Conference: Marine Environmental Politics in the 21st Century: MacArthur Program on Multilateral Governance, Institute of International Studies, UC Berkeley
Paper Abstracts:
Andy Thorpe
Department of Economics, University of Portsmouth
The New Economic Model (NEM) has had a profound impact upon the fisheries sector in Latin America. It has seen the emergence of new and increasingly influential stakeholders, as privatisation and financial deregulation have encouraged new patterns of ownership of both fishing and processing capital. In addition, it has also stimulated the development of new forms of production, most notably in the form of salmon and shrimp aquaculture. Furthermore, as has occurred in other sectors, new regulatory forms and institutions have emerged with several Latin nations passing comprehensive fisheries laws in the 1990s. These changes have coincided with the Latin region's increasing importance in world fisheries production and trade. However, they do not appear to have resolved the sector's fundamental problems, such as overcapitalization and low levels of income, and may indeed have exacerbated them. The reasons underlying this apparent contradiction can be found in the relationship between the macro-level policies and the responses of participants in the sector, a relationship which has not been clearly established in the extant literature.
This paper hypothesizes that the institutional changes inspired by neo-liberal policies were insufficient to take full account of the main characteristic of the fisheries, the absence of clearly defined property rights. It argues that this has conditioned the response of participants to the new regulatory framework and, increasingly, how they have attempted to influence the formation of management policies. Furthermore, it is argued, the failure to reconcile the neo-liberal inspired intensification of production with the conduct of firms in the sector has been a powerful factor in heightening management provoked conflict. This is especially evident at the industrial-artisanal interface where conflicts have become a more pronounced feature of Latin fisheries in the 1990s. In examining these issues by reference to the experience of key Latin fishing nations, the paper points towards possible future reconciliations between the sector and the NEM.
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Carolyn Trist: Local Politics of Marine Science in St. Lucia, West Indies
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