Welfare Impacts and Transaction Costs of Fisheries Co-Management at Oxbow Lake (Baor) in Bangladesh
By Khondker Murshed -e- Jahan, Nik Mustapha Raja Abdullah and K. Kuperan Viswanathan
ABSTRACT
Fisheries co-management starts from the premise that stakeholders have the innate capacity to improve resource condition as well as the welfare of the society. This paper provides a case study of fisheries co-management in the Oxbow Lake fisheries of Bangladesh and examines, firstly, the net welfare change to society as a result of the introduction of co-management and secondly, an evaluation of the transaction costs of the new management institution is made and compared with the centralised management institution. The simultaneous equation model consisting of supply, demand and identity equations were estimated and Marshallian surplus measurement was used to estimate the welfare change with and without the co-management system. A cross- sectional heteroskedastic and timewise autoregressive model proposed by Kmenta (1986) was utilized for the estimation. The welfare analysis shows that there is a positive welfare impact of fisheries co management upon the society. The consumers gained the biggest portion of welfare while the impacts on producers were quite small.
Static and dynamic processes were utilized in this study to measure the transaction costs of fisheries management. The results presented in this paper indicate that transaction costs of managing the fisheries are lower under a co-management arrangement.
The findings also reveal that legitimacy inherent in the co-management system encouraged fishermen to develop the co-operative / common attitude required for effective management of the Oxbow Lakes.
KEYWORDS: Welfare, transaction costs, fisheries co-management, Oxbow Lake,
Bangladesh
 View Property Rights: Co-management/Self Management Session
View Full Paper (PDF file)
|
