Sizing Up: Property Rights and Fisheries Management
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Sizing up: property rights and fisheries management. A collection of articles from SAMUDRA Report Item Type monograph Publisher International Collective in Support of Fishworkers Download date 30/09/2021 00:28:22 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/1834/18224 SAMUDRA Dossier Sizing Up Property Rights and Fisheries Management: a collection of articles from SAMUDRA Report International Collective in Support of Fishworkers 27 College Road, Chennai 600 006, India SAMUDRA Dossier Sizing Up Property Rights and Fisheries Management: a collection of articles from SAMUDRA Report International Collective in Support of Fishworkers 27 College Road, Chennai 600 006, India Sizing Up Property Rights and Fisheries Management: a collection of articles from SAMUDRA Report SAMUDRA Dossier Published by International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) 27 College Road, Chennai 600 006, India Tel: +91 44 2827 5303 Fax: +91 44 2825 4457 Email: [email protected] Website: http://www.icsf.net March 2007 Edited by KG Kumar Designed by Satish Babu Printed at Sri Venkatesa Printing House Chennai 600 026, India Copyright © ICSF 2007 ISBN 81-902957-6-4 While ICSF reserves all rights for this publication, any portion of it may be freely copied and distributed, provided appropriate credit is given. Any commercial use of this material is prohibited without prior permission. ICSF would appreciate receiving a copy of any publication that uses this publication as a source. The opinions and positions expressed in this publication are those of the authors concerned and do not necessarily represent the official views of ICSF. ii Contents Preface .................................................................................. v 1. Feudalism at sea.................................................................... 1 2. Coastal resources for whom? ................................................ 5 3. Flipped on its head? ............................................................ 10 4. Up against trawling ............................................................. 12 5. Redistributing wealth .......................................................... 16 6. Maori power ....................................................................... 18 7. The twilight zone ................................................................ 23 8. Naturally ours ..................................................................... 26 9. Jammed in Jambudwip ........................................................ 30 10. Hijacked by neoliberal economics ....................................... 34 11. Towards artisanal fishing zones .......................................... 41 12. The Holy Grail .................................................................... 42 13. Frustrating private agreements............................................ 49 14. The power of co-management ............................................. 51 15. Go for it .............................................................................. 53 16. Shifting gear? ...................................................................... 56 17. Important yet marginalized ................................................. 65 18. Empowering co-management .............................................. 70 19. A meaningful beginning ...................................................... 75 20. Who’s sharing the fish? ....................................................... 78 21. No one-size-fits-all approach .............................................. 82 22. Fishing rights vs human rights? .......................................... 83 23. Opening the tragedy? .......................................................... 87 24. The litmus test..................................................................... 92 25. Fulfilled, healthy, secure? ................................................... 94 26. Private rights tragedy .......................................................... 97 iii iv Preface Are fishing rights good, bad, necessary? Ichiro Nomura, Assistant Director General of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) asserts in SAMUDRA Report No 44, the triannual publication of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) (see pg. 82): “The FAO Secretariat has moved, beyond a doubt, on the matter of whether fishing rights are good or not. They are absolutely necessary and fundamental to the sustainability of the world’s fisheries resources”. This begs questions such as: Are fishery resources better conserved under a rights- based regime? What are the pros and cons of fishing rights in different parts of the world? What are the elements to look for in a fishing-rights regime, particularly in the context of developing countries? Do small-scale fishing communities benefit from different forms of fishing rights? This dossier, a compilation of articles from various issues of SAMUDRA Report since 1996, seeks answers to these questions. It examines some of the approaches and types of fishing rights in the geographic contexts of Africa, Asia, North America (Canada), Europe and Latin America. Ranging from topics like artisanal fishing zones in India and Peru to individual transferable quota (ITQ) regimes in Iceland, New Zealand and Canada, most of these articles are written primarily from the perspective of small- scale fisheries, and coastal and inland fishing communities. Some of the articles reflect the genuine apprehensions of small-scale fishing communities about ‘distributional inequities’, about exclusion and marginalization from the introduction of property rights that valorize capital over labour and community interests. Acquisitions of ITQs by corporations, argues Parzival Copes in his article (see pg. 5), would “destroy the viability of many smaller communities that do not have the financial resources to compete for the purchase of quotas and licenses.” Einar Eythorssson, in an article on Iceland (see pg. 1), while not denying that there are economic benefits from ITQs, raises the question of “who is enjoying these benefits, at what cost to whom?” Considering incidents of ‘high grading’, ‘quota busting’, ‘price dumping’ and ‘data fouling’ in countries that have adopted an ITQ-based fisheries management system, some of the articles in this dossier question whether or not a rights-based regime is the best bet for better conservation of fisheries resources. There are also articles that show how some disadvantaged coastal communities have, in fact, benefited from the introduction of property rights in fishing. Matthew Hooper, in an article on ITQs in New Zealand (see pg. 18), for example, claims, drawing upon the experience of the Maori peoples, “how a system based on well-defined property rights allows the rights of indigenous communities to be recognized and provided for…” There is broad agreement, on the one hand, about a rights-based approach to fishing, including the introduction of artisanal and trawl-free zones in coastal fishing, aquarian reforms in inland fishing, fishing rights in reservoir fishing, transferable quotas in large-scale fishing, reallocation of rights in commercial fishing, or assertion of traditional rights in marine fishing. There is some support to adopting fishing-rights regimes in consultation with fishing communities and in implementing these regimes in a participatory manner. In this context, the role of fishers’ movements has been highlighted. On the other hand, from a perspective of labour, gender and human rights, there are fears about some forms of fishing-rights regimes being inequitable, and about the socially insensitive manner in which some of these regimes are defined, adopted and v practised. The underlying narrow economic worldview of these regimes has been critically examined. What emerges very clear from the debate is that the last word is yet to be spoken on fishing-rights regimes and their scope, especially in the small-scale fisheries of the world. At the end of the day, questions still remain, and more unresolved questions are only round the corner. How can fishing-rights regimes be an improvement over conventional fisheries management? How practical would it be to integrate the principle of irreversible ‘exclusion’, at tremendous social costs, into decisions regarding who can fish? In small-scale fisheries, are property rights necessarily the best way to determine how access amongst small-scale fishers will be allocated? How could they protect the autonomy of small-scale fishing communities and prevent alienation of access to fisheries resources to large corporations? How could they not end up marginalizing fishworkers? How could they protect and improve upon traditional rights? It appears that greater adaptive space and flexibility of fishing- rights regimes would perhaps significantly help fishery stakeholders, particularly in the developing world, adopt such regimes. Or should we, as Menakhem Ben-Yami argues in his characteristically blunt style (see pg. 34), treat all ponderings over fishing rights as hyperbole and continue with conventional input-control measures in conjunction with small-scale fisheries that employ “less capital-intensive and technologically and operationally sophisticated fishing methods”? These are questions that will especially trouble policymakers and fishworker organizations from developing countries—and it is for them that this dossier is primarily meant. Although most of the articles in it are drawn from the experience of marine fisheries in industrialized countries, they are relevant