Towards a diagnosis for small scale fisheries in developing countries

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Towards a diagnosis for small scale fisheries in
developing countries

• Stephen Hall
• Director General, WorldFish Center

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Objectives of this session

• What information is needed to judge the basic
  health of a stock or capacity of a fleet?
• What characteristics of a fishery (stock
  abundance, fleet capacity) should be
  prerequisites to the use of capacity-or
  effort-enhancing fisheries subsidies?
• Do these questions differ for small-scale
  artisanal fisheries?

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This Talk

• The characteristics of small-scale artisanal
  fisheries in developing countries
• Definition of small-scale
• The developing country context for SSFs
• The functions SSFs serve
• SSF subsidies, overcapacity and overfishing
• Thoughts on the management problem and the
  changing landscape for SSFs
• The implications of those characteristics
• Overcapacity and overfishing
• Dangers in the current subsidy debate
• Opportunities the WTO could offer.

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A Coarse Topology
Justice Potter Stewarts definition will often
prevail.
Focus for this talk
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Small-scale, but large benefits

• gt 95 of the 200 million people involved in
  fishing are small-scale fishers, processors and
  traders.
• gt 90 of people working in SSFs are in developing
  countries.
• Developing countries produce and consume 70 of
  the worlds fish
• This will grow to 80 by 2020.
• Small scale fishers account for 70 of the
  production.

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The SSF sector has two faces
SSF are a key entry point for investing in
poverty reduction and human development.
The Challenge To invest in ways that secure the
benefits small-scale fisheries can deliver and
make them more resilient to current and future
threats.
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Fisheries will receive more attention as a
development driver

• The NEPAD CAADP - small-scale fisheries an
  important investment opportunity.
• More countries are putting SSFs into their PRSPs
• West Africa 4 countries in 2000 - 14 in 2007
• The enormous potential of fisheries and
  aquaculture for Africas integrated development,
  needs to be urgently and seriously addressed .
  for the desired MDG goals to be fully
  realized.

President of Nigeria, Olusegun Obasanjo
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Sustaining the benefits is very hard, but
possible (and essential)

• SSFs support of pro-poor development
• A complex, multi-faceted problem,
• Many interdependencies and entry points.
• Failure to embrace this complexity has led to
  piecemeal solutions and faith in magic bullets.
• Increased fishing capacity without effective
  governance
• eg 23 boat building initiatives in Somalia
• Modernization and centralized fish processing
• eg Lake Turkana experience
• Simplistic approaches to fisheries co-management
• eg Cambodia fishing lot reforms

Over-fishing and over-capacity are pervasive
problems. But how often are subsidies the cause?
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Drivers of Overcapacity and Overfishing
Environmental Stressors
After Kurien (2005)
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Drivers for SSF
Environmental Stressors
Markets
Subsidies
Overcapacity Overfishing
Processing
Technology
Access
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The dominant (developed world) management
paradigm doesnt help.
Re-inventing SSF Management is imperative

• BIOLOGICAL (yield/rent maximization) gtgtgt
  ECOLOGICAL, SOCIAL or ECONOMIC objectives.
• The biological foundation of SSF must shift to
• Avoid seeking optimum or maximum production.
• Adopt simple empirical indicators of stock
  status.
• Four useful states ? collapsed, declining,
  dont know, increasing.
• Even when SSFs can it is not obvious that they
  should always adopt current best practice
  management approaches.
• We need to broaden the context in which we think
  about and manage small-scale fisheries.
• Shift to a socio-ecological paradigm.
• Think about the limits to the possible

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Shifting to a socio-ecological paradigm

• Technical identification of optimum resource
  state not feasible or especially sensible.
• Establishing bounds of ecosystem resilience is
  more useful (but hard).
• Goal manage for social and economic objectives
  set within bounds provided by ecosystem
  reversibility (limits to the possible).

Within reversibility criterion over-fishing
individual species may be ok
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Lake Chilwa

• Lake size an important correlate of the catch.
• Large and opportunistic fleet, many of whom
  migrate from surrounding regions to fish.
• Size of the fishery and the number of
  participants varies with lake size.
• Agriculture and infrastructure projects threaten
  marginal habitat used by the fish.
• Protecting the margins of the lake may be more
  effective than trying to control the fleet or its
  catch.

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Emerging Approaches?

• Emerging approaches are part of the solution
• Precautionary principle (Code of Conduct)
• Ecosystem approaches to management,
• Co-management
• Adaptive management.
• BUT taking the main points of reference from
  within the fishery will not be enough.
• The process, the participants and the approach to
  objective setting and management need re-visiting.

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A General Framework
Diagnosis

• A thorough (re-) evaluation of a fishery and the
  context in which it operates.
• A process for recognising choices.
• Sets the stage for
• Allocating rights
• Identifying institutions that should form the
  management constituency
• Deciding objectives

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Towards a diagnosis

• Structured analysis, better decisions. For any
  SSF we need to ask
• Where does it fit in the wider economy (what
  purpose does it serve)?
• Which drivers have most effect on the fishery?
• Socioeconomic factors within the fisheries
  sector?
• External factors (conflicts, dams, pollution,
  coastal development, climate change, etc)? we
  subsidise these too
• What are the key relationships and dependencies
  and what assumptions are we making?
• What are the pathways to impact?
• What is the most appropriate management
  constituency?
• What is the most important focus for management?
• It may not be monitoring and compliance.

The framework for such a diagnosis - a work in
progress
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How do we know if we have over-capacity or are
over-fishing in the SSF sector?
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There is no simple answer

• Context matters.
• Over-fishing may be a consequence of conscious
  (or implicit) management decisions when
  participation is a social goal.
• Goals for developing countries are diverging.
• Over-capacity is a dangerous concept in a
  developing country context where small-scale
  fisheries serve a safety net function.
• Many SSFs support part-time fishers who only
  enter when times are hard eg when crops fail, or
  in particular seasons.
• Many fishers are highly migratory.
• Adopting a socio-ecological paradigm leads to
  different questions.
• How do I know when effects would become
  irreversible?
• Is the status of the resource compromising
  management objectives?

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Explicit objectives are key
Hilborn, 2007
The objective is shifting for many developed
country fisheries, but much less so in developing
countries.
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Concerns

• Looking for pre-requisites for subsidies within
  the existing (biological) management paradigm.
• May lock in, or drive countries toward, existing
  (narrow) management approaches that have proved
  inadequate.
• eg Investment in western MCS and biology
  focused management at the expense of other
  options.
• May stifle the development and introduction of
  better approaches.
• Undue emphasis on barriers to subsidizing SSFs in
  developing countries
• May stifle interest in legitimate and much needed
  investment in securing and sustaining the
  benefits SSFs deliver.
• Takes the eye off the bigger issue of subsidy to
  developing country fleets (small scale and
  industrial).

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Opportunity

• WTO rules perhaps could encourage investment in
  SSFs rather than scaling up. (small can be
  beautiful)
• Lake Tanganyika.
• Policy support and direct subsidies to the
  purse-seine fleet yet the industrial fishery
  still declined.
• BUT the artisanal fleet tested and adapted new
  fishing techniques
• Quickly out-competed the purse-seine fleet
• Continued to link with dispersed markets
  throughout the conflict in E.Congo
• Coped with severely disrupted inputs (fuel oil,
  engine spares etc) and market links
• The right set of rules could help drive sensible
  investment in SSFs.
• Rules for developing country SSFs need to be
  conditioned by a wider perspective on objectives.
  

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Thank You
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Exemption Criteria(Kuriens Proposal)