The scope of the study is vast. Some previous contributors say it is too vast and the study should be scaled back to tackle more limited problems. I would argue that the scope is appropriately comprehensive. One of the reasons for the failure in many attempts at fisheries management to date is precisely due to focusing on too limited a scope and efforts being stymied by external factors. Food security and sustainability in fisheries/aquaculture is a complex or ‘wicked’ problem and unfortunately cannot be adequately addressed by breaking it down into more digestible pieces.
The problem with a comprehensive approach is how to make the study manageable. There are a few ways this can be done. One way is to keep the broad scope but limit the study geographically. The results will not then be globally applicable, but could serve as the starting point for asking the right questions for other locations. One absolutely necessary approach is to make sure the Steering Committee and Project Team are properly multidisciplinary and able to collectively grasp and analyze the complex interrelated issues.
The Social in Fisheries
The scope document mentions at a few points that biological, economic and social factors all need to be considered (for example, Points 2 and 3), which is undoubtedly correct. But in practice it is not often well achieved in studies of sustainability. In particular the social is often not well integrated into understandings of problems or solutions. Insights from anthropology, sociology, political science, and environmental history would all help produce more effective and workable sustainable development policies but are rarely used in devising policies. On a basic level it is needed to better incorporate understandings of social, cultural and political contexts to better avoid the ‘blockages’ of lack of political will to implement policies, or social resistance against policies.
Social science researchers are well placed to let women involved with fisheries and aquaculture articulate the issues they face into the FAO study process and analyze how any changes in the sector would generate benefits or problems in terms of gender (Point 5).
Social science can contribute to understanding of issues surrounding small-scale fisheries (Point 4). One of the key issues for Pacific Island coastal fisheries is customary tenure, in that this form of property often clashes with commercial or industrial modes of production. Some pundits propose doing away with customary tenure and instituting private property regimes, but this is only likely to lead to dispossession and cultural breakdown. Approaches that appreciate the disparate worldviews coming to the table for resource management are needed to come up with creative solutions.
Disparate worldviews also arise as important not only for issues of customary tenure or Indigenous rights, but also more broadly to do with the philosophies behind regimes of natural resource management. Some biologists and economists have promoted a model based on use of market mechanisms and property rights. While there have been benefits from this model of resource management in terms of limiting catches in some fisheries, it would be a mistake to assume this model can be universally applied. Big players such as Japan explicitly reject this model of resource management, and the USA mostly does not use this kind of regime. The governance framework envisaged in the study must account for a diversity of approaches to governance, based on social science evidence-based research.
Point 2 notes that eco-system based management regimes are needed, but it has not yet been worked out how to do this kind of management in places without large government apparatus for data collection and monitoring. Social scientists working with biologists and economists looking at the available governance systems may be able to contribute to developing forms of eco-system based management feasible to implement in areas with limited government capacity.
Governance systems in themselves are complex for food security and resource management. Point 1 notes that ecolabels and traceability are important trends for the topic of the study, and these involve actors other than governments. Environmental non-governmental organizations have shifted the commercial landscape in fisheries over the last decade by exploiting the pressure point of reputational risk among seafood retailers in particular, boosting demand for ecolabeled products and other forms of avoiding bad press. Even the government actors are complex with global, regional, national and local-level government bodies all playing roles affecting food security and sustainable development in fisheries and aquaculture. Multi-organizational governance is the lens through which the various layers and types of stakeholders may be best understood. Their relative power relations as well as modes of operation are important to consider.
In this vein the value chain understanding noted in Points 4 and 9, which are important in terms of opportunities for both women and small-scale coastal fisheries, are also important for governance. The measures necessary to assure food security and sustainability from fisheries have to be effective all the way along the supply chain in globally traded commodities. National measures alone, and indeed government measures alone, are insufficient. Globalization thus offers obstacles for implementing policies for food security and sustainability, but also offers ways of working around the revenue shortages of small island states, for example.
I look forward to seeing more of this project and hope that the Steering Committee and Project Team are able to bring to fruition the ambitious aim to have a comprehensive approach to the study.
Kate Barclay
Member of the Australian Food, Society and Culture Network
Kate Barclay