Two Rules for the Same Fish: Small-Scale Fisheries Governance in Mainland Ecuador and Galapagos Islands

Abstract

The small-scale fisheries sector in the Ecuador mainland and Galapagos Islands face major challenges triggered by large scale human and climatic events, which compromise their sustainability. Lack of trust, leadership and cohesion among small-scale fisheries entities, limited organizational skills, and social problems within fishing communities reduce this sector's governability. Further, lack of willingness of fishers to observe rules, limited governing capacity and lack of political attention to small-scale fisheries often contribute to making the overall system less governable. According to interactive governance theory, different governing modes would be suitable for different systems, depending also on the types and quality of governing interactions. Using the interactive governance framework, this chapter explores the performance of the hierarchical and co-governance mode for small-scale fisheries governance in the Ecuador mainland and Galapagos Islands, respectively. These two case studies, by using empirical evidence and triangulation-based methods, analyze the small-scale fisheries sector and some mechanisms through which the governing system, the system-to-be-governed, and governing interactions are operating. The chapter highlights that both hierarchical and co-governance modes of governance have underperformed and consequently that their governability has been reduced for three main reasons: the mismatch between legal frameworks, the undefined social system's borders, and the use of inappropriate mechanisms for information mobilization. The chapter concludes by suggesting that both models need to contribute to national initiatives, to strength the social system, and to increase the small-scale fisheries sector governability. Only then can fisheries sustainability be achieved.