ABSTRACT
Co-management of natural resources, as summarized by Armitage et al. (2007), involves the sharing of power and responsibility between governments and communities through the actions of their individual members. Natural resource management in complex ecosystems consists of a set of nested activities, including the initial inventory of resources and their potential uses, assessment of the sustainability of those uses in the context of external stresses, the allocation of rights of access, development and implementation of biophysical and policy options, monitoring of trends in resource condition and adaptive response to these. It aspires to
the effi cient and effective combination of human effort, equipment, facilities and fi nances.
