Strategies and Policies Supporting Small-Scale Fishers’ Access and Conservation Rights in a Neoliberal World

Abstract

Around the globe, small-scale fishers are systematically excluded from access to fish or the benefits of fishing, yet in many cases they persist. This chapter considers key strategies used by small-scale fishers’ organizations, as well as some national or sub-national governments which support them, to maintain their access in the neoliberalizing world whose ideology runs contrary to their own. Equally important are their conservation rights and their rights to the benefits of fishing, such as fair prices for fish or fishing licenses. Strategies include local small-scale fishers forming organizations which buy up or are allocated pre-existing privatized fishing quotas and then leasing them out to members at affordable prices; governments leasing out quotas annually; governments prohibiting license transfer via the market or limiting licenses to local, owner-operated fishers; communities making government protect local habitat from large-scale overfishing or habitat-destroying developments; fishers’ organizations bypassing fish processors to get fair prices; and greater government oversight of socially destructive neoliberal practices. These strategies and policies illustrate the need for governance informed by interdisciplinary thinking beyond the narrow perspective of neoliberal economics – thinking which considers equitable distribution, legitimacy, the importance of livelihoods, the health of local ecosystems, and many socio-economic, cultural, and ecological issues.