The impact of co-management on household income and expenditure: An empirical analysis of common property fishery resource management in Bangladesh

Community Based Fisheries Management (CBFM), or co-management, emerged in Bangladesh as an alternative arrangement for the management of water bodies to solve the adverse effects of the government leasing policy on fishers and fishery resources. As a result of the continuation of the traditional leasing system, the elites and influential individuals captured and controlled the water bodies, and, as a consequence, low income individual lost their rights to fish and work in these water bodies. In 1995, the Bangladesh Department of Fisheries initiated a new management system called CBFM where local poor people were involved in the management process and received rights to fish in the common property water bodies. This study examined the impact of the CBFM-2 project on the income, expenditure and inequality of the fishing community and determines the relationship between poverty and inequality. Following simple random sampling, a representative sample of 196 fisher households comprising 101 CBFM (target) fishers and 95 non-CBFM (control) fishers were selected from Hakaluki and Halir haors of the Moulouvibazer and Sunamgonj districts, respectively. A propensity score matching method was used for impact evaluation. The results show that the CBFM-2 project has a positive and significant impact on fisherʹs income and household expenditure when poor fishers are involved in the co-management system. The results also reveal that inequality is not a major problem in the study areas, and no significant changes in the income and expenditure distribution has taken place following the project implementation. Finally, the results reveal that inequality and poverty are negatively related in the study area.