Poverty in Small-scale Fisheries: A Review and Some Further Thoughts

Abstract

Since the middle of the 1990s, poverty alleviation seems to have become the new priority agenda of international development organisations. The United Nations declared 1997–2006 as the “first UN decade for the eradication of poverty” and both the 1997 White Paper on International Development by DFID and the 2000 World Development Report by the World Bank recognise poverty elimination as the “world’s greatest challenge”. UN-agencies (UNICEP, UNDP, etc.) but also other international development organisations and institutions (ILO, WTO, etc.) are now taking concerted action to try to achieve the target proposed by the Development Assistance Committee of the OECD, namely to reduce by half by 2015 the proportion of people living in extreme poverty1. Even the IMF’s general orientation seems to have been influenced by this ‘new’ poverty agenda. The IMF’s facility for poor countries (formally known as the Enhanced Structural Adjustment Facility) has now been renamed the ‘Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility’ and the Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper (PRSP) initiative has replaced the Policy Framework Paper as the overarching document which outlines the IMF’s policy directions and resource allocation framework.