The management of common-pool resources remains one of the most challenging development issues among countries that rely heavily on the harvest of natural resources to sustain a great number of its households. In the Philippines, the management of marine, coastal, and forest resources -- except for nationally declared protected areas -- have been given to local government units (LGUs) since 1991. However, the devolution of such responsibilities to LGUs alone does not effectively result to sound natural resource management (NRM); many LGUs found that NRM can be complex due to various reasons.
