This volume reports the proceedings of an international scientific meeting to document the concepts, methods andexperiences in community-based management and common property management for coastal fisheries in Asia andthe Pacific. A number of general conclusions and recommendations about coastal fisheries community-basedmanagement can be made from the papers and discussion at the meeting. The conventional wisdom that fisheriesresources which are held as communal property are subject to eventual overexploitation and degradation and that a centralized management authority is needed to manage resources is not equivocal. Traditional community-basedmanagement systems have an important role to play in the management of coastal fisheries. Recent investigation on community-based fisheries management has shown that when left to their own devices, communities of fishers, under certain conditions, may use fisheries resources sustainably.