Helping labourers with the right kind of capital . The MDS analysis
demonstrated a big gap in physical capital between owners and labourers. Labourers are more difficult to help than small boat owners but are the largest
group of the poor and normally the poorest. Establishing appropriate supplementary livelihoods needs to be a high priority for poverty alleviation.
8.1.6 Institutional capital The problems:
There is a culture of distrust between institutions section 4.4. Government agencies have traditionally struggled to share data and work together
in an integrated way. As a result single sector interventions have failed to tackle the multi-dimensional nature of poverty.
Many poor fishers are institutionally isolated Section 4.3.3, Table 5.6 ‘extension officer’, ‘long term support’, ‘advocacy’. They are not consulted or
involved in fisheries manage. They lack advocacy, extension or an appropriate mechanism to express their needs. They are vulnerable to injustices and nepotism.
This is especially the case for economic migrants. Institutions lack human resource problem solving capacity and a
commitment to the long term Table 5.6 ‘extension officer’, ‘advocacy and participation’, section 6.3.4 ‘institutionally’. Poverty alleviation and building
livelihood resilience is not a quick fix. Each village has its own set of opportunities and constraints and tenacity is required to overcome hurdles.
Under-resourced and under-appreciated extension officers Table 5.6 ‘extension officer’, Section 6.3.6 social field. Besides the local village leadership,
extension officers are one of the few links between governmental agencies and the poor. They have a crucial role as conduits of information to the poor, ‘journeying’
with the poor in livelihood improvement and then bringing the needs of the poor to government institutions. Yet in many cases they are poorly paid,
underappreciated and less valued than desk-based roles.
The solutions.
Better acceptance of poverty statistics between institutions and inclusion of poverty data in the MSP process.
Making sure that different government agencies are talking to one another and agree on priorities for poverty alleviation
is crucial. On many occasions community leaders argue that their needy area had been overlooked. This is precisely why the type of broad scale socio-economic
analysis outlined chapter 4 could bring prioritisation to the marine spatial planning process. Part of the marine spatial planning process identifies the
suitability and carrying capacity for various activities such as aquaculture. This component should be used in conjunction with socio-economic data in order to
prioritise the most needy areas for interventions and ensure evidence based decisions are agreed across agencies. To provide a concrete example of this,
several sheltered bays in West Sumatra are suitability for grouper farming. By combining measures of grouper suitability with poverty and fishing dependency,
areas such as Sei Beremas in Pasaman Barat emerge as strong candidates where the development of grouper farming could strengthen the livelihoods of the poor.
Extension officers recognised as the frontline in poverty alleviation. Extension officers need to be proactive, they need targets and accountability. They
need to be creative and entrepreneurial. Several of the extension officers who were interviewed as part of this research had to prioritise their own businesses to
make ends meet. They also lived too close to the people they were helping meaning they became embroiled in nepotism. Extension needs to be well
resourced. Extension officers should receive good basic salaries and incentives based on successful livelihood projects. They must have to demonstrate a set
number of visits to a community each month and they must have targets of visiting each poor household during the course of a year and they need close
supervision. The cost of regular trips to the villages needs to be factored into the budget. They need to be able to operate bureaucratically, understanding
government systems and procedures, and yet need to be practical people, able to get their hands dirty. They need to be problem solvers, looking for creative ways
to improve livelihoods and knowing who to contact when facing an obstacles, such as ducks not laying eggs. More than anything they need to be good listeners,
learning what the com munity’s needs are and working together with local leaders
to try and bring the necessary resources to improve livelihoods. Ongoing institutional commitment
. The new program G-PEMP shows an awareness that institutions have not been functioning well and a commitment to
fix this. This is to be applauded but the first years of G-PEMP have demonstrated that some of the ways of working have remained the same. Generally a visit is
made to a fishing village, something is given out, there may be a short amount of training and there is sometimes a brief follow-up visit within the same year so that
a report can be written. However, after the six months there is no ongoing monitoring and it is not known if the sewing machinefish boxfruit trees are
making a meaningful contribution to livelihoods or not. This point relates to the success measures in section 8.1.5. Institutions need to generate measures of
success that evaluate long term livelihood resilience and not just expenditure of the allocated budget. Institutions also need to face the reality that many of their
initiatives are not addressing the largest group of the poor, labourers. In the distribution of the fruit trees in GPEMP, fruit trees were distributed evenly
between the six regencies regardless of the number of fishers in those regencies. This meant some fishers received tens of fruit trees but had nowhere to plant
them. The provincial government needs to prioritise the poorest areas even if that means certain regencies, such as Pasaman Barat, receiving a higher proportion of
the aid.
8.2 Pathways out of poverty
