Making Sense of Multidimensional Injustice for Creating Viable Small-Scale Fisheries in Chilika Lagoon, Bay of Bengal

Abstract

AbstractSmall-scale fisheries are often heavily impacted in terms of realizing the principles of fairness and justice. They grapple with historical injustices and current unfair practices that significantly impair their viability. This chapter aims to bring renewed focus to the issue of justice within small-scale fisheries by using the case of Chilika Lagoon on the Bay of Bengal. Given the multifaceted nature of (in)justices and their sources within the small-scale fisheries of Chilika Lagoon, the orders of governance framework is used to coherently capture the experiences of (in)justice by focusing on distributional inequities, procedural unfairness, and irregularities related to norms, structures, and functions impacting small-scale fisheries. Based on the insights gained from the experiences of injustices in Chilika Lagoon, four distinct but interrelated areas of (in)justices are articulated: historical and ongoing, unexpected and unusual, recurring and anticipated, and economic or Blue Growth-related injustices. Questions about justice and injustice are deeply rooted in history and are inherent and systemic, but they are also actively influenced by ongoing processes, factors, and phenomena. While a holistic understanding is necessary, novel ways of understanding questions about justice and fairness are crucial for creating inclusive, just, and viable small-scale fisheries.KeywordsMultidimensional injusticeSmall-scale fisheriesViabilityBay of BengalBlue Justice