Baldivieso, Carla

In rural Cambodia, inland freshwater and rice field fisheries are key sources of income, animal protein, and important ecosystem services. As the flood pulse in the Tonlé Sap floodplain recedes post-monsoon, leaving rice fields and local water bodies dry, Community Fish Refuges (CFRs) offer a promising path to sustain dry season fish stocks, aquatic biodiversity, and secure water for agriculture and husbandry. Their sustained physical integrity and productivity as multiple-use system depend on the ability of communities to collectively manage these systems. To explore whether the communities studied have been able to respond to the challenge of collectively managing CFR, we assessed two CFR sites established in 2016 by local and international organizations alongside government agencies. Our aim is to examine: 1) the presence, extent and effectiveness of collective action (CA) at the community level to manage CFR; and 2) the factors that either facilitate or inhibit CA in relation to CFR. We conducted a qualitative case study in two sites in Kampong Thom province between March and May 2023. These were chosen because, although they have similar ecological characteristics, they have different management outcomes according to the implementing international organization, WorldFish. This paper examines a process led by external actors seeking to reshape local behavior and existing institutional arrangements. The study reveals that centralized power structures, rural patronage politics, and limited peer-to-peer communication hinder villagers' participation and agency in managing Community Fish Refuges (CFRs) in Cambodia. These local power dynamics are tied to broader national politics, restricting villagers' ability to drive change and suggesting a need to reevaluate the CFR committee's structure to enhance legitimacy. While extended funding and well-informed external interventions are essential, the study questions the short-term feasibility of CA, emphasizing the critical role of contextual factors and policymakers' assumptions. The findings suggest that CFR governance challenges stem from complex external and internal constraints rather than inherently community limitations.

Sustaining local collective action institutions in the management of community-managed common pool resources presents a critical challenge, requiring a nuanced understanding of the role local institutions play in achieving social sustainability. This involves addressing the subtle, informal dynamics within these institutions while being critically aware of the biases embedded in the project's institutional design. However, externally-driven initiatives often compound these challenges by underestimating the extensive time, human, and financial resources required for successful implementation. In this paper, we present an analytical framework that could be used to both understand the context-specific collective action challenge, and to assess and unpack the outcomes of collective action initiatives. We integrate elements from the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework, Critical Institutional approaches, and learning processes as conceptualized by Freire in his theorization of critical consciousness. We contend that these schools of thought collectively enable us to grasp the contextual complexities involved in realizing collective action for managing common resources, particularly within agency constrained environments. This framework’s application to the study of Community Fish Refuges in Cambodia illustrates the importance of considering individual and collective histories and value systems and social hierarchies that shape decision-making and relationships between individuals and local institutions, in addition to political histories and structures, and the ways in which these shape the nature and effectiveness of collective action. This paper contributes to communicating the importance of a broad-based understanding of context and provides an integrated framework that can lead to more pragmatic interventions in support of collective action.