Power Dynamics and Community Failure in the Small-Scale Fisheries Sector in Cyprus

Abstract

Despite being an island state, fisheries have never been a major contributor to GDP in Cyprus. In social and economic terms, however, the island’s extensive coastline is indicative of the importance of fishing for (but not confined to) coastal communities. Cyprus has been a member of the European Union (EU) since 2004 and hence has had to comply with the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy and specifically with the Mediterranean Regulation. Fisheries resources suffer, in spite of a number of regulatory measures being in place, due to (i) overexploitation caused by the activities of the professional, recreational and illegal fishers and also weak enforcement of existing regulations, and (ii) ecosystem shifts due to factors such as climate change and the mushrooming of invasive species. Using the Interactive Governance Approach to supplement author’s empirical data from different studies, this chapter aims to understand the governability (quality of governance) of the Cypriot small-scale fisheries sector and the failure of the fisheries management system to sustain fish stocks and more generally secure the small-scale fisheries sector. Given that in Cyprus fisheries are under a hierarchical mode of governance, failure to govern should as a first step be analyzed in terms of how power is exercised in the interaction between the state and its citizens, or at least the relevant user groups. Power may both enhance and distort governability, depending on who administers it and how it is used. The chapter concludes that existing power relations, interactions and struggles among different stakeholders partly lie at the root of the problem, but that problems are further exacerbated by an economic system which focuses on individual utility-maximization on the one hand and authorities, with a ‘Divide and Conquer’ approach on the other hand. New institutions need to be created and policies improved in order to strengthen civil society institutions at the community level. It is also important that fishing communities are involved in discussions and empowered so that they acknowledge their role and envision the way towards governable fisheries.