Examining the Role of Social Capital in Community Collective Action for Sustainable Wetland Fisheries in Bangladesh

Abstract

Internationally, the decentralization of property rights is becoming an increasingly common policy intervention for sustainable natural resource management. In the context of decentralized wetland fisheries policy in Bangladesh, this paper examines the role that social capital plays in cooperation building and collective action among diverse households seeking to obtain fisheries property rights. It considers how some households are able to develop collective action in the form of a community-based organization to access wetland fisheries, and why other households are not. Using the Local Level Institution (LLI) study technique, our analysis highlights that the financial capacity of community members plays a crucial role in accessing resources when the government's decentralization policy also seeks to generate State revenue through fees. In this situation, information access and communication with external agencies were found to be prerequisites for earning the wetland fisheries property rights, with local leaders able to take advantage of their position to dictate collective decision making. This situation resulted in undemocratic decentralization and devolution of wetland fisheries rights, undermining transparency, accountability and the equitable distribution of natural resources.

Exploring the role of social capital in influencing knowledge flows and innovation in smallholder farming communities in the Caribbean

“…Previous research by Osbahr et al (2010) evaluated four agricultural development projects in southern Africa and revealed the important use of interpersonal networks as platforms from which to build more formal organizations (maize collectives). This suggests that by better linking formal and informal interactions, governments may be able to foster more decentralized and synergistic knowledge production and exchange at minimal additional cost (see also Mikulcak et al 2015;Rahman et al 2015). Better identifying and working with interpersonal networks may also help policy-makers initiate more integrated responses that can link smallholder farmer social capital to the significant human and financial capital of governments, donor agencies, the private sector and NGOs.…”

“…In particular, it plays an important role in developing area contexts where strong social ties function to counter poorly developed or weak institutions (Fafchamps 2006;van Rijn et al 2012;Lowitt et al 2015a). For example, social capital has been used to assess the barriers and opportunities for rural community collective action (Rastogi et al 2014;Rahman et al 2015); to improve understanding of agricultural innovation in smallholder farming systems (van Rijn et al 2012); to help design more integrative and decentralized policy frameworks (Bodin and Crona 2009;Crona and Hubacek 2010); and to enhance collaborative governance through supportive community institutions (Compton and Beeton 2012). Through such research, social capital has been usefully conceptualized as comprising three dimensions: 1) bonding social capital, which includes the horizontal connections found within a group, (also referred to as 'strong ties'); 2) bridging social capital, involving the horizontal links that are found connecting or bridging individuals who belong to distinct groups ('weak ties'); and 3) linking social capital, described as vertical ties to sources of power and finance developed among social actors involved in shared tasks to improve the common good (Grootaert et al 2003;Sabatini 2009).…”

A framework for analyzing institutional gaps in natural resource governance

“…This can lead to the lack of government officials' capacity or their reluctance to communicate with local community members, limiting their ability to bridge the gap between community members and the government since the rules do not equip them for required action (Ostrom 1996). In addition, this inter-institutional gap may be exacerbated when local leaders, also as community members and potential users of resources, capitalize on the resource flow and hijack the mediation process for their own benefit (Krishna 2002;Rahman et al 2015). Community members with relatively low social and human capital are generally worse off under such a situation, because they can arbitrate neither with the government officials nor with the local leaders (Rahman et al 2015).…”

“…In addition, this inter-institutional gap may be exacerbated when local leaders, also as community members and potential users of resources, capitalize on the resource flow and hijack the mediation process for their own benefit (Krishna 2002;Rahman et al 2015). Community members with relatively low social and human capital are generally worse off under such a situation, because they can arbitrate neither with the government officials nor with the local leaders (Rahman et al 2015). Therefore, the network closure within these two groups, and lack of information flow across them, can be seen as a form of inter-institutional gap, recognized in the concept of structural hole (Figure 1c).…”

“…When these are absent, bureaucrats and local leaders may attempt to develop informal socially-binding rules to perform a mediating role between formal and informal institutions (Krishna 2011;Rahman et al 2015). However, due to the lack of constitutional choice rules mandating their communication, government officials may also become reluctant to bridge the gap with local community members (Ostrom 1996).…”