, there is an attempt to classify sea tenure
systems under the headings of (a) individual ownership (one
example given), (b) communal ownership (many exam-
ples), and (c) cases in which there were no established
recognitions of rights but where access management was
achieved by keeping fishing spots secret (several exam-
ples).
There is little overlap among these various literature
reviews, and between the material covered in those versus
the studies summarized in Table I. These examples should
be considered as only a small subset of what must be a great
many cases of marine tenure systems. For example, vir-
tually all native groups in northern Quebec and northern
Ontario claim communal rights over fishing areas which
they utilize. Licensed individual trap-net and other fixed-
gear fishing areas are found throughout the Great Lakes.
Licensed lagoon-fishing rights are found not only in Mex-
ico but also in many other countries (including Turkey, as
observed by the present Author).
Contrary to Pollnac's (1976) findings, individual rights
are not uncommon. Often they seem to be a subset of
communal rights, as on the north-west coast of North
202 Environmental Conservation

TABLE I

Some Examples of Fishery-resource Tenure Systems.*

Area Type of Fishery Kind of Tenure System Reference

Inshore Maine lobster trap group territories ('harbor gangs') Acheson, 1975
Quintana Roo, Mexico lobster artificial shelter individual or family campos (parcels) Miller, 1982
Japan variety of inshore fisheries individual property rights; property Asada, 1973
rights of cooperatives
Oceania reef and lagoon exclusive rights by groups of villages Johannes, 1978
Washington State river salmon watershed owned by village Barsh, 1982
NW coast of N America salmon and other resources rights to control access ('ownership') Richardson, 1982
held by kinship groups
Lake Erie, Canada trap, pound, hoop, seine licensed individual-use rights Berkes, 1983
James Bay, Quebec gill-net and seine community resource-use rights Berkes, 1977
Fermeuse, Newfoundland cod trap 'berths' (trap locations) controlled by Martin, 1979
community, dispensed by lottery
Newfoundland inshore trap, seine, set-line communal and inherited individual Andersen, 1979
fisheries fishing rights
S Nova Scotia inshore gill-net, line, and community 'rights of first access' Davis, 1983
lobster
St David's Island, Bermuda hand-line 'customary positional tenure' for Andersen, 1976
individual boats
S Bahia, Brazil river and estuary net-fishing 'fishing property rights' of individual Cordell, 1978
fishermen/boats
Gulf of California shrimp weirs licensed community or fishing McGuire, 1983
cooperative rights
N Borneo river fisheries territories controlled by longhouse Watson, 1982

* Marine tenure, sea tenure, property rights, limited property rights, ownership, proprietary rights, usufractuary rights, resource-use rights, and customary
rights, are some of the terms used by different Authors.

America. For example, the Nishga Indian people of British
Columbia claim the entire watershed of the Nass River,
individual communities control sections of the main river,
and individual fishermen or families control specific fish-
ing sites on that section (Author's personal observa-
tions).
Among commercial fisheries, individual rights are com-
mon in fixed-gear fisheries. In the Canadian Great Lakes,
for example, some of these rights may be called 'traditional'
in the sense that they have been held by certain families for
generations (Berkes, 1983). In other kinds of inshore fisher-
ies, communal rights (often vested in cooperatives) are
common. There is a tendency in some countries, such as
Japan, to extend formal recognition to traditional commu-
nal coastal fishing-rights (Asada, 1973). In parts of Canada,
this is happening through the legal recognition of tradi-
tional native fishing-rights.
CONDITIONS UNDER WHICH THE TRAGEDY OCCURS
It is clear that many small-scale, traditional or otherwise
community-based fishing operations violate one or more
of the preconditions of Hardin's (1968) commons para-
digm. Yet examples of resource collapse are found not only
in open-ocean fisheries. Over-fishing is common also in
inshore areas, and in lakes and rivers fished by communi-
ties. Self-regulation, where it occurs, is vulnerable to a
number of stresses. These include (1) the loss of commun-
ity control over the resource, (2) commercialization, (3)
rapid population-growth, and (4) rapid technology-
change.
Community Control over the Resource
Loss of control over the resource results in the break-
down of marine tenure-systems and the creation of open-
access, common-property conditions. In the case of Ameri-
can north-west coast fisheries, for example, the breakdown
of what probably was a viable system of resource manage-
ment, was closely related to the destruction of the aborigi-
nal land- and marine-tenure. The area 'was overrun by the
canned salmon stampede between 1878 to the turn of the
century and replaced by an open-access system' (Rogers,
1979). The main feature of the breakdown was the Indian
 Berkes: Fishermen and 'The Tragedy of the Commons' 203
peoples' loss of control of the land, and the advent of that is important for its oil, and also some other resources
American and Canadian canning factories which used (Rogers, 1979; Richardson, 1982). The salmons were com-
Indians as cheap labour. mercialized, but Eulachon was not; presumably it faced too
In the case of Micronesia, the demise of the traditional much competition from other (and less smelly) oils to
system was associated with the breakdown of traditional create a profit for the venturers. With commercialization,
authority in reef and lagoon tenure. In this case, there was salmon became a major management problem, whereas
no influx of Europeans to take over the land. Rather, the there is no indication of over-fishing of any of the Eula-
breakdown was the result of pressure by the colonial gov- chon stocks. The Nass River estuary Eulachon, for exam-
ernments on fishermen to abandon traditional conserva- ple, still supports a communal fishery and, from all indica-
tion laws, so that surpluses could be generated for trade tions and observations of the Author, the yield is below the
(Johannes, 1978). Distant markets were developed, and maximum productive capacity of the resource.
fishermen began to compete with one another—turning A good example of the impact of commercialization
fish into a commodity which could be converted into comes from Nietschmann's (1972) work with Miskito
money and thence into trade-goods. Indian turtle fishermen of Nicaragua. Initially, the Indians
Examples of the loss of community control over the hunted and fished according to their subsistence needs, and
resource may also be found in the case of contemporary the available resource-base supported the harvest. The bal-
commercial fisheries. As put by the FAO fisheries consul- ance was disturbed in 1969 with the establishment of a
tant Thomson (1980), 'the enormous increase in the size nearby turtle-meat packing plant. Initially, the local people
and power of fishing fleets in the last three decades, and the complained about this development, and considered com-
extension of exclusive fishery zones to 200 miles from mercialization a threat to the communal meat-distribution
shore, have together changed the whole situation. Now the system and kinship obligations. But eventually, more and
deep-sea and the inshore fleets are finding themselves more turtlemen began selling commercially instead of
increasingly in conflict with each other, over the limited sharing their catches with relatives and neighbours.
fishing grounds within their country's EEZ.' Nietschmann (1972) noted that, by 1971, there was a large
The conflict between small-scale or artisanal inshore increase in Green Turtle (Chelonia mydas) harvests, even
fisheries and industrial fisheries—which last are usually though the amounts locally consumed actually de-
company-owned and capital- and energy-intensive—is ra- creased.
pidly becoming a common feature in many parts of the
world. Thomson (1980) gives examples from North Ye- Rapid Population-growth and Technology Change
men, East Java, Thailand, and India. He could easily have
given examples from industrialized countries as well. For In the Nicaragua example, Nietschmann (1972) consi-
example, many Newfoundland inshore fishermen found in dered population growth a second major factor in the
the 1960s and the 1970s that their cod stocks had dimin- breakdown of the traditional system; population growth
ished or disappeared. What had happened was that off- intensified the need for money for the purchase of trade
shore fleets were intercepting the cod during the seasonal goods and non-indigenous foods. In Johannes' (1978)
migration of those fish between their offshore grounds and analysis also, population is an important factor in influenc-
the coastal shallows. ing the marine conservation system. In that case, however,
As the geographer Carl Sauer observed some years ago population changes in both directions become important
(Speth, 1977), the operation of large-scale fisheries, which for the outcome. In some of the Micronesian islands, fish-
Sauer would have characterized as 'destructive exploita- ermen voluntarily abandoned their resource-tenure sys-
tion', has two interrelated consequences: the permanent tems in response to widespread depopulation that followed
degradation of the resource-base and destruction of the European contact. However, the subsequent sharp rise in
local economy and cultures. population in some of the islands presumably increased the
pressure on the fish resources, further preventing a possible
Thomson observes that it is 'a wise and humanitarian return to aboriginal fishery management (Johannes,
policy to give the artisanal fishing communities exclusive 1978).
control over the fishing-grounds around their villages'. To
implement this, 'legislation is needed which will reserve Such cases of depopulation at first, followed by a sharp
inshorefishing-groundsfor the exclusive use of small-scale rise in population, are a common feature of many pre-
fishermen and prohibit or control potentially destructive viously isolated societies. This is the case, for example,
methods of fishing' (Thomson, 1980). with many Canadian Inuit (Eskimo) and Indian groups.
Indeed there is a common theme in the writings of many
resource managers on Canada's North, that the rapid
The Commercialization of Subsistence Fisheries growth of the native population after 1960 or so is a threat
A second condition which leads to the tragedy of the to wildlife resources.
commons is the commercialization of a subsistence or The analysis of the James Bay Cree fishery does not sup-
artisanal fishery. As seen from Johannes' (1978) work on port this contention, however; the present population still
Micronesia, loss of communal control over the resource- needs and uses less than 10% of the available fish produc-
base may, in some cases, go hand in hand with commer- tion. Population growth itself, up to a certain level, is not
cialization—but not always. A case in point is the loss of likely to affect the sustainability of the catch. Rather, the
native control and commercialization of British Columbia problem is the concentration of a previously scattered and
fisheries. The original resource use-rights system encom- nomadic population in permanent settlements since the
passed five species of salmon, Eulachon (Oolichan or Can- mid-1960s. This government-sponsored policy to settle
dle-fish, Thaleichthys pacificus) which is a smelt-like fish native people may be considered the root cause of any
204 Environmental Conservation
rapid population-growth problem in those regions, and
indeed it is a general rule that the sedentarization of a
nomadic population results in a sharp increase in the birth-
rate.
In the Cree case, one consequence of the concentration of
the population in a large settlement was the increase of
fishing pressure on local stocks, instead of the application
of fishing effort over a large area. In the mid-1970s, there
were in fact signs of over-fishing of the Whitefish (Corego-
nus clupeaformis) stock in waters adjacent to the settlement
(Berkes, 1977).
A second consequence of the concentration of pop-
ulation was that the fishermen (and hunters) became
dependent on mechanical rapid transport (motor canoes,
snowmobiles, and even bush planes), for this was the only
way that fishermen could live in a permanent settlement
and still fish over a relatively large area (Berkes, 1981). In
this case, the changed technology of fishing (motor canoes,
nylon gill-nets) does not appear to affect the harvest. At
least in this case, it is probably safe to say that fish are not as
vulnerable to changes in technology as, for example, the
Beaver {Castor canadensis) were to steel traps and the Car-
ibou (Rangifer tarandus) were to the repeating rifle.
In theory, rapid technology-change in a fishery could
adversely affect the stocks. There are a few examples of
this, such as in the historical development of Great Lakes
fisheries. It appears, however, that other kinds of tradi-
tional resource-use systems (such as terrestrial animal
wildlife) are more susceptible to the effects of technology
change than are fisheries.
Nevertheless, it is important to point out that loss of
community control over the resource-base, commerciali-
zation, population growth, and technology change, often
occur simultaneously. These four processes accompany the
transformation of a community-based local economy into
a market economy, together with the various advantages
and disadvantages of such 'progress' and economic devel-
opment.
CONCLUSIONS
Hardin's (1968) commons paradigm is a useful way of
analysing many cases of fishery resource-collapse. But the
'tragedy' is not a universal feature of all fisheries. Ironical-
ly, the usefulness of the paradigm lies in its insolubility—
the fact that it is a tautology. The apparent sustainability of
many fisheries, such as those reviewed here, forces us, first,
to seek and analyse the assumptions behind the paradigm.
Secondly, it becomes necessary to try to explain the existing
cases of sustainable resource-use in terms of the violation
of the assumptions which underlie the paradigm.
The main lesson of the fishery examples is that these
resources are almost never truly open-access. Incidentally,
the same can be said for the resource in Hardin's own
parable: the mediaeval European village grazing-commons
was not open-access, either. As a matter of historical fact,
village commons existed without an accompanying 'trage-
dy' for many generations—until the manorial system lost
its effectiveness and the community-based self-regulation
of the commons broke down.
The second reason why many fisheries examples do not
fit the commons paradigm is that individual interests are
often subservient to collective interests of a community.
Communities have ways of dealing with selfish users, not
only in traditional societies but perhaps surprisingly also in
some commercial fisheries in western industrial nations.
Community-level controls of access to the resource, and
the supremacy of the collective interests of the community,
often go together. Indirectly they result in the regulation of
the fishing effort and the sustainability of the harvest. Con-
scious conservation is often absent or in the background; in
this regard, 'traditional management' differs from contem-
porary 'scientific management' with the latter's emphasis
on biological conservation. How well this general pattern,
observed in fisheries, fits with the traditional conservation
of other resources (wildlife, grazing lands, water, etc.) is yet
another question. It remains to be studied by experts in
those fields.
It is easy enough to conclude that community-level
resource-management and self-regulation should have a
definite role within the larger framework of resource poli-
cy. However, there are two problems here. Self-regulation
works best in traditional societies in which economic activ-
ities are embedded in social relationships within the com-
munity, and are regulated by common values and rules
('the culture') of the people who live in that society. Rules
of self-regulation are effective with people or groups who
live within the community, but not with non-residents.
Practices to deal with outsiders, competing user-groups,
and resource managers, do not exist in most traditional
societies. The second problem is that, in an economy in
which a commercial fishery is carried out, economic rela-
tions tend to become free from the social framework, as
Nietschmann's (1972) Nicaraguan turtle fishery example
so nicely demonstrates.
Thus, in a fishery in which different user-groups com-
pete, traditional mechanisms alone cannot solve the man-
agement problem. Further, in today's commercial fisher-
ies, fishermen really fish for money and not for fish. Even
subsistence fisheries no longer operate in a closed econo-
my, but instead as part of a global economy—as is seen in
the use of mechanical transportation in Cree Indian fisher-
ies (Berkes, 1981). Mechanisms to deal with such condi-
tions are simply not in the repertoire of conservation prac-
tices which have developed/evolved in traditional com-
munities, though this is not to say that traditional self-
regulation mechanisms cannot be adaptedTor use in a new
order.
To do so, however, is going to require a paradigm shift
for those resource managers who assume that fishermen
are bent upon destroying their own resource-base, consis-
tent with the deterministic workings of Hardin's 'tragedy'.
Meanwhile it appears that many fishery managers have
taken Hardin literally, and have elevated what really is an
imaginative analytical tool to the status of a scientific
law.
There is little evidence in Hardin's own writings that he
ever intended the commons paradigm to be treated as the
model of reality for all fisheries. In fact, in a more recent
paper, he discusses two possible approaches to the com-
mons dilemma: 'private enterprise' and 'socialism'. Each
of these can be made to work 'and each has its merits and its
faults' (Hardin, 1978). The first solution is basically the
privatization of the resource, as in constructing fences to
 Berkes: Fishermen and 'The Tragedy of the Commons'
allocate the commons; the second is basically the commu-
nity ownership and use of the resource.
In fisheries, the former can be achieved by granting
monopoly rights over the resource to afishingcompany or,
less drastically, by allocating individual quotas (quantita-
tive rights to land fish) in a limited-licence fishery. The
latter can be achieved by giving small-scale fisheries exclu-
sive control over the fishing grounds around their commu-
nities, as advocated, for example, by Thomson (1980). It is
mainly in the latter case that community-level self-regu-
lation becomes particularly important. The material re-
viewed in this paper shows that the recent interest in small-
scalefisheriesand community-based management is justi-
fied. The constraint to self-regulation does not have much
to do with any intrinsic shortcomings of traditional man-
agement mechanisms. Rather, the main constraints have
to do with economic and political stresses which impinge
upon those systems.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I thank colleagues H.A. Regier, BJ. McCay, and ANDERSEN,
H. A. Feit, for comments and criticisms which helped me to
sort out some of the issues. This study and some of the
research reported here have been carried out with the sup- ASADA, Y. (1973). Licence limitation regulations: the Japanese
port of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada.
SUMMARY
Fish populations are classical examples of common- BERKES, F. (1981). Fisheries of the James Bay area and northern
property resources and tend to decline over time. Accord-
ing to the conventional wisdom, they decline through a
process popularly known as 'the tragedy of the commons',
whereby selfish users are locked into a deterministic
mechanism in which they are both the villains and the BERKES, F. (1983). The Creation of Limited Property Rights as a
victims. However, the commons paradigm is not the model
of reality for all fisheries. There are many sustainable
fisheries, and detailed studies of some of them indicate that
they do not fit the commons paradigm because there are
factors which violate some of the hidden assumptions of
the commons paradigm.
In many community-based and small-scale fisheries,
there are unwritten regulations or customary laws that pre-
vent individuals from maximizing their private gains at the
expense of community interests. Far from being owned by
no one and freely open to any user, many of the fish stocks
of the world are under claims of ownership by communities
of fishermen who exercise use-rights and who control
access to the resource. As seen in examples from Oceania
and North America's west coast, open-access and common
property conditions were created, and the 'tragedy' started
only after the destruction of such traditional marine tenure
systems.
Many of the fishing nations have been favouring the
institution of a kind of property rights to the resource by
granting limited numbers offishinglicenses and by assign-
ing catch quotas to those licenses. An alternative approach
which seems to be attracting interest and gaining currency
is to provide exclusive rights and protection for commun-
ity-based, small-scale fisheries, as is practised for example
in Japan. The advantages of the latter approach is that
self-regulation by fishermen reduces management costs,
205
and is consistent with traditional marine tenure systems
which were once widespread and which are still relatively
common in many parts of the world. Providing the fisher-
men with the opportunity to manage their own fishery and
to maintain communal control of access to the stocks, is
also potentially very important for conservation. For the
establishment of territorial use-rights removes the open-
access condition which leads to 'the tragedy of the com-
mons'.
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