Is Greater Fishery Access Better for the Poor? Explaining De-Territorialisation of the Tonle Sap, Cambodia
研究了柬埔寨政府取消洞里萨湖渔业专营权、向穷人开放捕捞的政策，发现政治动机（如争取选票）而非经济考量是主因，但政策的环境和社会后果尚需全面评估。
The general tendency for states in South East Asia is to claim exclusive rights over natural resources at the cost of impoverishing the people who depend on them for subsistence. However, contrary to what one might expect, the government of Cambodia initiated unconventional intervention: it cancelled the fishing lots system, the de facto property rights that had granted exclusive access to certain aquatic resources to licence holders. These interventions, focused on Cambodia's largest lake, question the rationale behind such state measures to forfeit control. This paper demonstrates that political interests such as garnering election votes and circumventing certain bureaucratic agencies explain this radical shift in policy. Opening up previously exclusive lot areas to the communities won immediate support from the poor fishermen. However, now that the lake is under a more diverse, if obscure, system of governance managed by multiple agencies, the environmental and social consequences of the policy shift deserve a fuller examination.