Environmental Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
from fishing communities to more distant governors is argued to have resulted in the
marginalisation of small-scale fishers and the exacerbation of conflict.
Subsequent sections explore and provide a comparative analysis of the present
condition of conflict and governance in South Asia and South Africa and offer propos-
als for the ways forward, notwithstanding the political ecology constraints that might
obstruct change.
9.2 ATHEORETICAL PERSPECTIVE ON CONFLICT AND ITS
RESOLUTION
We define fishing conflicts broadly as confrontations between groups or categories of
people regarding fishing activity and its management. As capture fishing takes place
in a common pool resource, users may disagree over the use of sea and coastal space,
or over allocation (who takes what fish). More indirectly, disagreements may focus
on marketing (as changes in supply often result in changes in landing prices), fishing
technology (which is considered harmful to the marine environment, and/or to other
users) and on rules that govern the fishery.
Interactive governance theory locates fishing conflicts in three realms: the System-
to-be Governed (SG), the Governing System (GS) and Governing Interactions (GI).
In the case of primary sector activities, a SG consists of a natural sub-system (the
marine ecosystem) and a social sub-system (the social organisation of fishing, pro-
cessing and marketing) that are linked through the act of fishing. Governance is the
“whole of public as well as private interactions taken to solve societal problems and cre-
ate societal opportunities'' (Kooiman and Bavinck 2005:17), and is exercised through
GS and GI. Needless to say, every SG has some kind of GS (although the GS is not
necessarily complete, legitimate or effective), and the latter may be governmental or
non-governmental (market, civil society) in nature. The nature of the interactions
between the GS and SG co-determine the governability of the system and it is within
these interactions that conflict can be acute. These interactions take on different forms,
or modes. Kooiman (2003) distinguishes between three ideal-typical modes of govern-
ing: self-governance, hierarchical governance and co-governance. We return to the
latter mode - co-governance - that is particularly relevant to our topic below.
Although conflicts frequently centre on physical interferences between two indi-
viduals or groups of people, they arise for various reasons, including demographic
changes, inequitable power relations, competition over natural resources, changing
government priorities, structural injustices and institutional failure (Bennett et al.
2001). Research from several cases, however, suggests that conflict is frequently rooted
in ideas of entitlement (Bavinck 2005). This takes us to the GS-level, where varying
ideas of rights exist. The critical questions are: Does this person have the right to fish
here in this particular manner? Who decides who can gain access to the fishery and
what criteria are used to guide such decisions? Different ideas about rights thus also
become a locus of conflict. Rights may take the form of norms and conventions, or
of working rules (Bromley 2006). A body of such regulations, for which we apply the
term law, constitutes a legal system. In terms of interactive governance theory, legal
systems belong to the steering mechanism, or GS. Weber (1954) recognised, however,
that to make lawwork, one also needs 'a staff of people': the law-makers, the enforcers
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