Linking fisheries management and other development discourses

Embedded in the papers of both Mansfield (2011) and Young (2001) is a shared notion of fisheries management as a strongly political process. On the one hand, Mansfield focuses her attention on the causes of overfishing. In doing so she highlights five main processes leading to stock depletion worldwide, namely: 1) the massive scale of fisheries today; 2) the relationship of fish flow from South to North; 3) the role played by the government in encouraging modernisation; 4) the relationship between small and industrial scale fishing; and 5) the pressures of overfishing that are faced by large scale fishing industries. On the other side, Young (2001) is more concerned with fisheries property rights and how changing policies may affect the use of marine resources. Using Baja California as an example, she explains how state-led policies played a significant role in fomenting a “tragedy of incursion” that encouraged outsider’s encroachment and poaching. Moreover she argues that state-led unequal spatial distribution of resources for inshore fisheries’ development is responsible for distinctive impacts among local fishing communities.

Embedded in the papers and not put forward openly by the authors is also a strong critic to the ways in which development discourses have invaded fisheries’ management.

Fisheries as development mechanisms

On the opening remarks of “Integrating fisheries into the development discourse” the FAO for Asia and the Pacific (2007) highlights the importance of fisheries development and its role in poverty alleviation and economic growth. At a time when most fisheries worldwide are fully exploited or overfished, the FAO sends a call to all Asian nations to mainstreaming fisheries into national government policies. That call per se is not necessarily a malevolent invitation (and I’d like to stress not necessarily). In fact it could lead to positive outcomes if the task is undertaken using participative approaches that may ultimately lead to community based management initiatives or co-management arrangements. However, what can happen if such call for fisheries "mainstream into policy" is mistakenly taken as a call for modernization and ends up locked on the notions of past development discourses?

To some of you the critics to development discourses of Arturo Escobar might already be familiar. But let’s just recap. In the eyes of anthropologists like Escobar first world-led development processes have resulted in the creation of new forms of dependence, new systems of power and an endless “separation between reformers and those to be reformed” (Escobar 1999, p.386). Development discourses have been strongly criticized due to their clear principles of authority, patriarchy, centralized regulation and privatization of common resources (Escobar 1999, 1995).

Escobar’s critics of development discourses part from the analysis of the relationships of what he calls “the three axes that define development”: its forms of knowledge; the system of power that regulates its practice; and the forms of subjectivity fostered by this discourse (1995, p.10). When I started thinking about what to write this week I suddenly realized that all three of these axes are somehow applicable to the analysis of fisheries management.

• 1. Its forms of knowledge: fisheries management was previously dependent on local understanding of the resource. Now it is almost entirely reliant on expert knowledge from fish scientists. It is this type of knowledge that informs TAC allocations and MSYs.
• 2. The system of power that regulates its practice: nowadays fisheries rely on bioeconomics which, as explained by Martin (2001):

…“as a “discourse of development”, bioeconomics constitutes fisheries as a site of necessary economic transformation through the implementation of standard capitalist institutions such as private property, wage relations, and corporate structures” (p.124).

Again, critics from Mansfield (2011) regarding ITQs allocations and from Young (2001) regarding central government-led reforms and subsequent privatisation of marine resources come to mind. In Young (2001) capitalisation of the resource can be seen expressed through the figure of the permisionarios also. These outsiders ‘investors’ that have no vested interest in the resource and would therefore not care for its long-term productivity.

• 3. The forms of subjectivity fostered: although perhaps less obvious in Young (2001) this point refers to the self-recognition by peoples as underdeveloped/developed. Perhaps the clearest examples of a critic to this discourse are in Mansfield’s paper. First her description of the flow of fish from South to North; second her critical remarks on how South nations invite Northern nations to fish their ‘under-fished’ resources; and last her comparative analysis of artisanal vs. industrial scale fisheries.

There would still be much to say about how development discourses have left an imprint in current fisheries practices; of how fish are being seeing (and sold) as capital and fishermen are now seen as investors (or capitalists); of how communal resources where first turned into open access and then privatised; of the need for the reestablishment of customary fishing rights in many parts of the world; and of the need for participatory and co-management approaches.

But I think if I took this task I would seriously go over the word limit :)

Literature cited

Escobar, A. (1995). Encountering Development. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press

---(1999), The invention of development, Current history, Vol. 98, pp. 282-6.

FAO(2007) Integrating fisheries into the development discourse, RAP publication 2007/03, on-line resource: http://doc.abhatoo.net.ma/doc/IMG/pdf/Integrating_Fisheries_into_development_discourse.pdf

Mansfield B. (2011). Chapter 4 in Peet et al. "Modern" Industrial Fisheries and the Crisis of Overfishing

Martin, K. S. (2001). "Making Space for Community Resource Management in Fisheries." Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 91(1): 122-142.

Young, E. (2001). State Intervention and Abuse of the Commons: Fisheries Development in Baja California Sur, Mexico. Annals of the Association of American Geographers Vol. 91(1): 283-306.