Rural Sociology and Psycology (1+0)

Conflicts in Fisheries 

         Conflicts over resource use in fisheries have been escalating all over the world and it is more pronounced in South East Asia. The productive fishery resource of this region provided the much needed employment, income requirements of the population. Increasing fishing pressure due to rapid population increase, economic incentives , increasing demands and the high equation over harvesting of these resources have resulted in bitter competition for resource between small scale and large scale fishing operators. Further , monitoring of conservation of endangered aquatic animals and increasing non-fisheries activities like industrial growth, tourism industry along  the coast lines have made these issues more complicated and complex.  The rapid population growth rate, increased poverty, increasing standards of living often force the resource users to employ more effective, capital- intensive, but destructive, fishing technologies which further aggravates the conflicts.

Over capacity is one of the situation that leads to resource use conflicts in several contexts. Over capacity is the situation where the capacity to capture is much more than the target to be captured (Pascoe and Greboval, 2003). Over capacity in fisheries has been noted in Bangladesh (Rahman, et al., 2003), India (Vivekanandan, et al., 2003), Srilanka (Samaraanayake, 2003). The terms over capacity and excess  capacity are used interchangeably.

.      Pascoe, S. and D. Greboval, Editors 2003. Measuring capacity in fisheries, FAO, Fisheries Technical Paper No. 445. FAO, Rome, Italy, 314p.