This article analyses how bonding and bridging social capital function in community-based coastal resource management as common-pool resource management in Fiji. Strong bonds among villagers help disseminate information and knowledge in the community. A kinship-based village structure contributes to a high
degree of accountability among those villagers nominated as fish wardens, who are responsible for monitoring marine resources. Increased cooperation between non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and local villages has encouraged “weak ties”, which allows villagers to gain access to new knowledge and information
on coastal resource management. When a non-governmental organisation adopted an “individual participatory approach”, by allowing individual villagers to participate in management, a project was more successful than hitherto in incorporating resource users’ knowledge and experience into management planning.
That resulted in a higher congruence between institutions and local conditions.