South Africa\'s Fishing Policy and Its Coastal Communities

¶ … South African Fisheries and the Approaches Needed to Solve Them.

The purpose of this paper is to show a current South African issue about policy problems and the official or department that does something about it. This work then produces the necessary research - a memo about policy - to that official about the problems present and the efforts required to resolve them.

The start of the democratic process in South Africa in the year 1994 sparked a law reformation process that aimed to resolve problems in the past and provide a platform to disadvantaged communities. This process was led by the South African Constitution (1996) which was supported by a number of human rights ideals present in the Bill of Rights (Witbooi, 2006). The undermining of fishermen on the South African coastline was due to their organized exclusion from the marine communities following many years of industrialization, racism and the growing privatization of marine assets by the use of policy instruments like quotas. The ANC government was tasked with the problem of changing an industry which was primarily controlled by a few numbers of white-owned firms. This action happened in a complicated policy surrounding that also included regulating South Africa's integration into the world economy and taking on neo-liberal policies of economics as well as the social policies of the Reconstruction and Development Program (RDP).

People of the low-income fishing homes had held great hopes for the new government that it would fulfill its earlier declarations of increasing the standard of the penniless communities on the coast by helping them with the path to marine assets (African National Congress, 1994). Moreover, a position document created by the ANC says that "For the sake of all South Africans and especially those whose lives depend on the sea, marine resources must be handled carefully… The government should also help the people who use these assets" (African National Congress, 1994). So people expected the fishing assets to help in reducing poverty and create employment as well as giving more rights and resources to the low income fishing areas.

Although there being a liberal constitution that focuses on protecting and respecting a series of social, economic and environmental rights and recognizing "living customary law" (African National Congress, 1994), the conventional small-scale fishing sector in the country of South Africa is still undermined. The use of assets, access to them and the bodies for the management of fisheries remain centrally controlled and commercial businesses are favored due to a doctrine that focuses on the market (Sunde et al., 2003). Reforms in various policies from 1998 to 2006 improved the procedure of accessing marine assets for blacks and that handful of advantaged members who had been left out in the past by shareholder places and combined enterprise. Even then, these changes were thought to be just superficial and to make an impression only but not aimed to actually giving back the fishing rights to the coastal people in South Africa or help them with any of their social or economic requirements (Nielsen and Hara, 2006). Particularly, communities belonging in the Eastern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal were excluded very much because they were geographically remote and depended mostly on subsistence fishing.

Current Situation

An argument which has been quoted many times in traditional fisheries writings is marine resources will be destroyed if access is left completely open to all (Hardin, 1968). The idea behind this notion is that if limits and entry barriers are not set, it will lead to the exploitation of the assets, reduce the variation in them, destroy their ecosystem and completely finish the amount of resources present. Some other arguments include the fact that low income and undermined societies will consume the resources to the point that it would be difficult to recover them because of the difficult situations they would be in which would in turn lead to the further ruin of their living standards and diminish the resources (Pauly, 1997; Cunningham et al., 2009). If adopting this viewpoint, an approach which is focused on rights and produces barriers to optimize economical returns, is believed to be workable and sustainable (Garcia, 2005). This way has been used through a series of management systems which were all based upon the ideas of an efficient economy which contains rights for the private user as a main way for the policy to run.

Recently though, this approach has been criticized for not correcting the main policy issues like how to make sure that the revenue generated from fishery rents gives way to the growth of the economy and the welfare system (Olson, 2012). Those who favor this wealth-focused approach however argue that a crucial role of the fisheries is to catch the oceanic and marine wealth and convert it into a catalyst to transform and accelerate economic progress and end poverty by multiplying the wealth generated and redistributing it to different sectors (World Bank/FAO, 2009).

The wealth-focused approach to run fisheries is based on the idea of 'rent'. If we take it into accord, it says that the existing rights-focused approach is only an incomplete solution to the collapse of wealth in the fishing industry. The authors say that the rights have to be specified without any confusion and have to be backed by the particular institutions including legal and fiscal and others that give protection to the operation. A wealth focused approach needs a framework that focuses all areas of the management of fisheries to increasing the wealth provided by rent - it contains "the legal system; the economic measures; the management systems (including the hierarchy and nature of these management departments); the way of the organizational machinery and tools; identifiers; support of research; the management of communicational ideas and the workings in the research and the management sector; the layout of marine information machinery and so on" (Cunningham et al., 2009).

This wealth focused approach to administration is being furthered in Africa with the efforts of the World Bank and the regional fishing governing partners, the New Partnership for Africa's Development (NEPAD) and the African Union. Advocates of the system say that it will increase the growth of the economy and give benefits to the society by creating unemployment, helping with the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), adding value and developing the living standards of the low income people. They also endorse it by arguing that it promotes the contributions of those small fisheries in decreasing poverty and by making the process of the value chain more efficient. This proposition would also serve as a catalyst for the formation of small and mid-scale businesses, in reality though these opportunities are fulfilled by the local advantaged and elite population and in the open market; it necessitates competition vs. The larger businesses. This does not usually help the lower income strata of the communities (Bene et al., 2010; Isaacs, 2011).

Problems

Both the approaches focused on rights and wealth are targeted on the market and are used by most of the fishing industry North. South Africa however has taken on the system based on rights since 1994, keeping itself aligned with the policies of a macro economical neoliberal ideas (Crosoer et al., 2006; Sittert et al., 2006), and in collaboration with the NEPAD and the AU is focusing more on the wealth focused approach. But even with their fame and widespread usability, the market-targeted idea of the rights and wealth focused approaches has been criticized by fishermen, NGOs, resource organizers and also development agencies.

They discuss that marginal benefits are given to poor income communities and are skeptical of the proposal that poverty equals resource overexploitation. They put forward the idea that the industries, and those which use non-environmental friendly tools as well as ignoring the small scale enterprises will contribute equally to the over-consumption and exploitation of the marine assets present in the world (ICSF, 2009 and 2012). Other than that, they say that while the diminishing returns exacerbate poverty, there are other reasons as well including low level infrastructure, inadequate health and educational facilities, diminishing opportunities to make decisions and reduced political organization is contributing even more to increasing poverty in the fishing societies. They propose an approach based on human rights to administer the fisheries, putting forward the idea that creating fisheries that are able to sustain themselves is equal to achieving human rights (Sharma, 2011). Taking this argument into account, it says that the link between small fisheries and low income proliferation exists very much - the rights of these small fishermen have to be fulfilled if you want to maximize their contribution. If this approach is taken up, "the links between people and collectives with claims and the state plus non-state actors who have a duty are identified by human rights. It recognizes those who have rights and their deserved assets as well as those have obligations and it helps towards maximizing their potential so that the entitled people can claim their rights and the people with obligations can fulfill them" (United Nations, 2004).

A brief summary of your policy proposal to improve the policy problem concerned

The procedure of making the policy, the rules that underpin it, along with the dynamic arrangements in it will suggest an ideal change in the South African small scale fishermen's governance. This in the policy introduction should be clearly enunciated. The realization and importance of human rights should also be included as a continuous theme in the policy as well as the need for equitable and redress access to the benefits from the sources of the marine and participation is making important decisions. The government should shift its stance based on the realization of the rights towards the sector of the small scale fishermen by embracing an approach of development and a rightful system that should recognize the requirement to confirm the resource's sustainability, identifying the fishermen to be in the category for MLRA purpose and provide the marine-living resources to the community which the fishers harvested. The change in the point should be clear from the standards which construct the policy and the strategic objectives of the policy that look out to provide impact on the approach of human rights development. It should concentrate specifically on:

An important change from the policies of the past should be the recognition of the needs and rights of the small scale fishermen which should provide them with lawful protection and respect. The policy should extend the restricted classification of the fishermen's provision for survival that are explained in Section nineteen of MLRA which includes the continuation of the fishermen to survive to the commercial activity at the upper-end from the lower-end.

Moreover, there should be recognition of the different contributions that the small scale fishermen have made to the food security, poverty relief and economic development and different mechanisms should be proposed to provide some effect to their contribution in the policy. These mechanisms should include the infrastructure support for the development and providing the communities with several opportunities and premium schemes like storage for fish, along with the developmental and training skills. Several approaches which were adopted in the past should be moved away from as they were classified as participatory and community oriented approaches by the decision makers. The current policy recommends a gradual approach from the community and criteria formulation to provide the individuals with their rights of fishing. The allocation of these rights will be to the legal body which is community based and includes several fishermen from different communities of fishing.

The proposal of policy in relation with the resource management should set out the needs to go through a frequent assessment of the resource state, to recognize the allocation of the resource in the area and to establish the plans of management (Sowman et al., 2014).

The main advantages and disadvantages of this proposal

Political sector

A clear change in the governance approach and philosophy of the small scale fishermen will be suggested in the policy in South Africa. This approach will shift from the approach of rights based on privatization and maximization of resources and economic advantages respectively, towards the approach that promotes and supports human rights and an approach of development for the governance of fishermen. The flexibility that will be given by the policy and the continuous recognition of the fishermen will exhibit the understanding that the small scale sector of fishermen has fluidity to it. The policy will also recognize the fishermen to be a part of a much more broad system of society and economics depending on the long-term sustainability. Keeping in mind the different faces of poverty in the areas, we will demand that provisions should be contained in the policy which will donate to the relief of poverty in different forms and they should be implemented judiciously according to the policy spirit (Sowman et al., 2014).

Socio-Economic Sector

Legal access will be gained by the fishermen of the coast to the resources rather than by the present system of sole rights and the process of allocation of ad hoc permit. Maximum fishermen will have the opportunity to take part in the sector while the complete quantity that will be harvested by every fishermen may be limited than the ones they will receive under the system of individual rights. This will maximize the opportunities economically by a unified action and scale economies (Sowman et al., 2014)

Financial Sector

The important role played by the fishermen in food security and sustainability of the living between the households of fishermen in the communities who depend on this sole occupation of fishing is recognized by the policy. The policy also keeps in check the essential role played by the fishermen as a net of safety in the poor communities, importantly where the houses have no access to capital or land during the time of economic or environmental crisis. There should be a need to recognize the customary rights of the communities in order to give them access will mean that the fishermen fulfilling the standards will gain admission to the resource although on a regulated and managed basis. However, in cases like gear availability, resource state and context, lawful access may only work as a net of safety, but in many cases, the livelihood of people may be expected to create the base and contribute to the security of food and other similar needs of socio-economic (Sowman et al., 2014).

Industrial Sector

The communities of fishing which have the resource customary system will harvest the resources following the customary practices and rules because these rules are feasible and adhere to the Bill of Rights. The principle will specifically apply to the communities that are customary in KwaZulu-Natal and Eastern Cape as the customary rights communities are guarded by the Constitution that recognizes the laws of custom to be equal and an independent law source (Sowman et al., 2014).