6. Rolf Willmann provided an overview of poverty-related issues in small-scale fisheries. Due to the lack of pertinent research and data, any assessment of the extent of poverty in small-scale fisheries has to remain very tentative and speculative at the current time. In terms of employment, there are an estimated 39 million fishers and fish farmers in the world, and about 117 million people involved in fisheries related activities (e.g. fish processing, marketing and distribution) giving a total of 156 million people in fishing and fishery-related employment. As many as 90 percent of these 156 million might be employed in “small-scale” activities and/or living in coastal fishing communities. Given that often more than one person in a household is engaged in fishing and fishery-related activities, a figure of some 250 million people dependent in some way on small-scale fisheries does appear as a conservative estimate. As certainly not all of them are poor, this would clearly be an upper boundary of the possible extent of poverty in small-scale fisheries. On the other hand, the figure is indicative of the possibility of fishing communities contributing a significant share of global poverty estimated at some 1.2 billion people should it prove correct that there is widespread poverty in small-scale fishing communities as is frequently stated.
7. The food dimension of fisheries is also important given that hunger continues to plague about 1 billion people globally. Globally, fish contributes about 18 percent of animal protein intake, but in many developing countries fish contributes one-third or as much as half of animal protein. Small-scale fisheries provide the majority of fish for human consumption in developing countries. In considering the food dimension, the participants stressed the fact of the high nutritional value of fish (e.g. vitamins; micronutrients) and its affordability even though real fish prices show overall an increasing trend.
8. In reference to the large body of literature on poverty issues including the 2000 World Development Report, Mr Willmann mentioned that the nature of poverty is usually associated with low income and consumption, low attainment levels in education, health and nutrition, high vulnerability, and powerlessness. Whilst there are many characteristics of poor households that are typical, there is no one established, and accepted, theory or conceptual framework that can explain the causes of poverty in all situations. However, evidence points to several interrelated and re-inforcing causes including (i) poor economic performance, (ii) weak asset base and landlessness or land-poor, (iii) political instability and conflict, (iv) poor and inadequate public service delivery, (v) income and gender inequality and (vi) erosion of traditional safety nets. Additional factors that could play a particular role in small-scale fisheries include (i) the high risk nature of fishing activities, (ii) the geographic remoteness of many communities, (iii) the frequent low socio-political status of the fishing occupation and fishing communities, (iv) unfavourable conditions for organizing (absence from home; remoteness; geographic spread), (v) insecure access to natural resources, especially fishery resources and land; and (vi) the proneness to depletion and dissipation of resource rents because of open or quasi-open access to fishery resources.
9. There were several issues to consider in the development of poverty reduction strategies in small-scale fisheries. A first question was how much more is needed to be known on the extent of poverty, the characteristics of the poor, and the causes of poverty in small-scale fisheries. While many countries have already undertaken poverty assessment studies, they usually did not specifically refer to fisheries. On the other hand, it could be assumed that many of the findings of these studies apply equally to fishing communities.
10. A second issue is whether national programmes for poverty reduction were reaching small-scale fishing communities, and if not why not, and what could be done about it. A related issue was whether fisheries-specific poverty reduction programmes should be led by fisheries departments or other ministries having a more comprehensive mandate such as rural development or economic planning.
11. In discussing these issues, participants agreed that more research would be desirable to obtain a better understanding of the extent to which the specific characteristics of small-scale fisheries contributed to higher or lower incidences of poverty than elsewhere in the economy and whether the dynamics and causes of poverty in fisheries were specifically influenced by aspects such as resource access conditions, coping and insurance mechanisms, and other factors.
