Community Performance in South Korea’s Fisheries Co-Management Policy

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Abstract

This paper begins with the question of performance assessments in the policy and a possible gap in the way the South Korean government evaluates the co-management communities as successful or unsuccessful within the co-management policy. This issue is critical to fisheries communities and to co-management governance because the ways in which communities are evaluated and categorized affects their future performances and the collective actions of the fisheries communities. While studies have explored the performance of fisheries communities, there has been little investigation regarding the performance variations of fisheries communities that are differently assessed by governments in government-led co-management and by communities in community-based management. This difference may result from the way the policy in the co-management system is designed, particularly the means of evaluation, which may lead to inappropriate evaluations of the performances of the co-management communities. Given these gaps in the literature, this study explores how the design of the co-management policy shapes methods of evaluating and driving performance in fishery communities. The objective of this study is to identify the key differences between robust and fragile communities under co-management and community-based management. Furthermore, this study examines how the central government and local governments attitudes toward the co-management policy relate to communities’ co-management activities and its evaluation from government officials in their jurisdictions. This paper mainly uses an in-depth structured interview approach, interviewing fishery community members, government officials, researchers, and key stakeholders in related organizations. In-depth interview data is complemented by additional survey data for a detailed analysis.

Author

• Sojeong Kim, University of Colorado Denver