Democracy and Human Rights in the Management of Small-Scale Fisheries in England

Tim Gray (), Rebecca Korda and Selina Margaret Stead
Additional contact information
Tim Gray: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle on Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
Rebecca Korda: School of Geography, Politics and Sociology, Newcastle University, Newcastle on Tyne NE1 7RU, UK
Selina Margaret Stead: Faculty of Environment, University of Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT, UK

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 4, 1-14

Abstract: Small-scale fisheries (SSF) in England face several challenges to their viability. We argue that the source of these challenges can be traced to the more dominant large-scale fisheries (LSF) sector which has more influence than SSF over government policies. A recent attempt to mitigate the impact of these challenges has been made by the Future of Inshore Fisheries initiative whose main prescription is co-management, i.e., giving SSF a participatory role with the government and LSF in the decision-making in English fisheries management. Co-management is a form of democracy and it may help the SSF to deal with their problems. However, in our view, the English SSF also require an acknowledgement of their human rights to a fair quota and protected access to productive inshore waters. In making this case, we draw on normative arguments to assert that human rights are prior to democratic processes. Our conclusion is that both democratic decision-making and human rights principles are needed to secure the English SSF from the real threat of extinction.

Keywords: small-scale fisheries; democracy; human rights; future of inshore fisheries; too big to ignore; England (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/2956/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/4/2956/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:15:y:2023:i:4:p:2956-:d:1059719

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().