Fisheries: the Enclosing Paradigm

Date: Wed, 18 Nov 1998 21:25:56
To: Sustainable Maritimes <sust-mar@chebucto.ns.ca>
From: David Orton <greenweb@fox.nstn.ca>
Precedence: bulk
Return-Path: <sust-mar-mml-owner@chebucto.ns.ca>

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Fisheries: the Enclosing Paradigm

Hello 'sust-mar' members,
There have been some recent postings on fisheries, EAC's
anthropocentric press release on swordfish and tunas, and
the notice of the International Ocean Institute conference,
plus perceptive comments by Daniel.

Some on this list may be interested to have a look at the 1995
Green Web Bulletin #45, "Fisheries and Aboriginals: The
Enclosing Paradigm". This particular bulletin, as well as
discussing the Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy of the federal
government, also attempts to outline the commercial fisheries
paradigm within which the AFS must operate. The paper tries
to show from a left biocentric perspective, what some features
of an ecocentric fishery would entail. 

This bulletin was an extremely difficult paper for me to
write because of its scope. Fortunately eight other
ecocentric activists critically reviewed the paper in draft
form. The paper is long (about 16 pages) but it is available
to movement activists by e-mail. It was part of a 1995
Learned Societies Conference presentation in Montreal. 
Some extracts from the paper, to give a sense of its flavour,
are given below.

David Orton

		* * * * * * * * * * * * 


Extracts from Green Web Bulletin #45 - Fisheries And
Aboriginals: The Enclosing Paradigm

.....

Introduction: The same attitudes, capitalist values and kinds
of industrial technologies that are destroying the forests of
Canada are also at work in the fishery, but the visible
consequences have proceeded much further. The Northern Cod on
the East Coast has been fished to commercial extinction. In 
July of 1992, a 2-year moratorium (since extended) was placed
on this fishery. The above quotations, relating to the West
Coast 1994 Fraser River sockeye runs, show the same commercial
extinction paradigm unfolding. Canada pursues economics-driven
conservation policies. Individual, commercially valuable fish
species, are managed to their maximum human/corporate
exploitation. Then, if environmental factors change or there
are major errors in management or policy decisions, and if the
rules are flouted or manipulated by participants in the
commercial fishery, there is ecological and economic disaster.

There are factors unique to the commercial fishery not found
in forestry. Nevertheless, the same basic value choices
confront native people about their participation in demanding
and gaining access to the food and commercial fishery. On the
native side, what values will natives bring to an increased
participation in the commercial fishery? On the non-native
side, will aboriginal participation and disputes be resolved
from the dominant, human-centered and capital-intensive
industrial fisheries resourcist perspective, or from an
ecocentric, health of the total marine ecosystem, all-species
preservationist perspective? Is the federal government's
Aboriginal Fisheries Strategy (AFS) an appropriate response
for natives? Is it acceptable to non-natives? Does this 
Strategy contribute to the long term survival of Canadian
marine and fresh water ecosystems, and promote the
biodiversity of animal life in such systems?

.....

STATE MORE INVOLVED IN THE FISHERY: Due to the extensive
state regulatory role in the fishery, and its power to
disburse unemployment insurance in this highly seasonal
industry, the government is much more involved in the lives
of fishers and plant workers, than it is in the lives of
forestry and pulp and paper mill workers. 

The federal (and provincial) governments have strongly
influenced, and thus limited, the thinking of fisheries-
related organizations. This has been done through various
mechanisms. In addition to regulating through various
licenses, who can take part in the commercial fishery and
which areas can be fished, this influence has been
exercised through:
a. Direct government grants to organizations representing
fishers, e.g. the Maritime Fishermen's Union and the Eastern
Fishermen's Federation;
b. Bringing fishing organizations into various stakeholder
meetings with the promise of some input into dividing up the
Fisheries pie;
c. Through the power of unemployment insurance, that is, the
annual struggle by many fishers and plant workers to obtain
enough fishing-related work to qualify to draw benefits in
the off-season.

.....

SELF-RIGHTEOUSNESS AND DENIAL: Workers in the East Coast
fishery are classified as inshore, midshore, offshore or
plant workers. Like their counterparts in the forestry sector
and in the pulp and paper mills, such workers have in the
main, with some important exceptions, overwhelmingly defended
their own narrow economic interests in a number of different
fishing organizations - often self-righteously. They have
opposed conservation measures which would cause cut backs in
their own personal incomes and denied any personal
responsibility for the crisis in the fishery. One particularly
glaring example of the supremacy of self-interest, would be
the bluefin tuna fishers who, at the end of September 1994,
blocked the Canso Causeway between Cape Breton and mainland
Nova Scotia for several hours. They were trying to use the
travelling public as a lever, to pressure the DFO to reopen
this tuna fishery using the 1995 quota! The magnificent
Northern bluefin tuna, which can weigh over 400 kilograms, is
reported to be down to about 15 percent of its historic
spawning population, according to the International Commission
for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas.

.....

Public conservation discussions by fishers stay within the
parameters of human self-interest. While having serious
contradictions, corporate and inshore fishers have come to
have a joint vested interest in their exclusive access to the
fishery commons, as do timber companies and loggers in
accessing the crown land forestry commons.


WHAT IS NEEDED FOR NATIVES AND NON-NATIVES TO TAKE
THE FISHERY PRESERVATIONIST PATH?
(Note: in the bulletin, there are extensive discussions under the
following headings.)

a. Changing our ethics from anthropocentrism to ecocentrism
and manifesting this in all fisheries policies.

b. The reinstatement and internalization by fishers and the
Canadian public of the view that the oceans are a Commons.

c. Establishment of an extensive marine protected areas
system.

d. No destructive fishing technologies to  be utilized.

e. No fisher or company to acquire a financial interest by
being granted the privilege of fishing the marine commons.

.....

Unless aboriginals want to become part of the problem, they
must ally themselves with any non-natives who want to take
the preservationist path in a bioregional, community-
grounded inshore fishery. Some of the possible features of
such an ecocentric fishery, which could appeal to natives
and non-natives, have been sketched in this paper. 
Irrespective of Supreme Court rulings or statements in the
Canadian Constitution, the actual orientation in the
commercial fishery as in forestry, is decided by the
dominant corporate interests. These corporate interests,
through their government partners, ensure policies are
enacted which serve corporate welfare, not ecological or
community health. The DFO-drafted AFS, does not challenge
corporate control. What it has done, is to help create
divisions between small fishers and thus undermine a needed
unity necessary for fundamental change in the commercial
fishery. Was this the real intent of the Aboriginal
Fisheries Strategy?

		* * * * * * * * * * * * 




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