This paper principally deals with changing aspect of aquatic property regimes in tropical Southeast Asia to understand how local hegemony plays an important role both of freshwater resource use and local development, with special reference to migratory fish (white fish) and non-migratory fish (black fish) in various aquatic environments. In tropical Southeast Asia, freshwater resources have deteriorated to a great degree. This is due to anthropogenic alteration of the environment owing to industrial and agricultural development, and uncontrolled and mismanaged exploitation of resources. To protect from environmental degradation and resource depletion, both the government and local communities have tackled the problem, adopting various sets of formal and informal measures. In this paper, case studies of freshwater resource use in Laos and Thailand and its change over time are examined. In the Lower Mekong Basin of southern Laos, 68 fish conservation zones (FCZs) were established as sanctuaries in 63 fishing communities with a support of international agencies during the period of 1993 and 1997. As migratory fish did not increase except some cyprinid species, and thus it turned to be partly a failure, some local communities converted FCZs’ sanctuary to a common property for a limited social purpose since around 2000s. In one community, FCZ was auctioned for public use only for a few days and then open to community members. In paddy field system in Laos and elsewhere in Southeast Asia (eg., Thailand and Cambodia), fishing in paddies is open access while ponds used to be a common property and were used for communal fishing (phaa nong) mainly for non-migratory fish. Since around 2000s, communal ponds in some communities of Laos and Thailand have come to be privatized so as to contrive to raise funds for community development, although big ponds tend to be maintained as a common property. Also, some individuals claimed an exclusive use of the pond for aquaculture or lotus harvest. Elsewhere, ponds were auctioned for a few days’ exclusive use, and then were open to public. The change from communal to privatized property through a sale, a one-sided occupation, or auction system (as temporal privatization), does not simply suggest a collapse of community solidarity, but generally a rise of social hegemony to realize community development by collecting funds. These examples clearly show that property regimes are not fixed but flexible, depending on the increasing social demand as in the cases of FCZs in the Lower Mekong Basin, and of privatization of ponds in Laos and Thailand. Whether community's decision is appropriate or not in terms of social development and resource management, is a question of sustainable community fishery in Southeast Asia.

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This paper reports on the social and institutional arrangements of community-based coastal resource management (CBCRM) in Fiji. Through the analysis guided by Ostrom’s design principles (1990), it highlights how external organizations have affected CBCRM. For future research, the discussion suggests that the multi-dimensional nature of social capital, expressed as bonding and bridging social capital, be used to explain the mechanisms that encourage people involved in CBCRM to cooperate with others.

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Cambodia has rich aquatic resources particularly favored from the Mekong River Basin and Tonle Sap Lake. Fisheries activities have been conducted since ancient times. Until the eighteenth century, any people regardless of nationality and occupation could conduct fishing and obtain fishery products from freshwater areas in Cambodia. At present, freshwater fisheries are still important for food security of Cambodian people, as clearly shown by the fact that approximate 75% of protein intakes are supplied from freshwater fisheries products. However, contemporary circumstances surrounding fisheries have come to be quite different from those before. For instance, several fish species are listed as endangered while over exploitation of fishery resources has been criticized as environmentally hazardous and bringing about resource depletion by international communities. At the same time, conflicts between fishermen and among relevant stakeholders have been prevailing in various parts of the country. After the last civil war, Cambodian government has been financially supported by foreign countries for the economic development. In this regard, Cambodia should seek for an appropriate policy to enable both the management of national living resources including fishery resources and public security simultaneously, in favor of international consensus.

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This paper describes how the people utilize the diversified natural resources for their living and form subsistence activities connected with seasonal change. The connection of subsistence activities as well as land use and habitat is also focused on. Various subsistence activities and land use in the wetland of Lao PDR are characterized by rice farming and paddy fields. The village and land use are formed on the basis of rice cultivation. The paddy fields and their surroundings are regarded as the ecotone where creatures live in dependence on the environment in which rice growing takes place. With rice, water, trees, and wild animals and plants, the paddies in our research area have complex ecological characteristics.

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We made a detailed study of fishing activities by artisanal fishermen using gill nets and ecology of their target catfishes in 2000 and 2001 in Lake Malawi National Park in east Africa, where fishing activities seemed to coexist with the regulations of underwater protected areas (PAs) and fish stocks seemed to be maintained well. The overall ratio of the illegal nets in the PAs was 26%. Even though there was no effective law enforcement activity by the national park authority, fishermen tended to avoid setting nets near the boarder of PAs in the areas directly visible from the village, and they tended to use small cryptic buoys when they set nets inside the PAs. A large coastal area was relatively less exploited as a result of this unforced control, probably resulting in current good stock status of catfishes. We discuss the reasons of this unforced control in the light of acceptance of, and coexistence with the national park, interaction with external scientists, and local leadership.

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