Shrimp polyculture is an important activity in SouthEast Asia, providing a livelihood and food for small-scale farmers. However, farmers are facing challenges due to increasing environmental problems in rivers used as the primary source of water in aquaculture pond production. To deal with these challenges, farmers have organized co-management communities, which gives them a stronger voice among river users. An illustration of such cooperative efforts is evident in Sidoarjo District, East Java, Indonesia, where the practice of co-management in aquaculture has evolved throughout the years.
This study investigates the effects of co-management on technical efficiency and farmer’s resilience to environmental stressors using an input-oriented Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) model. Environmental stressors are identified through interviews with 306 farmers in eight sub-districts in Sidoarjo, of which two are practicing co-management. The primary data collected from farmers included farm-level economic, social data, and farm characteristics, completed with farmers’ opinions about five environmental stressors and an economic stressor measured on a Likert scale and additional information about co-management.
The results show that farmers in two sub-districts practicing co-management have relatively high technical efficiency after taking other drivers into account. The findings establish a correlation between technical efficiency and co-management, highlighting the apparent connection between the practice of co-management and the observed increase in technical efficiency. Moreover, the positive impact of co-management appears to be particularly significant for farms with an area under 5 hectares. In terms of farmer’s resilience to environmental stressors that often occur in shrimp farming, the farmer’s technical efficiency seems to be less affected by the identified environmental stressors. These results include two significant findings. First, the positive effect of co-management on technical efficiency and stress resilience suggests that farmers have an incentive to participate in collective action. Second, the results confirmed the effectiveness of co-management on the potential of collective action for solving market-failure problems.
In conclusion, co-management in this case study is an effective tool for small-scale shrimp polyculture farmers who are highly dependent on multiple-use river basins as their main water resource. Co-management could be used as a tool to improve technical efficiency and limit stress factors for farmers. It could be initiated by the farmers themselves or by policymakers and natural resource managers and could improve the livelihoods of small-scale shrimp polyculture farmers.