Understanding fisheries conflicts in the southa legal pluralist perspective (original) (raw)
Related papers
2010
This version woefully remains a work in progress. I had hoped that the information presented here would be supplemented with detailed analyses. Unfortunately, time and poor health have impeded my work. Regardless, I have decided to make the information in the report available for a number of reasons. The context is rapidly changing in East Godavari. It may be useful for other researchers to have some comparative information. The website for IDPAD no longer exists which means that the original report is no longer available. My main objective is to give a voice the fishers' problems, as they see them.
Fisheries Co-Management and Legal Pluralism: How an Analytical Problem Becomes an Institutional One
Human Organization, 2009
This paper addresses two issues pertaining to legal pluralism in capture fisheries, particularly with regard to the South. First there is the problem of analysis. If legal pluralism is a common phenomenon, how is it to be discerned and understood? Secondly, there is the matter of institutional design: given the pervasiveness of legal pluralism, which management institutions are better suited to represent and resolve inter-legal system differences? The authors argue the case of co-management.
A B S T R A C T When customary legal systems exist alongside state regulations, individuals can choose between these different frameworks to support their claims to resources. Research suggests that such framework switching to maximize self-interest weakens and challenges resource management. Multiple legal systems are at work in India's fisheries and this study examines how they work to govern conflict over purse-seine fishing in the Sindhudurg district of Maharashtra State. Through participant observations, interviews and state fishing law reviews, this study finds evidence of strong customary legal systems, operating through local cultural practices, to protect common property rights, equitable access, ethical and ecological concerns. In contrast, state legislation appears weak because it addresses issues of local concern, such as equitable access, at a slow pace and over such a large scale as to be absent. Consequently, multiple legal systems in these fisheries do not create a management challenge that follows a predictable path towards resource degradation. Instead informal, customary rules applied alongside formal state legislation interact in complex ways that create opportunities for effective co-management.
An Overview of Fisheries Conflicts in South and Southeast Asia: Challenges and Directions
Conflicts are broadly defined as a situation of non-cooperation between parties with contradicting objectives. Nowadays, conflicts on such issues as ownership of properties and struggle for economic gains and opportunities are common in communities. These types of conflicts, however, should be distinguished from divergent ideologies and interests that pose a threat to national security—the source of which could be both internal and external. Conflicts and security issues have now become major concerns of governments and civil societies around the globe. The fisheries sector is not spared from conflicts and security threats arising from escalating scarcity of resources and competition for declining opportunities in this sector. In South and Southeast Asia, where fisheries are a source of food and livelihood for majority of its population, conflicts in fisheries are often viewed in the context of allocation or access rights to limited resources. However, conflicts are often far more c...
Journal of Legal Pluralism, 2019
The Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) introduce a human rights framework for fisheries management and development, suggesting an inclusive approach that embraces a range of rights, regimes and interests. These reflect diverse systems of law, values and norms, straddling both customary and statutory systems of governance and tenure. The interface between these different systems poses questions about the extent to which they are reconcilable with a human rights-based approach. The latter originates in the domain of transnational law, which has been increasing in scope and importance in recent decades. How transnational law interacts with and affects various law systems is an empirical question, to which much scholarly attention has gone. The normative question that emerges, however, is how to balance the recognition of universal human rights with respect for historically-evolved and locally legitimate, customary law in case of conflicts between them. This paper investigates some of the tensions and opportunities that arise in the meeting of the SSF Guidelines and customary sociolegal systems, paying special attention to four important fields of overlap and possibly contention: tenure, gender, child labour and markets. Co-management platforms are suggested to be the ideal meeting ground for negotiating acceptable hybrids and designing so-called interlegalities.
Exploring regional solutions to fishermen disputes in South Asia
2017
Indian and Sri Lankan fishermen are often in the news having been arrested for crossing maritime borders. Niroshika Liyana Muhandiram and Mohit Gupta write that this is not a bilateral issue but a regional one, and outline how fora such as SAARC and BIMSTEC could assist in coming up with long term solutions to fishing-related conflicts.
Fish fights over fish rights: non-traditional security issues in fisheries in Southeast Asia
2005
This paper presents the results of ‘Fish Fights over Fish Rights” project which evaluated conflicts related to overcapacity in the fisheries and those that may pose threats to food, livelihood and environmental security in Southeast Asia (SEA). The case studies of fishing communities and the series of national multi-stakeholder workshops in Cambodia, the Philippines and Thailand; and the regional consolidation workshop altogether present a range of resource conditions, institutions, conflict situations and potential security issues both at the national and regional levels. The study characterized the conflicts in fisheries on the biological, social and economic context; and conflicts were analyzed according to their typology. One of the key conflicts in all three countries is about fishing operations that violate rules on use of different gears, and scales and zones of operations. By groups, conflicts are rampant between largeand small-scale fishers as they compete for access in con...
Marine Fisheries: Environmental and Natural Resources Law in India
The Oxford Handbook of Environmental and Natural Resources Law in India, 2024
India’s marine fisheries laws are challenged by complex and dynamic fishers, fishing practices and the marine environment. The country has done well to simultaneously oversee different spaces at the state and national levels, but research on the ground demonstrates that further legal stratification is needed. Laws in India which concern the oceans are oriented towards capitalists furthering the economic growth of the country, while small-scale fishers who are the majority users of the oceans, function as communities interested in their livelihoods and ecological sustainability. These deep disconnects have given rise to communities taking to forming informal legal institutions at the village level, which address their concerns and make sense to them. India’s legal machinery requires a considerable shift to promote the concerns of its fishing citizens, and meet global concerns about climate change, ecological sustainability and providing livelihoods to those living in poverty.
Indo – Lanka Fishery Issues: Traditional and Human Security Implications
2015
The International Maritime Boundary Line (IMBL) demarcates and designates the waters between India and Sri Lanka. Even though, both countries ratified bilateral agreements governed by United Nations Convention on the Law of Sea (UNCLOS) in 1974 and 1976 yet conflicting situations regarding fishery concerns have been persistent, causing traditional and human security implications. This situation has coloured relations between the two states. From a traditional security perspective crossing of IMBL leads to security implications on citizens, border, territorial, and sovereignty and human security implications like food, livelihood, environment and economy. This study examines the geostrategic relationship of the two states concerning the Indian Ocean, and the fishery problem. Security is an approach to understanding relations between states. While Traditional security views state as the single actor to ensure survival internationally, Human security is a new concept. Research objectiv...