Current interest in fisheries co-management is first of all a reflection of the failure of conventional fisheries management against a background of declining income from fishing and increasing conflicts over the exploitation of resources. Already in the nineties, a global study on the transition towards sustainable fishing based on twenty five case studies emphasised the success of fisheries co-management (OECD, 1997). At the same time, there has been renewed interest in traditional systems of fisheries co-management: the fishers' corporations (prud’homies) in the French Mediterranean, the Lofoten islands fisheries, the Cofradias in Catalonia, the Van Chai system in Vietnam, the Panchayat village system from Andhra Pradesh. Some of these older systems are only on the fringes of co-management proper, which evidences the wide spectrum covered by co-management in the fishing literature. Several major questions related to the co-management of fisheries are broached in this study: ■ What are the terms of reference that would allow adequate intervention of each stakeholder in a co-management system, at the level of the different phases and various scales (local, national, transnational)? ■ What is the relative importance of the social, economic, institutional and legal aspects of co-management, respectively? ■ What are the key factors for success or failure of fisheries co-management? ■ What are the main components of conditionality for co-management in terms of framing, capacity building, data and tools? ■ Are the costs of co-management higher or lower than other, more centrally-managed systems? ■ What lessons drawn from international experience can be applied to the SRFC region?