Throughout the congress, students from Ratana Chuenpagdee's World Fisheries course at Memorial University in Newfoundland, Canada, will be guest-posting here on the blog. Part of their assignment is to respond to comments and get involved in discussions with people attending the conference, and with other students around the world.
We welcome comments, and encourage you to join the debate!World fisheries can be a complex issue for many reasons.
For example, it is becoming increasingly difficult for authorities to implement policies on fisheries due to the differences between small scale and large scale fisheries. These policies are needed to regulate the fisheries but in many cases they have failed to encompass both the needs of commercial and local fisheries.
In one case we looked at in class, there were areas where the government had attempted to provide both the poor small-scale fishers (who use the fisheries for their livelihoods) and the larger scale fishers (who sell fish for profit) with equal rights to the fishing grounds.
It may have looked good on paper, but it hasn’t turned out that way in practise.
In some instances, poor fishers have sold their rights/quotas to the larger scale fishers to make a quick profit. In most cases the fishers had no education, and this quick profit was not enough to benefit them in the long-term. They became stuck in their positions, thus adding to the debt of these small-scale fisheries.It’s a clear case where the policies put in place to regulate the two classes of fishers ended up having a negative effect, particularly on the small-scale fishers.
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| Does community-based fisheries management work? |
So, the questions arises: Is it possible to have policies that support both the large and small scale fisheries while maintaining a sustainable fishery?
In truth, the government may not always be the best policy makers regarding the fisheries.
In class we discussed a situation where the government did not regulate the fisheries of the area. Alternatively, the authorities of the community were in charge of managing the fisheries. They decided who was allowed to fish there and the quotas. This way of managing the fisheries mainly benefited the people of that community.
Although this worked out for the locals, outsiders were often not treated well and would be banned if they did not fully follow the regulations. Since the government does not make the policies, the rules ended benefiting only a small group of people rather than larger groups.
Should governments be in complete control of policy making regarding fisheries or should the people of the area be fully in charge? Would policy making be a more effective process if both groups were equally involved in the process?
We look forward to your comments!
Post by Susan, Andrew, Brett and Leanne.
Nice post - you raise some important issues about scale in fisheries management.
ReplyDeletePlace-based access rights are one possible solution for small-scale fisheries, but there are also scale issues for this type management. Considering what has been mentioned in other posts about ecosystem complexity, how can people involved in locally-based management ensure that the decisions they make are ecologically sound in the context of the broader ecosystem?
Fisheries management of the past has been criticized for being too narrow in scope; is it possible that place-based management may also be too narrow to address ecosystem complexity on a larger scale? If so, do you think government still has some role to play, to ensure that communities do not take all the responsibility of fisheries management without the necessary resources to make the best decisions?
Quite interesting topic you chose for your post! From my experience with fisheries, community involvement with the government can be one of the most crucial ways to ensure that policy development is fair to all involved. There is most certainly a place for community and government partnership! This partnership can also be seen as the link for both scientific knowledge and local knowledge. Governments tend to not have someone on the ground in the area, so they only have the hard numbers from the local activities. Local fishermen tend to be the ones who have a learned knowledge of the area, so they would be the ones who understand what the practices in the area are. One without the other can be difficult. One example I know of is with the landings numbers for lobster in Maine. Say the recorded number for landings is somewhere around 1 million pounds per year. This number only shows how much is caught, but not how much is actually used and sold. In this case, the fishermen would be throwing back at least two thirds of the recorded landings, due to size and sex regulations.
ReplyDeleteBy using a combination of community and government when creating policies, it can be possible to reach the best possible solution for all involved. However, this can be challenged when looking at market demands. Is there a role for the government (and community!) when regulating how the by-product of the catches are produced and sold within the market?