Small-Scale Fishing and Sustainability. An Ethnographic Approach to the Case of Self-Employed Fishermen in the South-East of Spain

Gabriel López-Martínez,Víctor Meseguer-Sánchez,Klaus Schriewer

doi:10.3390/su131910542

Gabriel López-Martínez, Víctor Meseguer-Sánchez + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/su131910542

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Abstract

Small-scale fishermen, in contrast to industrial fishing boats, develop a sustainable relationship with their activity from three perspectives: social, economic, and environmental. From this hypothesis, we analyze the ethnographic material obtained in extensive fieldwork (in-depth interviews and participant observation) developed in the four main ports of the region of Murcia (Spain). From this field work the existence of two other types of fishermen (life-modes) besides small-scale fishermen is derived: small entrepreneurs and wage-earners. In different proportions, all three share the consequences of the various reforms to the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Despite the similarities, this paper shows different strategies, in each of the cases, that justify their permanence in their activity, taking into account the labor modality, as well as their relationship with the idea of sustainability. Conclusions show that because small-scale self-employed fishermen are involved much more than the two other life-modes in the totality of tasks related to their profession in that they own both the means and relations of production (simple commodity production), they are best placed to achieve social, economic, and environmental sustainability.

Highlights

In the last 20 years, European fishing communities have undergone relevant structural changes resulting from the different reforms of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), affecting small fishing stocks
Among the instruments that were proposed to solve the problems derived from the over-training of the fishing fleet, we find the implementation of the so-called Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs)
Our analysis shows that self-employed small-scale fishermen perceive their activity from that relationship of sustainability, which implies a necessary reflection on their present activity and their reproduction as a social, economic, and environmental main actor in this context

Summary

Introduction

In the last 20 years, European fishing communities have undergone relevant structural changes resulting from the different reforms of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), affecting small fishing stocks. Overfishing, excess fleet capacity, the heavy subsidies that this sector had received for years, and its economic fragility constituted the main problems that urged the need for a new reform. Among the instruments that were proposed to solve the problems derived from the over-training of the fishing fleet, we find the implementation of the so-called Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQs). With this mechanism, the European Commission interprets that what to date would have been marine common goods, would be better protected in the long term regulated by the market, becoming transferable and marketable private property [1,2,3]. Along with these ITQs, the reform offered the possibility of receiving subsidies in exchange for the scrapping of vessels, with the intention of ending a fleet that is understood to be outdated and inefficient

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