Study Of International Small-scale Fisheries Management

The small-scale fisheries are important parts of the global fisheries, which havebeen making tremendous contributions for world’s food security, employment, economy,poverty reduction, nutrition etc. for a long time. However, the fisheries lack oforganization and scale, which seriously affect industrial management and its upgrade.And the communities engaged in small-scale fisheries are facing vulnerable andunsecured living and working environment. Currently, the importance of small-scalefisheries management and difficulties they suffered have been paid great attention byvarious countries. In China’s coastal areas, there are a large number of small-scalefishers who living on small-scale capture fisheries still. In the context of a severerecession of fisheries resources, the income of this group is deteriorating at acompetitive disadvantage while the entire fishery subsidy policy issued by the countryis impossible to improve their situation. Therefore, to protect this kind of fisherieswhere there are so many marginalized small-scale fishermen fishing for living, theremust be a targeted fishery management in order to maintain its national economy andsocial stability contribution. Because the fisheries situation vary from country to country,there is no unified understanding for the small-scale fisheries and management methodsworldwide, which means if one country want to develop its own small-scale fisheriesmanagement policy，it can only reference research and experience in other countries,but not completely copy. Firstly, Based on a collection of the identification ofsmall-scale fisheries and management information of FAO and countries who have hadsmall-scale fisheries management experience, the author indicate that the single modelfor Chinese fishery management is no longer applicable to the current situation offisheries resources. And with the widespread concern of human rights and fair, there isa need to make a distinction between small-scale fisheries and large-scale fisheries inthe management. The paper proposes a definition of small-scale fisheries concerningwith the way of operating, operating waters, which should protect small-scale fisheriespractitioners’ equitable participation and sustainable development of fisheries and resources. Furthermore, compared to the existing centralized management model, aco-management mechanism based on fishermen organizations can not only solve theseproblems faced by small-scale fisheries, but also achieve democratic governance,promote compliance and reduce administrative costs. Through analyzing theco-management mechanism theory and its practice in Japan and other relevant countries,and combined with our small-scale fisheries situation, the paper points out that topromote the establishment and development of small-scale fisheries organizations,government needs to empower and cooperate with fisheries organizations, as well asaccelerating the improvement of relevant laws and regulations and increasing capitalinvestment and so on.