Co-management of sea turtle fisheries: Biogeography versus geopolitics Lisa M. Campbell a,Ã , Jennifer J. Silver b , Noella J. Gray a , Sue Ranger c , Annette Broderick d , Tatum Fisher e , Matthew H. Godfrey f , Shannon Gore g , John Jeffers h , Corrine Martin i , Andrew McGowan d , Peter Richardson c , Carlos Sasso j , Lorna Slade k , Brendan Godley d a Nicholas School of Environment, Duke University,135 Duke Marine Lab Road, Beaufort, NC 28516, USA b School of Resource and Environmental Management, Simon Fraser University, 8888 University Drive, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada V5A 1S6 c Marine Conservation Society, Unit 3, Wolf Business Park, Alton Road, Ross-on-Wye HR9 5NB, UK d Centre for Ecology and Conservation, School of Biosciences, University of Exeter, Cornwall Campus, Penryn TR10 9EZ, UK e Department of Environment and Coastal Resources, South Base, Grand Turk, Turks and Caicos Islands, BWI f North Carolina Wildlife Resources Commission, 1507 Ann Street, Beaufort, NC 28516, USA g Conservation and Fisheries Department, P.O. Box 3323, Road Town, Tortola VG 1110, British Virgin Islands h Montserrat Department of Fisheries, Ministry of Agriculture, Government of Montserrat, Brades, Montserrat, West Indies i IFREMER, 150 Quai Gambetta, BP 699, 62321 Boulogne-sur-mer, France j Department of Fisheries and Marine Resources, P.O. Box 60, Crocus Hill, Anguilla k Amberley, Kingsmuir Drive, Peebles, Scotland EH45 9AA, UK article info Article history: Received 28 April 2008 Accepted 14 May 2008 Keywords: Co-management Sea turtles Caribbean Fisheries abstract Co-management between local communities and government agencies is promoted as a strategy to improve fisheries management. This paper considers the potential for co-management of sea turtle fisheries within four UK Overseas Territories (OTs) in the Caribbean, and for co-ordinated management among those territories. We focus on fisher incentives for engaging in co-management and on the potential to scale up co-management to a regional level. This paper presents data from Anguilla, British Virgin Islands, Montserrat, and Turks and Caicos Islands, where 110 turtle fishers participated in a socio- economic survey undertaken as part of the ‘Turtles in the UK Overseas Territories in the Caribbean’ project. Based on three established criteria for co-management (perceived crisis in stock, willingness to participate and community cohesion), results suggest that fisher support for co-management exists within each OT, but the extent of support for and views of specific management interventions varies among OTs. The implications of results for co-management in each territory, and for establishing co- ordinated management regimes in the region, are discussed in the context of current debates about the nature of resources and scalar (mis)matches between resource and management regimes. & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction The question of appropriate institutions and actors for managing common pool resources has long been debated in the resource management community. In the 1980s, general concerns about the failures of top-down management by government led to increased interest in communities as resource managers [1]. Community-based natural resource management emerged as a bottom-up alternative for a number of reasons, including documented examples of success, beliefs about community interests in resource sustainability and shifts towards governance models that emphasized both local participation and small government (see Agrawal [2], for a review of the emergence of the community-based management paradigm). More recently, abilities of communities to effectively manage resources have been critically examined [3,4] and arguments to scale up conservation and management are resurging (see Wilshusen et al. [5] and Brosius and Russell [6] for a summary of resurgent arguments). Many issues are at stake in this debate and underlying it are the assumed strengths and weaknesses of the actors involved in resource management, the scale at which strengths can be capitalized on and weaknesses overcome and how this varies for particular resources. For example, communities may be seen as capable of managing resources that can be defined as local (e.g. a forest patch), but less able to manage resources that are shared (e.g. migratory species) [1,7,8]. Similarly, governments may be less willing to delegate management to communities when there are competing interests in the resource, it has high market value or there is limited scientific understanding of it. Mobility, volatility and unpredictability of resources can make them ill-suited for ARTICLE IN PRESS Contents lists available at ScienceDirect journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/marpol Marine Policy 0308-597X/$ - see front matter & 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.marpol.2008.05.005 Ã Corresponding author. E-mail address: lcampbe@duke.edu (L.M. Campbell). Marine Policy 33 (2009) 137– 145