Action 5 : Institutional Analysis of FADs in the Lesser Antilles

Organizer : Katia Frangoudes (katia.frangoudes@univ-brest.fr)

http://www.cedem.eu/presentation.php

Motivation and objectives

Motivation and objectives

FADs have enabled the extension of the fishing activity that formerly took place near the coast. The efficiency of FADs to concentrate migratory species has been demonstrated by scientists and recognized by fishermen who accept the installation of FADs financed collectively or individually, with or without public support. But the positive impact of FADs on the fishing activity is accompanied by the usual problems of managing the fishing (definition and implementation of fishing rights to regulate access) along with those linked to setting up installations out at sea (declaration of the installations, maintenance and monitoring). The issues are mainly to do with collective choices that concern fishermen, their organizations, the administration, political representatives and the institutions of coastal communities generally.

The aim of the institutional analysis, mainly based on collecting qualitative information from direct interviews of those people involved in the fishing sector on the local, national and regional level, will be to better identify and document the nature of these problems and attempts at resolving them. Getting to know the perception that fishermen have of the coastal ecosystem, of FADs and their involvement in setting them up, in addition to the relationships between the people involved will enable us to understand why this technical innovation is adopted, or not, by fishermen. We will thus take an interest in understanding the conditions which make fishermen consider these tools as their own, a product of their initiative, and help them feel that they are a real party to the decision-making process. These are the conditions that are essential to setting up robust institutional systems.

Understanding organizations and formal or informal management rules, when they exist, but also the causes of conflict between professional fishermen, or between professional fishermen and recreational fishermen, is a prerequisite to setting up new rules for managing the fishing activity round FADs. Management rules that take into account these parameters perhaps have more chance of being appropriated by the fishermen. Any institutional system is a forest where the tree of structures and formal rules, codified in written law, hides a set of unwritten operational rules and networks of information exchanges that play an important role. More often than not, they form part of the long history of the communities’ management of the resources and coastal spaces. To the extent that conflicts are in themselves a search to resolve tensions between the people involved, studying them can provide a great deal of information. The same is true for the role of the family or communities as important places for individual or collective decision-making. The distribution of tasks linked with the fishing activity between men and women could also be useful for this analysis. We shall, for example, examine whether women play a (formal or informal) role in the fishing activity and how they can influence the behaviour of their husbands in their activity. For this, we shall undertake a gender analysis.

The comparative analysis of the many situations encountered will thus allow a certain number of hypotheses to be tested on the determining role of the way FADs are financed (privately or publicly), where the determining character of the social, cultural or economic dimensions in the success or failure of FADs.

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Material and methods

Undertaking this task will require :

a preliminary review of work in the social sciences dealing with artisanal fishing in the zone and with FADs in general and a pre-identification study via interviews in order to establish guides for the interviews.
carrying out semi-directive interviews of representatives of the groups of people involved: scientists, administrative staff, fishermen's organizations, and professional and recreational fishermen.
the use of focus groups, which is a more appropriate methodology when we wish to study the impact of this type of fishing oat the level of the community and at the level of the different groups that make up these communities.
synthetic processing of the replies.

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Implementation

This task will be carried out in Martinique and in Guadeloupe where we have identified the existence of two different property systems (collective and individual) which imply a different way of managing the activity (collective and private). Via individual interviews and focus group interviews, we will attempt to better understand the organization of the existing management systems in order to identify the strengths and weaknesses of each, thus enabling us to answer the needs of the fishermen and their communities, but also answer those of preserving fishing resources in the long term. It seems mandatory to carry out the same task on two other islands in the Lesser Antilles, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominica since, first, they are two other places where we identify a strong fishing activity round FADs and, second, the way FADs are managed is different from the way our two regions manage them.

Understanding what actually happens will enable us to present recommendations with the end result of sustainable FAD fishing at the economic, social and environmental level.

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Participants

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Work schedule

Work schedule - Action 5 Global work schedule project

For information, the work schedule is given below. Changes in the planning can be made in coordination with the points concerning working conditions and economics.

Month 1 : review of the literature and establishing a guide for the interviews. Doing fieldwork in Martinique and in Guadeloupe.
Month 2 : transcription and analysis of the qualitative data, and writing the report.
Month 8 : doing field work in St Vincent and the Grenadines and Dominique.
Month 9 : transcription and analysis of the qualitative data, writing the final report and recommendations to be made.
Month 24 : Presentation of results.

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