The unsatisfactory condition of global fishery resources and the challenges governments face in reversing this tendency are hotly debated topics among resource management groups. Eighty percent of the world’s fisheries are at risk due to overfishing, and of these fisheries, 52% of them are completely exploited.
This situation, if unresolved, could lead to disastrous consequences for a large percentage of the human population. Depleted fisheries could set in motion a global food crisis—which would mostly affect people and countries with fewer economic resources. Moreover, the fishery industry supports the livelihood of over one tenth of the world’s population.
To tackle this issue, some countries have implemented public policies that aim for more sustainable harvesting of fisheries resources. However, in this process, the voice of the fishermen has not always been heard, and most of them don’t feel any ownership over the potential solutions. Therefore, despite these public policy efforts, only 1% of the world’s fisheries seem to be recovering from over-exploitation.
Is it possible to reverse the trend of overexploitation?
Fundación Lonxanet para la Pesca Sostenible, a small Spanish civilian organization that has been supporting fishermen for more than twelve years, believes it can be done through projects on the local level, but only if the fishermen themselves are called upon as experts who can help identify solutions to reshape industry norms.
In 2003, Fundación Lonxanet started to work alongside fishermen in a coastal community in Galicia (Spain). The fishermen of this community have defined the future that they wish to build, and they have begun to realize this future through the creation of Marine Reserves (protected coastal areas) and critical collaborations with local government. Together, they have created a Fishery Resource Management Plan, a model that promotes dialogue and distributes the responsibility between fishermen and the government. It also promotes co-responsibility; it has improved the fishery sector’s compliance with and acceptance of the laws, since the fishermen themselves are the ones who propose the solutions. As a result, the number of sanctions to fishermen has significantly decreased, and the evaluation of fishery resources has substantially improved, due to better cooperation between the fishery sector and the scientists who collect data.
Fundación Lonxanet’s experience proves that an increase in the control and surveillance systems—along with a corresponding increase in public spending—does not resolve the problem of overfishing, unless we include the fishermen in the core of the solution.
The creation of bridges and links between both groups helps promote co-responsibility and co-creation of solutions, because together the groups can form institutions of collective action. In a global context, in which the divide between the public sector and civil society is so large, it is urgently important for cross-sector collaboration to take place in order to reverse the situation.
But this example has implications far beyond the fisheries sector; for myriad social and environmental problems, generating trust across groups is essential for building solutions.
Antonio García Allut is a professor at the University of Coruña (Spain), the president of Fundación Loxanet Para la Pesca Sostenible, and an Ashoka Fellow.