Local knowledge, global markets: drivers of fishery choices in the Lakshadweep Archipelago and its unintended consequences

As reefs are exposed to increasingly frequent, increasingly intense global climate change disturbances, local fishing can make the difference between recovery and decline. Efforts to rationally manage fisheries are often only... [ view full abstract ]

As reefs are exposed to increasingly frequent, increasingly intense global climate change disturbances, local fishing can make the difference between recovery and decline. Efforts to rationally manage fisheries are often only marginally successful since they are unable to reconcile the economics of fishing with reef conservation. Attempts to evolve win-win solutions, while admirable in their intent, may result in only temporary reprieves, unwittingly eroding local institutions and changing underlying human-nature relationships in subtle but important ways. I present a history of fishing in the densely populated Lakshadweep Archipelago. The reduction of sustenance reef fishing was the epiphenomenal result of a highly successful pelagic tuna fisheries development programme in the 1980s. While transforming the local economy, this shift also meant Lakshadweep reefs were able to recover surprisingly well from the catastrophic 1998 coral mass mortality, despite high densities of dependent human populations. Over the last four decades however, there has been a fundamental shift in how fishers relate to their resource – from food to commodity. Also, any tradition of regulating reef harvest has vanished in institutional memory. The upshot of these changes is that as Lakshadweep connects rapidly to mainland markets, global demand for reef fish, together with temporary dips in tuna profitability have seen a sudden rise in commercial reef fishing. This commodification is doubly troubling as reefs experience more global bleaching-related mortalities with substantially reduced recovery. Our work shows that the commodification process can unravel human-nature relationships that are critical in maintaining the resilience of climate-fragile human-ecological systems.