Enclosing marine and coastal commons - the case of Scallop production in Sechura Bay
Channel: IASC COMMONS
Date: 2020-10-15

WCW2020 IASC Europe Keynote with Prof. Dr. Achim Schlüter. 
Many aspects of the ocean and the coasts are common pool resources. However, we are expanding more and more the economic boundary to the sea. Blue growth is rather high on many governments’ agendas. We are expending economic activities and are able to transform the environment at a much higher pace then we have been able in the past. This requires institutions to emerge quickly to avoid sustainability crisis and overuse often found in environmental resource use. However, this is a tricky second order collective dilemma, tough to be solved. There are not only many ecological sustainability challenges on the horizon, but the literature on coastal and ocean grabbing, which clearly sees the enclosure of the world largest commons ahead of us, points out the substantial social and economic challenges. With a holistic perspective on marine enclosure processes the talk uses as a case study the privatisation process under way in the Scallop production of Sechura Bay (Peru). Using the IAD framework, the process under way is analysed. Granting use rights in a first step of institutionalisation to fishery cooperatives, the process has now changed towards an enclosure were private, knowledgeable and financially capable actors are taking over.