| Summary: | Co-management arrangements are commonly framed with the theoretical
assumption that community management systems function with a minimum of
transaction costs and government-community power sharing lowers overall costs of
management. Commonly overlooked both practically and theoretically are costs to
communities. This dissertation investigates the involvement of three northern indigenous
communities in a wildlife co-management arrangement to delineate community costs of
power sharing. The subject of the study is the internationally migratory Porcupine
Caribou Herd, Canada's three primary Porcupine Caribou user communities (Old Crow,
YT, Aklavik, NT, and Fort McPherson, NT), and the resource regime established by the
Canadian Porcupine Caribou Management Agreement and The Agreement between the
Governments of Canada and the United States for the Conservation of Porcupine
Caribou.
Using multiple sources of evidence and drawing on the ethnographic method, the
study documents emergent communication linkages between co-management boards
and communities, analyzes locals' perceptions of caribou management information and
scientific research activities, identifies patterns of interaction between researchers and
hunters, and illustrates the constraints of choice available to hunters of the Canadian '
Porcupine Caribou co-management system. Presented is an account of the "1993
Caribou Crisis," a critical co-management incident in which hunters confront caribou
researchers and face the dilemma of violating cultural traditions in order to stop proposed
hydrocarbon development.
Fundamentally, the study examines the consequence of interfacing authority
systems and power dynamics of a formal co-management arrangement. The study also
points to the limitations of rational choice perspectives when conducting institutional analysis, and the need to consider group identity, perspectives on uncertainty, and styles
of learning when delineating transaction costs. From a more applied perspective,
delineating anticipated and incurred community transaction costs of power sharing brings
attention to the impediments to local involvement, how community members invest their
energies in a co-management process, and who and by what method they bear the costs
of shared decision making.
Porcupine Caribou user communities make sacrifices when seeking to exercise
authority in shared decision-making. The transaction costs of co-management
associated with community involvement come at the price of time commitments and
imposed schedules, restructuring of former traditions of leadership, and engaging with
government agencies in bureaucratic processes. Internalizing authority in caribou
management means that community members and leaders must decipher new
information, interact with a host of players, engage in lobbying, and become involved in
conflicts which are at times turbulent and controversial, as well as divisive to community.
In some cases, the costs of power sharing are perceived to violate customary and
traditional institutions regarding human-human, and human- caribou relations and in turn,
undermine the well-being of the caribou resource and the relationships of those who
depend on it.
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