ABSTRACT
This chapter applies the “commons” framework to a coral reef ecosystem of the Karimunjawa Island Marine National Park (or KNP), an emerging marine tourism area. We refer to this as a new common-pool resource, the marine tourism commons (MTC). In this case study, we find that the MTC experience a changing set of resource regimes since the past three decades (1982–2014) and undergo a dynamic institutional process which offers insights to the two concepts of commonisation and decommonisation. By further applying Ostrom’s Social Ecological System Framework (SESF) to the case study, the chapter analyses a set of 29 multitier variables that points towards a weak institutional performance in managing the coral reef for marine tourism: Non-cooperative behaviour of the resource users – the Tourist Guides – operating within a failing marine governance system hinders that the limited number of coral reef snorkel and diving spots can be managed as a common-pool resource and might experience destructive use in future.
