Bangladesh contains one of the richest and largest inland fisheries in South Asia and the third highest inland capture fisheries in the world and has a long history, which continues to the present, of conflict and cooperation between fishers and other diverse fishing interests over access to a range of fishing environments managed under a variety of leasing and tenurial arrangements. Several fishing communities are of ancient origin and over a long period of time have developed and adapted their indigenous fishing knowledge, including technologies, fishing practices and knowledge of diverse fishing environments to manage fisheries in a variety of environmental and ecological conditions. This thesis provides a detailed ethnographic account of one such community, the Koibortta fishers of Krishnapur village in the northeast flood plain region of Bangladesh, focusing on their management practices and indigenous fishing knowledge in selected inland common property fisheries. It examines, using documentary and oral historical sources, the ways in which they have adapted aspects of their indigenous fishing knowledge to changing economic and environmental circumstances over the past 50 years. It also examines, using case studies of three water bodies, how they were able to gain short-term and insecure access to selected water bodies, partly by drawing on traditional social networks at village and multivillage levels to mobilise fishers in negotiations with leaseholders. / The thesis argues that these social networks and fishers’ capacity to adapt aspects of their fishing knowledge to new circumstances were insufficient to gain long term, secure and direct access to productive water bodies as fishers lacked strong government commitment to their long term security. The thesis concludes with a discussion of the capacity of Krishnapur fishers to manage fish resources equitably and sustainably.

As a result of the profound influence of theories of collective action such as The Tragedy of the Commons, The Prisonerâ s Dilemma Game, and The Logic of Collective Action, policy analysts have recommended external management, either by government control or market participation, as the most efficient option to govern common pool resources. However, due to the repeated failure of the external intervention, a new alternative has been considered, the common property rights. Due to their long term interaction with the resources, local users have developed mechanisms, rules, and institutions that can be used to favor the sustainable management of the resources. Recognizing these benefits in places where the government has nationalized the resources, it has started a process of decentralization of property rights of natural resources to local users. The purpose of this paper is twofold, to analyze the potential benefits that a common property right regime has in the management of the environmental resources, and to evaluate which are the key factors for this arrangement to succeed. In this endeavor, the case of the Irrigation systems in Philippines is presented. / Master of Public and International Affairs