Working together in small-scale fisheries: harnessing collective action for poverty eradication

Abstract

Marine spatial planning (MSP) now has a sufficient history for consideration of the way in which MSP processes are developing over time, gaining experience and responding to issues that arise. Rather than setting a study of this kind in the well-established framework of adaptive management, I choose instead a spatial concept that allows planning action to be more closely meshed with the nature of the marine setting itself, that of Deleuze and Guatarri's notion of striated and smooth spaces. This suggests that there are two different manners in which space is produced, which are interdependent and interchanging and work together in making progress; this has certain resonances with the materiality of the sea. I use this concept in a reading of an MSP process with a relatively long pedigree, that of the Shetland Islands, Scotland, UK, focusing particularly on the development of aquaculture policy, through analysis of a sequence of documents. The study reveals that policy-making is suffused with striated and smooth spatialities, finding expression on the one hand in development criteria and other regulations, and on the other hand, in discretion, negotiation and opportunity-building, with the two yielding to each other and advancing together with their different types of movement. This suggests a more general manner by which MSP processes may progress, by spatial dialectic of this kind, in which those who practice MSP engage through their own reasoning of the natural and human structures and dynamisms of the coasts and seas and their responsive plan-making.

Stock Performance and Fishers’ Perception of Grouper and Snapper Fisheries in the Saleh Bay, Indonesia

“…The other attribute of institutional dimensions is surveillance and law enforcement. Strict law enforcement against the practice of destructive fishing through marine patrols and strengthening the Community Surveillance Groups (POKMASWAS) are urgently needed to more effectively enforce the laws [50], [51]. This is in line with previous studies (e.g.…”

Marine Social Science for the Peopled Seas

“…Social vulnerability and resilience scholars, for example, study the social and institutional factors that lead to differential vulnerabilities of individuals or groups (e.g., coastal communities, smallscale fishers, women) to climate change or other environmental hazards, and that shape their capacity to proactively plan for and adapt to change (Cinner et al, 2018;Tuler, Webler, & Polsky, 2013). A significant body of social science research focuses on the cognitive (e.g., knowledge, perceptions, motivations, norms), social and institutional drivers of collective actions in natural resource management (Jentoft et al, 2018;Ovando et al, 2013), individual behaviours in fisheries (Fulton, Smith, Smith, & Putten, 2011) or levels of support for conservation (Jefferson et al, 2015;McNeill, Clifton, & Harvey, 2018). Studies employing the sustainable livelihoods approach examine how different contextual factors, levels of individual capacity and institutions influence the social and ecological outcomes of local marine and coastal livelihood strategies (eg, fisheries, aquaculture, tourism) and the efficacy of alternative livelihood programs (Allison & Ellis, 2001;Ferrol-Schulte et al, 2013).…”

Interactive Learning and Governance Transformation for Securing Blue Justice for Small-Scale Fisheries

“…To ascend out of poverty and avoid falling back into it, small-scale fisheries people need strong institutions at micro, meso, and macro levels (Allison et al, 2020; Krishna, 2013). People must then know how to make use of the opportunities that institutions create, both individually and collectively (Jentoft et al, 2018). Knowledge is power (“ scientia est potentia ”), as Francis Bacon said in his Meditationes Sacrae (1597), 6 but knowledge is more powerful when backed up by strong institutions.…”