This book is premised on the great expectation about small-scale fisheries globally as a means of providing food security and alleviating poverty among the millions of people in coastal and inland communities. To reach these goals, small-scale fisheries must be governed in a way that is efficient, effective and socially just. The reality, however, as this book shows, is that governance systems are not always up to the task. Small-scale fisheries are not given the attention they deserve by governments, they are vulnerable to external pressures, and they often find themselves at the losing side in the competition with other goals like conservation, and for access to markets, resources, and space, making the life in small-scale fisheries an uphill struggle for sustainability and survival. The book, which draws on case studies from around the world, provides a sharp analysis of the key elements, the design and the functioning of the governance systems as they relate to small-scale fisheries. A unifying analytic approach is “interactive governance theory”, which has its own language that can help improve governance, and governance literacy, for fisheries and ocean sustainability. The theory has also been explored and applied in other TBTI publications in the Mare Series.
