Zooming-in Co-management of Coastal Resources to Community Level: a Case in Southern Iloilo, Philippines

The past two decades have witnessed the emergence of co-management as an approach in managing coastal resources. Co-management covers various partnership arrangements and degrees of power sharing. It includes the sharing of responsibility and authority between the government and the community of local fishers to manage a fishery. As such, several co-management arrangements exist depending on the role of the fishers in the formulation of the regulations ranging from consultative roles to delegated roles. While many studies look into co-management in a higher level of government, this case analysis looks into community-level initiatives towards co-managing coastal resources with the local government unit and coastal community in Barangay Sinogbuhan. Review of previous studies and relevant documents, key informant interviews and focus group discussions were undertaken to collect data for analysis. Using key conditions for successful co-management, enabling policies and legislation, and delegation of authority were rated high at both levels. Other key conditions were rated medium while participation and management rules enforced were rated low. At the outset it was assessed that the evolving co-management has promising prospects, though more still needs to be done.