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The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2014
housing, markets, financial resources, information, legal systems and social services (e.g. education, health care, sanitation). In fact, land and fisheries tenure rights often need to be combined. Fishing communities need secure use rights to fishery resources and to land in coastal, lakeshore or waterfront areas for ensuring and facilitating access to the fishery, for accessory activities (including processing and marketing), and for housing and other livelihood support. This is all the more critical for fishing communities that are likely to be marginalized and/or poor sectors of a society. KEY ISSUE 2: Tenure rights in fisheries The preliminary technical guide notes that tenure rights in fisheries are often referred to as “use rights” and exist in many different forms consisting of various bundles of entitlements that confer both privileges and responsibilities.4 They can be formal and legally recognized or informal and customary (or traditional). The development of formal tenure arrangements in fisheries has tended to focus on access to fisheries and use of fishery resources, and in this context the terminology of “rights” is often more commonly used than “tenure”. Fisheries tenure rights are typically seen as part of a broader fisheries governance and management framework. Thus, tenure is a useful term because it indicates the broader system of rights – formal and informal, traditional and customary – and includes social and societal notions of rights that individuals, groups of people or communities may have to a fishery resource. In addition, because wild fishery resources are common property (i.e. not owned by individuals or groups), live in the water where they are difficult to see and rarely keep within set boundaries, it is often more difficult to determine who is entitled to them or has rights to harvest them than it is for terrestrial resources. This is why the discussion to date has tended to focus on who may “use” (not “own”) shares or portions of sustainable catches of fish stocks. The preliminary technical guide also addresses the frequent misconception that rights-based fisheries management regimes imply the privatization of resources. Most coastal resources are likely to already have some form of (often collective) management systems. These may be either customary arrangements applied by local fishing communities or systems that have been replaced by central management. Customary tenure rights of a community include the collective rights of its members to the natural commons as well as individual rights to specific land parcels or natural resources. Informal tenure rights are tenure rights that lack formal, official protection by the State and often arise spontaneously, e.g. in areas affected by migrations. Nonetheless, these rights can still be legitimate because they are covered by, for example, international laws and conventions, treaties or other legal instruments although not explicitly included in national tenure legislation. While formal tenure rights have been implemented in fisheries in the last 25 years, there is a much longer history of customary and traditional tenure systems in fishing communities5 that dates back centuries. These have tended to be in the form of rights to fish in certain areas – i.e. spatial access or use rights – and have often been found in conjunction with land tenure, making it important not to view fisheries tenure in isolation but within a broader land and livelihoods context.6 Many formal tenure systems are based on rights that were initially customary. In some countries, customary tenure rights have received formal legal recognition equivalent to other statutory tenure rights. However, in other countries, they lack legal recognition. In the latter, rights holders often cannot easily defend their customary rights in cases of competition from other resource users. The expansion of tourism, port or harbour infrastructure projects and industrial progress have increasingly led to claims by other interest groups and resource users on land in coastal areas traditionally held by fishing communities. The move towards rights-based fisheries management systems rests on the notion that fisheries will generate more benefits and do so more sustainably if users have stronger rights. Thus, rights-based fisheries management is a concept that focuses on the privileges and rights – and responsibilities – in the form of common, collective or individual rights relating to catching fish.