Project Description

The objective of the project is to contribute to, review and assess the development of fisheries governance frameworks and institutional arrangements in South Africa and South Asia for the resolution of core fishery conflicts, in order to reincorporate the excluded and promote responsible fisheries governance that takes into consideration the need for environmental sustainability, social justice and human wellbeing.

This comparative project is taking place against the background of world fisheries faced by resource depletion and in search of sustainable and responsible governance strategies (FAO 2008). In the South, the number of fishers is still increasing, however, and significant sections of the rural population continue to depend on fishing for a livelihood. Conflicts between large- and small-scale fishers over access and withdrawal rights (Schlager and Ostrom 1993), as well as between fishers and fisheries management agencies, prevail in many locations (Bavinck 2005, Sowman et al. 2003), and constitute a major impediment for the achievement of sustainable resource use. The project focuses on two fishing regions that have emerged from a long period of structural violence: South Africa (formal termination of Apartheid 1994) and South Asia (end civil war Sri Lanka 2009). In both instances, sustained conflict has severely impacted the small-scale capture fisheries. In South Africa it has resulted in erosion of traditional systems of fisheries governance, the marginalization of small-scale (largely black and coloured) fishers, and the domination of industrial (white) fishing fleets. The civil war in Sri Lanka, on the other hand, has repeatedly displaced the Tamil and Muslim fishing population of the island and severely restricted their fishing activities. In the meantime, the vacuum thus created along the Palk Bay has been filled by trawler fleets from South India. In both the South African and the South Asian case, these small-scale fisher groups have been seeking to redress inequalities and obtain a fair share of fishing rights. The project commences on the assumption that a sustainable fishery – taken in both an ecological and a social-economic sense – depends on the realization of new governance frameworks that involve various stakeholders in decision-making and address issues of equity and socio-economic development. With important actors located at different scale levels (from local, to national, to supranational), the Consortium engages with cross-level and multi-actor stakeholder influences. The Consortium expects to make a major contribution to knowledge generation, research and innovation, and capacity building, first of all through the sharing of existing knowledge between stakeholders at various societal levels, between research locations, and between these locations and other relevant settings (through literature reviews, and project dissemination activities). In addition, the project seeks to signal and partially address certain knowledge gaps that are deemed relevant for the policy development process in South Africa and South Asia, such as with regard to socio-economics and governance arrangements. The Consortium also strives to strengthen the capacities and skills of organizations, groups and individuals at different levels, by involving them in knowledge generation, policy-development and -monitoring processes. In this regard, the project serves to create opportunities for master's students and team members to develop knowledge and experience on conflict mitigation and natural resource management. At an academic level, the project is rooted in the debate on legal pluralism and governance (Jentoft et al. 2009; Bavinck 2001) of natural resource use. From this perspective (Wiber and Spiertz 1996), fisheries conflicts are not about interests alone: they reflect differing perceptions and orientations, revolving around varying authorities and legal systems (Pospisil 1971; Benda-Beckmann 2002; Bavinck and Woodman 2009). The process of conflict resolution therefore implies the need to develop a common governance framework between parties who have previously occupied different 'semi-autonomous social fields' (Moore 1978). Governance is in this context defined as "the whole of public as well as private interactions taken to solve societal problems and create societal opportunities" (Kooiman and Bavinck 2005). In line with academic convention (Kjaer 2004), this perspective acknowledges the contribution of civil society and market actors to governance practice, in addition to government. It includes the formulation and application of principles guiding interactions and care for institutions that enable them. The team defines a governance framework as the set of institutional arrangements that apply to a given activity – such as fisheries - and/or territorial unit. This set of arrangements may be more, or less coherent and responsive to the conflicts generated by opposing wellbeing perspectives (Deneulin and McGregor, forthcoming). It is in any case dynamic and susceptible to new governance initiatives. The project also contributes to academic and policy debates on participatory decision-making (Fung and Wright, 2003, Mascarenhas and Scarce, 2004). By closely monitoring and reflecting upon the 'bottom up' process of constructing governance frameworks in two settings, the team expects to realize new conceptual and methodological insights. As the conflicts in South Africa and South Asia have ramifications at various societal levels and possess a strong dynamic, the academic investigation will likewise be multi-level and consider the process of change over time. The project will adapt and apply recently developed tools on social wellbeing (Gough and McGregor 2007), to ascertain some of the impacts of fisheries conflict and governance failures on fisher wellbeing within the two sites. The ways in which gender, race and caste mediate fisher well being and implications for governance will also be addressed.

The project concentrates on South Africa and South Asia respectively. Whereas in Sri Lanka and India a conflict resolution framework is still very much in development, South Africa began the process of inaugurating a new small-scale fisheries policy in 2010. The project is therefore two-pronged, emphasizing the processes of conflict resolution, negotiation and institution-building in Sri Lanka and India, and the processes of conflict resolution, negotation, policy development and implementation in South Africa. The diversities existing in and between the fisheries of both regions, as well as in their governance arrangements, are taken as a source of inspiration for governance frameworks that could work in different contexts. The South African group will learn from the bottom-up institution-building process in South Asia. The South Asian group benefits on the other hand from South Africa's experience in policy development, conflict resolution and negotiation as well as implementation and monitoring.

References

Bavinck, M. and G.R. Woodman (2009). Can there by maps of law? In: Benda-Beckmann, F. von, Benda-Beckmann, K. von, and A. Griffiths (eds.), Spatialising law: an anthropological geography of law in society, pp 195-218. Ashgate Publishers.

Bavinck, M. and K. Karunaharan 2006. Legal pluralism in the marine fisheries of Ramnad District, Tamil Nadu,India. IDPAD Working Paper Nr 2, 84 pp.

Bavinck, M. 2003. The spatially splintered state: myths and realities in the regulation of marine fisheries in Tamil Nadu, India. Development and Change, 34 (4) 633-657.

Carvalho A R, Williams S, January M and M Sowman. 2009. Reliability of Community Based Data Monitoring in the Olifants River Estuary, South Africa. Fisheries Research. 96:119-128.

Kooiman, J. and M. Bavinck 2005. The governance perspective. In: Kooiman, J., M. Bavinck, S. Jentoft and R. Pullin (eds.) Fish for Life: interactive governance for fisheries. Amsterdam: AUP.

Deneulin S, McGregor JA (forthcoming). The capability approach and the politics of a social conception of wellbeing, European Journal of Social Theory.

Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), 2008. The state of world fisheries and aquaculture. Rome: FAO

Fung, A. and E.O.Wright, 2003. Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London and New York: Verso. 310 pp.

Gough, I. and A. McGregor 2007. Wellbeing in developing countries: from theory to research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Hauck, M. 2008. ‘Rethinking small-scale fisheries compliance’. Marine Policy 32:635-642.

Isaacs M. 2006. Small-scale fisheries reforms: expectations, hopes and dreams for “a better life for all”. Marine Policy 30:51-59

Kjaer, A.M. 2004. Governance. Polity press, Cambridge, 240 pp

Kurien, J. 1978. Entry of big business into fishing, its impact on fish economy, Economic and Political Weekly, 13 (36): 1557-65.

Mascarenhas, M. and R. Scarce, “The intention was good”: legitimacy, consensus-based decision-making, and the case of forest planning in British Columbia, Canada, Society and Natural Resources 17 (2004), pp. 17–38

Moore, S.F. 1978. ‘Law and Social Change: the Semi-autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study’; in S.F. Moore, Law as Process: an Anthropological Approach, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 54–81. [Reprinted from (1973) Law & Society Review 7:719–46.

Nielsen, J.R. and M. Hara. 2006. Transformation of South African industrial fisheries. Marine Policy 30(1):43-50.

Pospisil, L. 1971. Anthropology of Law. A Comparative Theory, New York: Harper and Row. Schlager and Ostrom 1993

Sathyapalan, J., J.T. Srinivasan, and J. Scholtens 2008. Maintaining a viable small scale fishery. A case study of trawler sector in the Palk Bay. CESS Monograph 5, Hyderabad: Centre for Economic and Social Studies.

Schlager, E. and E. Ostrom 1993. Property rights regimes and coastal fisheries: an empirical analysis. In:

Anderson, T.L. and R.T. Simmons (eds), The political economy of customs and culture: informal solutions to the commons problem, 13-41. Lanham (MD): Rowman and Littlefield

Spiertz, J. and Wiber, M.G. (eds) 1996. The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management, VUGA Uitgeverij:‘s- Gravenhage

Suryanarayan, V. 2005. Conflict over fisheries in the Palk Bay Region, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers & Distributors.

Suryanarayan, V. 2009. Contested Territories or Common Heritage. Chennai: Centre for Security Analysis.

Vijayan, A.J. (1999). An overview of the marine fisheries and fishers in and around Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu. Draft report, Trivandrum.

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Home REINCORPFISH Project Description Participants News & Announcements Photo Galleries	Project Description The objective of the project is to contribute to, review and assess the development of fisheries governance frameworks and institutional arrangements in South Africa and South Asia for the resolution of core fishery conflicts, in order to reincorporate the excluded and promote responsible fisheries governance that takes into consideration the need for environmental sustainability, social justice and human wellbeing. Project Outline South Africa South Asia This comparative project is taking place against the background of world fisheries faced by resource depletion and in search of sustainable and responsible governance strategies (FAO 2008). In the South, the number of fishers is still increasing, however, and significant sections of the rural population continue to depend on fishing for a livelihood. Conflicts between large- and small-scale fishers over access and withdrawal rights (Schlager and Ostrom 1993), as well as between fishers and fisheries management agencies, prevail in many locations (Bavinck 2005, Sowman et al. 2003), and constitute a major impediment for the achievement of sustainable resource use. The project focuses on two fishing regions that have emerged from a long period of structural violence: South Africa (formal termination of Apartheid 1994) and South Asia (end civil war Sri Lanka 2009). In both instances, sustained conflict has severely impacted the small-scale capture fisheries. In South Africa it has resulted in erosion of traditional systems of fisheries governance, the marginalization of small-scale (largely black and coloured) fishers, and the domination of industrial (white) fishing fleets. The civil war in Sri Lanka, on the other hand, has repeatedly displaced the Tamil and Muslim fishing population of the island and severely restricted their fishing activities. In the meantime, the vacuum thus created along the Palk Bay has been filled by trawler fleets from South India. In both the South African and the South Asian case, these small-scale fisher groups have been seeking to redress inequalities and obtain a fair share of fishing rights. The project commences on the assumption that a sustainable fishery – taken in both an ecological and a social-economic sense – depends on the realization of new governance frameworks that involve various stakeholders in decision-making and address issues of equity and socio-economic development. With important actors located at different scale levels (from local, to national, to supranational), the Consortium engages with cross-level and multi-actor stakeholder influences. The Consortium expects to make a major contribution to knowledge generation, research and innovation, and capacity building, first of all through the sharing of existing knowledge between stakeholders at various societal levels, between research locations, and between these locations and other relevant settings (through literature reviews, and project dissemination activities). In addition, the project seeks to signal and partially address certain knowledge gaps that are deemed relevant for the policy development process in South Africa and South Asia, such as with regard to socio-economics and governance arrangements. The Consortium also strives to strengthen the capacities and skills of organizations, groups and individuals at different levels, by involving them in knowledge generation, policy-development and -monitoring processes. In this regard, the project serves to create opportunities for master's students and team members to develop knowledge and experience on conflict mitigation and natural resource management. At an academic level, the project is rooted in the debate on legal pluralism and governance (Jentoft et al. 2009; Bavinck 2001) of natural resource use. From this perspective (Wiber and Spiertz 1996), fisheries conflicts are not about interests alone: they reflect differing perceptions and orientations, revolving around varying authorities and legal systems (Pospisil 1971; Benda-Beckmann 2002; Bavinck and Woodman 2009). The process of conflict resolution therefore implies the need to develop a common governance framework between parties who have previously occupied different 'semi-autonomous social fields' (Moore 1978). Governance is in this context defined as "the whole of public as well as private interactions taken to solve societal problems and create societal opportunities" (Kooiman and Bavinck 2005). In line with academic convention (Kjaer 2004), this perspective acknowledges the contribution of civil society and market actors to governance practice, in addition to government. It includes the formulation and application of principles guiding interactions and care for institutions that enable them. The team defines a governance framework as the set of institutional arrangements that apply to a given activity – such as fisheries - and/or territorial unit. This set of arrangements may be more, or less coherent and responsive to the conflicts generated by opposing wellbeing perspectives (Deneulin and McGregor, forthcoming). It is in any case dynamic and susceptible to new governance initiatives. The project also contributes to academic and policy debates on participatory decision-making (Fung and Wright, 2003, Mascarenhas and Scarce, 2004). By closely monitoring and reflecting upon the 'bottom up' process of constructing governance frameworks in two settings, the team expects to realize new conceptual and methodological insights. As the conflicts in South Africa and South Asia have ramifications at various societal levels and possess a strong dynamic, the academic investigation will likewise be multi-level and consider the process of change over time. The project will adapt and apply recently developed tools on social wellbeing (Gough and McGregor 2007), to ascertain some of the impacts of fisheries conflict and governance failures on fisher wellbeing within the two sites. The ways in which gender, race and caste mediate fisher well being and implications for governance will also be addressed. The project concentrates on South Africa and South Asia respectively. Whereas in Sri Lanka and India a conflict resolution framework is still very much in development, South Africa began the process of inaugurating a new small-scale fisheries policy in 2010. The project is therefore two-pronged, emphasizing the processes of conflict resolution, negotiation and institution-building in Sri Lanka and India, and the processes of conflict resolution, negotation, policy development and implementation in South Africa. The diversities existing in and between the fisheries of both regions, as well as in their governance arrangements, are taken as a source of inspiration for governance frameworks that could work in different contexts. The South African group will learn from the bottom-up institution-building process in South Asia. The South Asian group benefits on the other hand from South Africa's experience in policy development, conflict resolution and negotiation as well as implementation and monitoring. References Bavinck, M. and G.R. Woodman (2009). Can there by maps of law? In: Benda-Beckmann, F. von, Benda-Beckmann, K. von, and A. Griffiths (eds.), Spatialising law: an anthropological geography of law in society, pp 195-218. Ashgate Publishers. Bavinck, M. and K. Karunaharan 2006. Legal pluralism in the marine fisheries of Ramnad District, Tamil Nadu,India. IDPAD Working Paper Nr 2, 84 pp. Bavinck, M. 2003. The spatially splintered state: myths and realities in the regulation of marine fisheries in Tamil Nadu, India. Development and Change, 34 (4) 633-657. Carvalho A R, Williams S, January M and M Sowman. 2009. Reliability of Community Based Data Monitoring in the Olifants River Estuary, South Africa. Fisheries Research. 96:119-128. Kooiman, J. and M. Bavinck 2005. The governance perspective. In: Kooiman, J., M. Bavinck, S. Jentoft and R. Pullin (eds.) Fish for Life: interactive governance for fisheries. Amsterdam: AUP. Deneulin S, McGregor JA (forthcoming). The capability approach and the politics of a social conception of wellbeing, European Journal of Social Theory. Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO), 2008. The state of world fisheries and aquaculture. Rome: FAO Fung, A. and E.O.Wright, 2003. Deepening Democracy: Institutional Innovations in Empowered Participatory Governance. London and New York: Verso. 310 pp. Gough, I. and A. McGregor 2007. Wellbeing in developing countries: from theory to research. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hauck, M. 2008. ‘Rethinking small-scale fisheries compliance’. Marine Policy 32:635-642. Isaacs M. 2006. Small-scale fisheries reforms: expectations, hopes and dreams for “a better life for all”. Marine Policy 30:51-59 Kjaer, A.M. 2004. Governance. Polity press, Cambridge, 240 pp Kurien, J. 1978. Entry of big business into fishing, its impact on fish economy, Economic and Political Weekly, 13 (36): 1557-65. Mascarenhas, M. and R. Scarce, “The intention was good”: legitimacy, consensus-based decision-making, and the case of forest planning in British Columbia, Canada, Society and Natural Resources 17 (2004), pp. 17–38 Moore, S.F. 1978. ‘Law and Social Change: the Semi-autonomous Social Field as an Appropriate Subject of Study’; in S.F. Moore, Law as Process: an Anthropological Approach, London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, pp. 54–81. [Reprinted from (1973) Law & Society Review 7:719–46. Nielsen, J.R. and M. Hara. 2006. Transformation of South African industrial fisheries. Marine Policy 30(1):43-50. Pospisil, L. 1971. Anthropology of Law. A Comparative Theory, New York: Harper and Row. Schlager and Ostrom 1993 Sathyapalan, J., J.T. Srinivasan, and J. Scholtens 2008. Maintaining a viable small scale fishery. A case study of trawler sector in the Palk Bay. CESS Monograph 5, Hyderabad: Centre for Economic and Social Studies. Schlager, E. and E. Ostrom 1993. Property rights regimes and coastal fisheries: an empirical analysis. In: Anderson, T.L. and R.T. Simmons (eds), The political economy of customs and culture: informal solutions to the commons problem, 13-41. Lanham (MD): Rowman and Littlefield Spiertz, J. and Wiber, M.G. (eds) 1996. The Role of Law in Natural Resource Management, VUGA Uitgeverij:‘s- Gravenhage Suryanarayan, V. 2005. Conflict over fisheries in the Palk Bay Region, New Delhi: Lancer Publishers & Distributors. Suryanarayan, V. 2009. Contested Territories or Common Heritage. Chennai: Centre for Security Analysis. Vijayan, A.J. (1999). An overview of the marine fisheries and fishers in and around Rameshwaram, Tamil Nadu. Draft report, Trivandrum.	Centre for Maritime Research Plantage Muidergracht 14-16 NL-1018 TV Amsterdam Phone: +31 20 5254185 Fax: +31 20 5254051 Contact Form