




































Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal 8(1): 141-145, January 2025 

BOOK REVIEW 
 

Fisheries Livelihoods and Governance: Lessons for 
Policy-making 
 

Merlyn Maria Antony  
 
Fabinyi, Michael, and Kate Barclay. 2022. Asia-Pacific Fishing Livelihoods. 
Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. xv + 112. SB ISBN 978-3-030-79593-1. 
  

Before leaving for my 
preliminary fieldwork to the 
Andaman Islands, I had a 
conversation with a fellow 
PhD scholar1 researching the 
islands who recalled the 
following incident. While 
travelling in an auto rickshaw, 
the driver remarked that one 
would never come across a 
beggar on the islands. After 
all, if one did not have 
anything, they could still fend 
for themselves by fishing in 
the waters. According to a 
Food and Agriculture 
Organization (FAO) report 
(2022), in 2020, fishing 
employed an estimated 37.8 
million people globally as full-
time, part-time, unspecified, 

                                                      
 Ph.D. student, Dr. B.R. Ambedkar University Delhi, Lothian Road, Kashmere Gate, Delhi 
110006; merlynmaria12@gmail.com  

Copyright © Antony 2025. Released under Creative Commons Attribution © 
NonCommercial 4.0 International licence (CC BY-NC 4.0) by the author.  

Published by Indian Society for Ecological Economics (INSEE), c/o Institute of  Economic 
Growth, University Enclave, North Campus, Delhi 110007.  

ISSN: 2581–6152 (print); 2581–6101 (web).  

DOI: https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v8i1.1296  

1 Thank you, Shashank Bhardwaj, for the vignette. 

mailto:merlynmaria12@gmail.com
https://doi.org/10.37773/ees.v8i1.1296


 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [142] 

and occasional workers. Even so, more has been written about landscapes 
than seascapes and the lives of those dependent on them. This gap is what 
the book Asia-Pacific Fishing Livelihoods seeks to bridge. Written by Michael 
Fabinyi (Professor) of the School of Communication and Kate Barclay 
(Professor) of the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of 
Technology Sydney (UTS), the book is an outcome of their years of 
qualitative research on fishing livelihoods in the Asia-Pacific. As they note, 
the Asia-Pacific region is home to the Coral Triangle, one of the world’s 
most significant marine biodiversity hotspots, and hosts the largest number 
of fishers in the world. However, they use the region only as an anchorage 
point to draw specific case studies to extend their arguments.  

In the globalized neoliberal order, the oceans are touted as the last frontier 
for “development”. They are also seen as a recourse for sustaining 
ecological systems. Amidst this, fishers conduct the activity of fishing, 
which is shaped by these processes. But fishers are often portrayed as 
plunderers of the sea whose activities need to be managed. Strategies that 
increase economic benefits and minimise environmental effects are then 
implemented. Lost among all this are the differentiation within fishers and 
the myriad ways of practising livelihoods. The authors, therefore, use a 
relational approach—described as an intersection of political economy, 
institutional settings, and local social relationships—to advocate for 
management strategies that take into account this differentiation. 

Chapter 1 provides an introduction that details the approaches used to look 
at fishery livelihoods and governance. It critiques reductionist ways of 
looking that consider the diversity in fish and fishers only in terms of 
dollars and management strategies. And as a counter to the normative, the 
authors position their relational approach, a combination of broadly three 
ways of looking, within the evolving field of marine social science.   First, 
derived from Tim Ingold (2018), livelihood is seen “as a set of activities 
operating in relationships with other processes and people over time, and 
that livelihoods are shaped by people’s relational positions in society” 
(Fabinyi and Barclay 2022, p. 11). Second, they draw upon David Mosse’s 
(2010) view of poverty as a function of “historically developed economic 
and political relations … social categorisation and identity”. Third, they 
consider the role of institutional arrangements in shaping access to and 
exclusion from resources based on the works of Hall et al. (2011) and Li 
(2007). This relational approach guides discussions on livelihoods and 
governance in the subsequent chapters. 

Chapter 2 examines the consequences of globalization for fishing 
livelihoods and the ensuing difficulties for governance by taking examples 
from the Western Philippines and Papua New Guinea (PNG). Migrations 



[143] Antony 

 
 

under colonial rule in Mindoro and Palawan in Western Philippines, internal 
rural–urban migration in PNG, and waves of globalization saw the 
diffusion of knowledge and technologies that changed the character and 
intensity of fishing as well as fishers (dealt with in detail in the following 
chapter). This subsequently opened new commodity frontiers and sites of 
capital accumulation. However, the increase in catch resulted in the 
depletion of resources along with the marginalization of those who were 
not able to step up. In Chapter 3, the authors examine cleavages within 
fisher communities brought on by larger processes. They consider how the 
intersection of ownership of the means of production, migration, and 
gender, have resulted in the exclusions of some in Western Philippines and 
Oceania. These chapters attest to two drawbacks in fisheries governance. 
Firstly, the inability of policies to factor in larger complex processes that 
lead to outcomes that are being controlled through strategies such as 
marine protected areas. Secondly, these resource management policies fail 
to take into account the social differentiation within fishers.  

Chapter 4 focuses on fisheries governance and the role it plays in shaping 
livelihoods. Using case studies from Indonesia and Australia, the authors 
map parallel trajectories in fisheries governance. They note that the practice 
of fishing was motivated by economic growth and resource nationalism up 
to the recent turn towards market-driven management methods such as 
inter-transferable quotas (ITQ). The authors mention an interesting account 
of blue-fin tuna fishers in Australia, where a ranching system was developed 
after the introduction of ITQs, which boosted the local economy by 
generating jobs. However, this comes across as a lone case, for most of the 
accounts are harrowing and rightfully so. Consequently, in their review of 
stateist and neo-liberal strategies, the authors argue that governance 
strategies are not value-neutral, and, by moulding the context within which 
livelihoods are practised, they determine who will have access and who will 
be excluded. The concluding chapter attempts to provide a pragmatic 
solution for the concerns raised. The proposition is a well-being framework, 
as it would not only help stakeholders find common ground but would also 
help assess conditions and the effects of, say, governance. The authors 
highlight works (Abernethy et al. 2020; McClean et al. 2019; Voyer et al. 
2016, 2017) by their UTS teams in Australia, Indonesia, and the Solomon 
Islands as examples. The varied framings of well-being—material, 
subjective, and relational well-being on one hand and non-economic social 
benefits on the other—the authors argue, are better able to take into 
consideration the wider (external and internal) relationships within which 
fishing occurs. Doing so breaks the telos of economic prosperity while 



 Ecology, Economy and Society–the INSEE Journal [144] 

drawing focus to other aspects of fishing such as nutritional and food 
security, the role of women, quality jobs, and environmental sustainability.   

The book is brief but rich. Each chapter could potentially be a book in 
itself.  The arguments made by the authors reflect some of those made by 
Fikret Berkes in Coasts for People (2015), like whom the authors also conclude 
that fishery and its governance is a “wicked problem” (Jentoft and 
Chuenpagdee 2009). The moment one pulls at a particular aspect, the skein 
comes undone and unravels endlessly. But unlike Berkes, who adopts a 
socio-ecological standpoint, which is often accused of masking hierarchies 
and social differentiation, this book, by relying on a relational approach, is 
able to unmask the fluidity within fishing and the inadequacy of normative, 
objective, and all-encompassing governance strategies. By highlighting case 
studies from a region unfamiliar to me, the book revealed surprising 
similarities with fishing in the Indian seascape, especially the Andaman 
Islands, making the book an interesting read. However, in highlighting the 
deficiencies in microscopic ways of looking at livelihoods and governance, 
the fishers come across as victims. Seldom do they talk back. An occasional 
mention of such was the case of the Fiji mud crab fishers who formed their 
own resource management collective on account of gender-blinded policies. 
For even in such shadowing, fishers, just like others, find a way of 
negotiating their livelihoods (see Dobeson (2019)). Although this book 
doesn’t fully capture the everyday experiences of Asia-Pacific fishers, it 
offers a helpful overview and highlights key issues faced by them, serving 
more as a prelude. 

Conflict of Interest Statement: No potential conflict of interest was 
reported by the author. 

REFERENCES 

Abernethy, Kirsten, Kate Barclay, Alistair McIlgorm, Patrick Gilmour, 
Nicholas McClean, and Johnathon Davey. 2020. Victoria's Fisheries and 
Aquaculture: Economic and Social Contributions. Research Project FRDC 2017-
092. University of Technology Sydney. 

Berkes, Fikret. 2015. Coasts for People: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Coastal and 
Marine Resource Management. Routledge. 
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315771038  

Dobeson, Alexander. 2019. Revaluing Coastal Fisheries: How Small Boats 
Navigate New Markets and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan. 
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05087-0  

FAO. 2022. The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022: Towards Blue 
Transformation. Food and Agriculture Organization. 
https://doi.org/10.4060/cc0461en  

https://doi.org/10.4324/9781315771038
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-05087-0
https://doi.org/10.4060/cc0461en


[145] Antony 

 
 

Hall, Derek, Philip Hirsch, Tania Murray Li. 2011. Powers of Exclusion: Land 
Dilemmas in Southeast Asia (Illustrated edition). University of Hawai'i Press. 

Ingold, Tim. 2018. Anthropology: Why It Matters. Polity. 

Jentoft, Svein and Ratana Chuenpagdee. 2009. “Fisheries and Coastal 
Governance as a Wicked Problem.” Marine Policy 33 (4): 553-560. 
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2008.12.002  

Li, Tania Murray (2007). The Will to Improve: Governmentality, Development, and 
the Practice of Politics. Duke University Press. 
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smt9s  

McClean, Nicholas, Kate Barclay, Michael Fabinyi, Dedi S. Adhuri, Reuben 
Sulu, and Terry Indrabudi. 2019. Assessing Tuna Fisheries Governance for 
Community Wellbeing: Case Studies from Indonesia and Solomon Islands. University 
of Technology Sydney. https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2019-
11/UTS%20Tuna%20Wellbeing%20Summary%20Report%20A4%20FA.p
df  

Mosse, David. 2010. “A Relational Approach to Durable Poverty, 
Inequality and Power.” The Journal of Development Studies 46 (7): 1156-1178. 
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2010.487095  

Voyer, Michelle, Kate Barclay, Allstair McIlgorm, and Nicole Mazur. 2017. 
“Using a Well-being Approach to Develop a Framework for an Integrated 
Socio-economic Evaluation of Professional Fishing.” Fish and Fisheries 18 
(6): 1134-1149. https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12229  

______. 2016. Social and Economic Evaluation of NSW Coastal Professional Wild-
Catch Fisheries. Research Project FRDC 2014/301. University of Technology 
Sydney. 

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2008.12.002
https://doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv11smt9s
https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/UTS%20Tuna%20Wellbeing%20Summary%20Report%20A4%20FA.pdf
https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/UTS%20Tuna%20Wellbeing%20Summary%20Report%20A4%20FA.pdf
https://www.uts.edu.au/sites/default/files/2019-11/UTS%20Tuna%20Wellbeing%20Summary%20Report%20A4%20FA.pdf
https://doi.org/10.1080/00220388.2010.487095
https://doi.org/10.1111/faf.12229

