How locally designed access and use controls can prevent the tragedy of the commons in a Mexican small-scale fishing community
Abstract
The Seri people, a self-governed community of small-scale fishermen in the Gulf of
California, Mexico, have ownership rights to fishing grounds where they harvest highly
valuable commercial species of bivalves. Outsiders are eager to gain access, and the
community has devised a set of rules to allow them in. Because Seri government officials
keep all the economic benefits generated from granting this access for themselves,
community members create alternative entry mechanisms to divert those benefits to
themselves. Under Hardin's model of the tragedy of the commons, this situation would
eventually lead to the overexploitation of the fishery. The Seri people, however,
are able to simultaneously maintain access and use controls for the continuing sustainability
of their fishing grounds. Using insights from common-pool resources theory, I discuss
how Seri community characteristics help mediate the conflict between collective action
dilemmas and access and use controls. Copyright © 2005 Taylor & Francis Inc.
Type
Journal articlePermalink
https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6434Published Version (Please cite this version)
10.1080/08941920590959631Publication Info
Basurto, X (2005). How locally designed access and use controls can prevent the tragedy of the commons
in a Mexican small-scale fishing community. Society and Natural Resources, 18(7). pp. 643-659. 10.1080/08941920590959631. Retrieved from https://hdl.handle.net/10161/6434.This is constructed from limited available data and may be imprecise. To cite this
article, please review & use the official citation provided by the journal.
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Show full item recordScholars@Duke
Xavier Basurto
Truman and Nellie Semans/Alex Brown & Sons Associate Professor
I am interested in the fundamental question of how groups (human and non-human) can
find ways to self-organize, cooperate, and engage in successful collective action
for the benefit of the common good. To do this I strive to understand how the institutions
(formal and informal rules and norms) that govern social behavior, interplay with
biophysical variables to shape social-ecological systems. What kind of institutions
are better able to govern complex-adaptive systems? and how can societies (la

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