A Human Rights Approach to Fisheries Management?
A new article argues that ‘rights-based fisheries governance’ should be better linked with human rights. Sounds great on the title and then gets silly in the substance. Below are my peeves. If you want to read something more fulfilling, I’d recommend Gezelius and Hauck on how it is necessary to address unmet needs in the broader political system to make fisheries management work in developing countries.
Here’s a summary of the justification:
What we are suggesting here, in essence, is complementing the focus on the ‘governance system’ that is taken by much fisheries literature, with an analysis of some of the key elements of the ‘system to be governed’, to use the terminology of Kooiman et al. (2005). The interactive governance approach of these scholars is now being used to evaluate fisheries and is bringing together the interactive study of poverty and governance in fishing communities (Jentoft et al. 2010; Onyango and Jentoft 2010). This is part of a broad movement towards consideration of fisheries as linked social–ecological systems, which culminates in ecosystem-based and resilience-based approaches to assessment and management of fisheries social–ecological systems (Andrew et al. 2007; De Younget al. 2008).
Participatory assessment of vulnerability in African fishing communities shows that priority concerns of fisherfolk are health, food security, access to cash, lack of infrastructure and education. Worries over the state of fish stocks and access to the resource were not found to be primary for these communities (Goulden 2006; Barratt 2009; Mills et al. 2009). Fishing communities articulate a high degree of threat from corruption and theft, fatal epidemic diseases unchecked because of lack of access to medical facilities, uncertainties generated by climate variability and change, and threat of eviction because of a lack of stable title to land adjacent to aquatic resources (Thorpe et al. 2007)…
Where fisherfolk live insecure lives and do not perceive the decline or possible collapse of fish stocks as the most immediate threat to their well-being, development investments focused narrowly on aquatic resource access and tenure reform do not gain the support of fisherfolk. Simply put, vulnerable people do not make the most effective and motivated resource stewards. In such circumstances, other insecurities in the fishery social–ecological system, such as those described in the previous section, may need to be understood and acted upon first if economic inefficiencies generated by weak property rights are to be addressed successfully.
Such a mix of issues here.
One issue tackled is poverty. I very much agree that deeper drivers of insecurity should be addressed among fishermen. In fact, I got my start as a development practitioner in Guatemala working on human rights. But, I don’t think the authors are being constructive. Any well-designed reform in a small-scale fishery would have to include a clear pathway to improving fishermen’s livelihoods. And there is no silver bullet in international development, but fishery reforms can help reduce poverty. So should we really wait to save small-scale fisheries that are in decline, as suggested by the authors? Would this not exacerbate poverty?!
The authors give the example of Lake Victoria:
Fishers around Lake Victoria face multiple deficiencies in basic rights. Development organizations, researchers and journalists working in the area have documented poor access to basic social services and education, and discrimination against women . These are issues that need to be addressed as a priority before fishers around the lake can reasonably be expected to engage with government as partners in aquatic resource protection and management efforts.
So poor social services, education, and gender discrimination must be addressed before fishermen can be expected to engage with governments for resource protection? A giant leap. Here’s a quote from a Lake Victoria fisherman:
“Some years ago it was actually possible to clearly see the bed of the lake on some occasions, but due to pollution, the sewage from farmland is being carried by river to the lake. It is not conducive for fish breeding. Fish numbers are declining rapidly. This is my livelihood, how will I feed my children?” explains George Guya, a fisherman with over 25 years experience.
More on that here.
Another issue tackled here is rights-base management. In the article, the authors explain that the most common form of RBM in the developing world, individual transferible quotas (ITQs), wouldn’t work in the developing world. Thus, RBM should not be tried. It’s as if they assume fisheries managers don’t understand the need to implement less sophisticated RBM schemes in small-scale fisheries in the developing world.
To link RBM with human rights, the authors give a number of recommendations that essentially read like anything I’ve ever seen recommended as best practice in fisheries management. Sustainbilty. Increase benefits to users. Stakeholder consultation. The only novel idea is that fishery policy should be integrated with other anti-poverty measures. Based on these recommendations, why on earth are we talking about RBM at all?
So there you go. I really expected better from Fish and Fisheries,especially with the lead author coming from the WorldFish Center.
(And just to be ultra clear, I’m all for better recognition of human rights problems in developing countries. This was just a poor argument.)
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Edward H Allison, Blake D Ratner, Bjorn Asgard, Rolf Willmann, Robert Pomeroy, & John Kurien (2012). Rights-based fisheries governance: from fishing rights to human rights Fish and Fisheries (13), 14-29 : 10.1111/j.1467-2979.2011.00405.x
