Common Resources Management in Anti-Commons Situation, Case of Marine Resources in Morocco (French Version)

The fishery activity contributes greatly to value added, labour creation and poverty reduction. Nevertheless, many fish stocks have been collapsing due to overfishing and governance inefficiency. In Morocco, in addition to its fragility and instability, the stock of octopus for example has not been recovered after a long period of overexploitation. In fact, the fishery management failure has negative consequences upon the resource valuation and sustainability. The reasons behind this management failure are multiple but they are not well known. The imperfection or the breakdown in coordination process are among the chief reasons of this failure. The purpose of this study is to shed light on the coordination problems regarding the Moroccan octopus fishery by emphasizing the effects of «anti-commons» as the main reason for coordination failure. While in the anti-commons situation multiple users hold exclusion rights but no one can use the resource effectively, in the "commons" situation all community members have the right to use the scarce common resources and no one can exclude other members. The «anti-commons» also refer to shared knowledge and expertise among disconnected and separated decision makers.<br><br>Empirical studies have focused on areas where the effects of anti-commons are easy to elucidate, namely the fields of biotechnology, scientific research, communication and information technology, as well as the fields of business, media and fisheries. In the fishery sector, the anti-commons were analysed in the field of investment in aquaculture. Yet, the fields of highlighting anti-commons implications remain large and include the field of fishery resources. In order to test the anti-commons related to the imperfection of markets and their implications for the management of fishery resources, we used in our research the model of anti-commons. This model highlights the prevalence of anti-commons problems in different market structures. Thus, we conducted a test on the octopus market structure. The market imperfection would confirm the prevalence of anti-commons problems in the octopus fishery.<br><br>The results obtained show an oligopolistic character of the octopus market with a manifested level of monopolistic behaviour of big fishery companies. The value of the Lerner index close to one also highlights the presence of market power exercised by these companies and the consequences of their collusive action. As a result, fishing operators have endured private and social costs related to continued overexploitation of resources and coordination imperfection. The fragmentation of the management system require the establishment of coordination mechanisms to manage the interdependencies between multiple actors. The allocation of management rights to groups of individual quota holders may be an effective solution, which requires however good coordination through cooperation and the ability of users to provide management functions that were provided by the government.