Drazen Cepic

Links between corruption and illegal practices within fisheries are recognised in existing literature but little reference has been made to how these interconnected practices affect the performance and legitimacy of fisheries co-management. Research in the three countries bordering Lake Victoria, Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda, found that corruption is systemic and that members of all stakeholder groups – fishers, fisheries officers, police and the judiciary – are implicated. It was confirmed that corruption is strongly linked to illegalities and that corruption in this context should be viewed as a collective action problem, with fishers reluctant to invest in legal gears and methods when they perceive illegalities and corruption to be prevalent. It was also found that corrupt practices linked to illegalities discourages local level fisheries management structures – the Beach Management Units – from enforcing regulations and contributes to a lack of trust between fishers and government. Linked corruption and illegal fisheries practices were therefore found to be undermining the performance and legitimacy of co-management. This article concludes that whilst co-management offers opportunities for collusive corruption through collaborative arrangements, any management system will be susceptible to the harmful effects of corruption where it is systemic and is not formally recognised or appropriately addressed. Greater official recognition of the links between corruption and illegalities, and a range of appropriate actions taken to this collective action problem, is essential if co-management is to have a chance of success.

Social ties influence access to knowledge and cooperation in natural resource management, with the sharing of certain characteristics thought to be positive for social cohesion and participatory forms of management. In this article, a holistic characterisation of fisherfolk personal networks is developed, disaggregating results by the main occupational groups within the fisheries studied, to provide a more nuanced understanding of the personal networks of types of fisherfolk. Links are then made between the characteristics of personal networks and evidence on how fisherfolk benefit from their networks, interpreted as contributing to social cohesion within the communities. The personal networks of fisherfolk (boat crew, boat owners and traders/processors) of Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda bordering Lake Victoria were investigated using personal network analysis, with fisherfolk asked who they discuss their fisheries activities with. The analysis found that networks based on the same occupation were more characteristic of fish traders/processors networks than those of boat crew and boat owners and that shared ethnicity, gender and location were characteristic of boat owner and boat crew networks, though shared ethnicity may reflect the composition of the communities rather than choice. Social and economic interactions within the networks were based on provision of credit, social support and advice, suggesting that these form the basis of social cohesion and should be taken into consideration in working with fishing communities in both development interventions and designing collaborative management approaches.

The literature on compliance in small scale fisheries provides evidence of the normative foundations of fishers’ behaviour. However, the mechanisms through which normative reasoning translates into non-compliance remains unclear due to the tendency to conceive non-compliant behaviour simply as an outcome of ‘moral deficit’. This paper identifies such mechanisms by focusing on moral reasons which undermine the legitimacy of fisheries regulations. Taking the case of Lake Victoria, East Africa, the paper explores how non-compliance can be founded on diverse and competing concepts of fairness by creating a typology of the modes of justification used by respondents who engage in illegal fishing. The paper establishes four areas of justification: the principle of superfluousness, the principle of autonomy, the principle of futility, and the principle of necessity. Investigating the evidence for each, the analysis finds that the majority of fisherfolk believe that regulations are necessary and support government action in fisheries management. However, fishers expressed futility in fishing legally, given the extent of illegal fishing, and justified their non-compliant behaviour through reference to the cost of legal fishing compared to illegal and the need for better catches and income associated with illegal fishing.