Abstract
In fisheries, alleviating poverty sometimes requires strategies that are inherently in conflict. When aiming to develop a fishery as a means to reduce poverty, its common pool resource basis might be undermined, resulting in greater poverty. But poverty in fisheries is also linked to, or a part of deeper social issues and processes, for instance, the marginalization and exclusion of certain communities. Poverty also has many factors— income, health, literacy, gender, power, security, etc.—all of which make poverty alleviation a particularly “wicked problem” that would require a broad process of political, social and institutional reform. In other words, poverty alleviation is not only an issue of sustainable resource management but also one of societal governance. Drawing from research in small-scale fisheries communities in Nicaragua, Tanzania, and Bangladesh, this paper describes how fishing people cope with poverty. The paper discusses what the governance implications are for alleviating poverty at individual, household and community levels, and argue that both the definition of poverty and poverty alleviation in small-scale fisheries must be rooted in real life experiences.
Highlights
In his 1833 Oxford University lecture series, William Foster Lloyd explained poverty by using an analogy between a pastoral commons and the English labour market and between a calf and a human child where the calf is equipped with “a set of teeth and the ability to graze” and the child with “a pair of hands competent to work” (Lloyd, in Hardin and Baden 1977, 11)
We argue that alleviating poverty among resource users calls for a broader concept of freedom than Hardin’s – one that is more in line with that of Amartya Sen’s “freedom as agency.”
We argue that in order to sustain the resource while alleviating poverty among small-scale fishers – and for common pool resource users in general, a broader idea of freedom than Hardin’s notion of “freedom in a commons” is needed
Summary
In his 1833 Oxford University lecture series, William Foster Lloyd explained poverty by using an analogy between a pastoral commons and the English labour market and between a calf and a human child where the calf is equipped with “a set of teeth and the ability to graze” and the child with “a pair of hands competent to work” (Lloyd, in Hardin and Baden 1977, 11). In both instances, unlimited access would inevitably ruin the commons – whether that is the pasture or the labour market – and create human misery. Where Hardin recommended a mechanism that would effectively close what is often the last free space of manoeuvre for deprived small-scale fishers, in Amartya Sen’s conceptualization, fisheries governance would be about providing small-scale fishers with the “entitlements” and “capabilities” they need in order to live better
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