In practice, community empowerment and co-management are closely related and if there is no empowerment, there is no co-management. Thus, building community is essential to empowerment,
it is essential to co-management. According to Pomeroy and Viswanathan successful co-management and effective partnerships can occur when the community is empowered and organized. Furthermore,
stated that empowerment is secured when resource users are in a position to participate as equal partners in negotiations, give input on management decisions and ultimately achieve self-control. On the other hand,argued that empowerment would be concerned with the redistribution of the power and it works at the level of the group, the community and the nation which interchange between the levels. However, empowerment is both a condition and a goal of fishery co-management, and empowerment must occur at both at an individual and collective level for fishery
co-management to become sustainable. Empowerment even applies to the formation of institutional arrangements for governance.