ABSTRACT
This chapter uses the Institutional Analysis and Development Framework to analyse the formal and informal institutional change over the last decades of marine space use for scallop culture in Sechura Bay, Peru. This business emerged from the initiative of small-scale entrepreneurial dive fishers who found ideal culture conditions in the large bay of Sechura and is by now an important sector of the Peruvian export economy. In Sechura, scallop culture started as an informal, open access activity, where, as business rose, exclusive extraction and later territorial use rights were granted formally under Peruvian law to small-scale fisher associations. While scallop culture is highly profitable under “normal” (environmental) conditions in Sechura Bay, it is investment-intensive and a financially extremely risky business, for example when El Niño related dynamics cause scallop die-offs. After a de facto privatization into the hands of those with the financial means, ability to take the risk, and other capabilities, the latest law paved the way for large-scale investors to hold all important property rights and to take control of all strategic steps of the production process. However, organized fishers managed to maintain their exclusive access criteria albeit under a private property regime.
