Re-evaluating Assumptions: A Chat with Chris Béné

The topic of today’s plenary session was “Wealth, Resilience and Freedom.”

The first speaker was Chris Béné, of the Worldfish Centre in Malaysia. His talk, “Is the Wealth-based Approach Really Appropriate for Small-scale Fisheries in the Developing World? An Alternative Perspective” compared the relative merits and shortcomings of the wealth-based and the welfare-based approaches to fisheries.

I was able to catch him during a break to get his further thoughts on this issue, and to follow up on a couple of points that stood out to me during his presentation:

Q: In your talk, you suggest that the wealth-based model for fisheries tends to work better in developed nations, and the welfare-based model seems to benefit developing nations. Could you briefly explain the primary reasons for the different levels of success?

A: It seems that the capacity of the fisheries sector to extract rent, which is the wealth-based model, is more appropriate for the conditions in developed countries, while the prevention mechanisms that can be provided by the fisheries are probably more adapted to what is needed, at the present time, in developing countries. It’s a process, so we move from one end to the other. All the fisheries in the world will be part of that movement from a poverty reduction approach, to poverty prevention.

Q: At the beginning of your talk, you mentioned that it’s important for us to remember that about 56% of people involved in small-scale fishing are women. Does gender play a role in the differences between what works in developed vs. developing nations?

A: I don’t think it does, in the sense that the importance of women in the fisheries sector is not different in developed and developing countries. In both cases, the role of women in the sector is quite important. Of course, they interact differently in both cases, but I guess my point is that as soon as we talk about small-scale fisheries, we need to have in mind that half of the labourers in that sector are actually women.

Q: To conclude, your talk, you spoke briefly about the different costs of the two approaches. In your opinion do the benefits outweigh the costs of either approach?

A: When I say “costs” I don’t necessarily mean economic costs. It could be social costs, and that’s really what I was trying to highlight, that you will have to make some hard choices, trade-offs. Neither approach is actually free of cost. The importance is to realize is that by supporting or promoting one approach vs. the other, you cannot simply look at the benefit. It’s a rhetorical strategy that is sometimes adopted by people to promote their approach- they’ll present the benefits, but won’t put as much energy into demonstrating or evaluating the cost. It’s important to talk about both the benefit and the cost.