The Community-based Fish Culture in Seasonal Floodplains and Irrigation Systems (CBFC) project is a five year research project supported by the Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF), with the aim of increasing productivity of seasonally occurring water bodies through aquaculture. The project has been implemented in Bangladesh, Cambodia, China, Mali and Vietnam, where technical and institutional options for community based aquaculture have been tested. The project began in 2005 and was completed in March 2010. The objective of the study was to improve our knowledge of mare management and the livelihoods of two villages of the Niger Inner Delta, Severi and Komio. We wanted to understand mare access and fishery management and to highlight the different stakeholders involved in mare management as well as the different rules regulating access to the various mare resources. We implemented a series of Focus Group Discussion with the different socio-economic groups of the villages (fisherfolk, farmer-fishers, and herders) and a series of semi-structured interviews with key informants and stakeholders involved in mare management took place in July 2008.