Collective Action for Local-Level Effort Regulation : An Assessment of Recent Experiences in Senegalese Small-Scale Fisheries

During the 1990s, several important communities of small-scale fishermen along the Senegalese coastline have adopted effort-restraining schemes on their own initiative, a rare occurrence in this type of fisheries. The paper is an attempt to understand these experiences and, in particular, to answer four queries. First, have these schemes been motivated by market power or by resource management considerations? Indeed, by colluding with the purpose of limiting supply, fishermen may want to exercise market power so as to cause a rise in fish prices. Alternatively, they may desire to stop the dissipation of the resource rent and the depletion of the resource stock by putting an end to an open-access mode of operation. Second, are the schemes effectively run and have they proven to be sustainable? Third, what types of fishermen do appear to be most convinced or most supportive of effort-limiting measures; and is it possible to understand the characteristics of supportive fishermen in the light of available economic theory? and, fourth, what are the reasons behind the varying incidence of success of such measures in different points of the Senegalese coastline and regarding different techniques or species of fish?