Building capacity, overlooking context: examining the effects of European fisheries management development programmes on socio-environ-mental justice for artisanal fishers in West Africa
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2025-07-08
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en
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The period between 2017 and 2023 saw important involvement of the European Union in the fisheries policy domain in West Africa under the PESCAO programme. Fisheries governance in this region faces a number of challenges such as illegal fishing, overfishing and concerns around food security. Artisanal fisheries form the backbone of the local sector, with profound links to coastal communities and an often-undervalued importance to the regional economy, but face competition from the largely foreign-owned export-oriented industrial sector. Despite its importance, the former is often marginalised in policy-making. This thesis sought to examine whether PESCAO repeated this marginalisation trend, examining its interventions through the lens of Fraserian and Schlosbergian socio-environmental justice for artisanal fishers, supplemented by a historical-materialist approach to power relations. It also examined the follow-up programme WASOP’s likely further marginalisation of artisanal fisher communities through its reification of the ‘Blue Economy’ before meaningful advances in fisheries governance have been made. It concludes that European Union fisheries management development programmes, though positive for the regulatory capacity of states, tend to further an industrial-focused conception of fisheries management ill-suited to the artisanal West African context, with little implicit or explicit regard for socio-environmental justice for the human and the more-than-human.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen