An Introduction to Pre-existing Local Management Systems in Southeast Asia -- Pre-existing Fisheries Management Systems in Indonesia, Focusing on Lombok and Maluku -- Open to All?: Reassessing Capture Fisheries Tenure Systems in Southern Laos -- Seasonal Ritual and the Regulation of Fishing in Batanes Province, Philippines -- Pre-existing Inland Fisheries Management in Thailand: The Case of the Lower Songkhram River Basin -- Vietnam: The van chai System of Social Organization and Fisheries Community Management -- Conclusion: Errors and Insights.

This book examines pre-existing management systems in fishing communities in Indonesia, Laos, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam. Besides the erroneous assumption that tropical fisheries are ‘open access’, the cases demonstrate that pre-existing systems (1) are concerned with the community of fishers and ensuring community harmony and continuity; (2) involve flexible, multiple and overlapping rights adapted to changing needs and circumstances; (3) that fisheries are just one component of a community resource assemblage and depend on both the good management of linked upstream ecosystems and risk management to ensure balanced nutritional resources of the community; and (4) pre-existing systems are greatly affected by a constellation of interacting external pressures.The cases presented in “Managing Coastal and Inland Waters” demonstrate that good management systems must account for such cultural, ecological, economic, political and social context factors to achieve their goals.