2 LITERATURE REVIEW 2.1 Poverty and Small-scale Fisheries
2.1.1 Causes of Poverty
Globally, small scale fisheries “can generate significant profits, prove resilient to shocks and crises, and make meaningful contributions to food security
and poverty alleviation” FAO, 2003. But the question of why fishing communities are poor and how best to manage these fisheries continues to be
debated. Béné’s 2003 review of the relationship between poverty and small- scale fisheries identifies two contrasting paradigms on the causes of poverty.
Firstly, there is the endemic poverty paradigm that “they are poor because they are fishers” and whatever they do they will continue to remain poor. Within this
school of thought there are two main theories in the literature concerning the roots of endemic poverty. The first is the endogenous origin theory Copes, 1989 based
on the premise that fisheries are an open access and common pool resource. Originating from Gordon 1954 and Hardin 1968 the logic of this argument is
that an open access, common pool resource allows more people to enter the fishery, leading to overexploitation and eventually impoverishment of the fishing
community. The second theory, the exogenous origin of poverty argument, is that the causes of poverty originate in the weakness of the wider economy coupled
with the mobility of labour. Cunningham 1993 showed that a short-term economic surplus in the fishery provides an incentive for labour to move from
lower paid jobs in other economic sectors into the fishery. This resulted in a wage equilibrium over the long term between fisheries incomes and that of the wider
economy. The other paradigm in the literature is that small-scale fisheries, as an open access resource, offer a last resort for the landless poor. The poor are
attracted to become fishers and “they are fishers because they are poor”. Béné 2003 argues that these theories have become received wisdom and are actually
two sides of the same coin that equates fisheries with poverty. While explicitly recognising that biological overexploitation, the wider economy and mobility of
lab our are crucial factors that contribute to poverty he argues that “poverty is a
complex phenomenon which encompasses, alongside low income, other concepts such as illness and lack of education, social exclusion, entitlement failure,
vulnerability to shocks and political powerlessness”. He uses the example of
Bangladesh where a successful introduction of fingerlings increased the wild stock. But the poor stayed poor because their access was limited by socio-
institutional mechanisms of economic exclusion and class exploitation. Indeed, for fishers themselves, concern about the sustainability of the natural resource
may rank far below other ‘basic’ concerns such as food insecurity and disease Mills et al.,
2009, Roy, 1993. Béné’s 2003 review is a call to investigate the problem of poverty in fishing communities from a multi-sectoral and multi-
dimensional perspective that is wider than bio-economics alone.
2.1.2 Wealth and Welfare Approaches to Fisheries Management