Freedom and Poverty in the Fishery Commons
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Date
2010
Journal Title
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Volume Title
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Abstract
Poverty was at the heart of the tragedy of the commons discourse
from the very beginning. The idea was that commoners would inevitably end up
deprived due to their own resource overuse. As Hardin saw it, if the initial problem
was freedom of the commons, then limiting that freedom would logically reduce
poverty. In this article, we argue that alleviating poverty among resource users
calls for a broader concept of freedom than Hardin’s – one that is more in line
with that of Amartya Sen’s “freedom as agency.” Based on case-studies of smallscale
fisheries and poverty in Bangladesh and Tanzania, we claim that the root
of the tragedy of the commons is the restriction of freedom rather than unlimited
freedom and that it is arguable whether the people who have no other option than
to continue fishing for their livelihood, even in over-exploited ecosystems, could
be understood to be free.
Description
Keywords
Capability deprivation, Common pool resources, Governance, Poverty, Small-scale fisheries
Citation
Jentoft, S., Onyango, P. and Islam, M.M., 2010. Freedom and poverty in the fishery commons. International Journal of the Commons, 4(1).