Democracy and Human Rights in the Management of Small-Scale Fisheries in England
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
Summary
This paper posits that the establishment of co-management is not enough for addressing the challenges faced by the small-scale fisheries sector in England. The authors argue that without legal recognition of small-scale fishers’ human rights, power imbalances with the large-scale sector will continue to marginalize small-scale fishers and challenges will persist. The authors situate the paper within the ongoing debate in political philosophy about the relationship between democracy and human rights, ultimately defending the idea that human rights should take precedence or that they are not necessarily ensured by democracy. The authors conclude by identifying nine reasons for the controversy surrounding the recognition of small-scale fishers' human rights in England and proposing potential solutions for addressing these controversies. They draw mostly from existing literature about co-management, small-scale fisheries, and human rights to support their position.
The paper is well-written and presents clear arguments, however, some ideas could be more concise while certain points require further clarification. My specific comments are listed below.
Major comments:
- The abstract should be revised to convey the key research and findings of the paper more effectively. To achieve this, some background information about small-scale fisheries in England and its challenges could be removed or condensed, and more emphasis could be placed on the specific approach taken in the paper to address the topic. Additionally, it could be beneficial to provide a summary of the main arguments, findings or solutions being proposed in the paper.
- It would be beneficial to clearly state earlier in the paper, ideally in the abstract, that the goal of co-management is to enhance democracy. This will provide the reader with a clear understanding of the connection between co-management and democracy and better orient them for the subsequent section discussing the relationship between human rights and democracy.
- It may be worth talking about how the legal recognition of human rights for small-scale fishers in England could distinguish low impact under-tens in practice. The sentence “the argument for the HRBA therefore applies only to the low impact under-10 vessels which includes only a few super-under tens” Leaves this question open.
- It appears that the citation of Gelcich et al., 2006 (on line 329) may not be entirely relevant to the current discussion. According to the study, it does not pertain to co-management systems dominated by the large-scale sector but rather how traditional management systems were impacted by the new property right schemes. Therefore, it would be appropriate to either revise the citation to better align with the current discussion or consider removing the reference altogether.
- I found that the rationale for why "the right to be awarded quota to a level that would redress the injustice of the allocation made in 1989" and "the right of protected access to productive inshore waters which includes restrictions on large-scale vessels fishing just outside the 6 nm zone" should be prioritized among the list of human rights was not clearly explained. As it stands, the prioritization appears arbitrary. To clarify, it would be useful to provide further explanation for why these two rights are particularly important for small-scale fishers, for example, it may be that they are rights that are specific to small-scale fishers and not already covered by existing legislation on basic human rights.
- In my opinion, the fourth and fifth controversies described in the paper appear to share a common origin - the concept of human rights for small-scale fishers as being exclusionary. It would be beneficial to address these two controversies together and highlight how this notion of exclusivity can lead to issues with open-access and the large-scale fishing sector. Alternatively, it would be useful to clearly differentiate the two controversies, providing distinct explanations for the origin of each and how they differ.
- In my opinion, the ninth controversy in the paper requires further examination. The text does not clearly differentiate whether the recognition of human rights for small-scale fishers has not been successful in developed countries or if it has simply been underutilized. The observation that less developed countries seem to have more positive outcomes from legal recognition of small-scale fishers' human rights than developed countries, does not necessarily imply that they are less effective in developed countries. It could be that they are not as necessary in developed countries or that other factors are at play. I suggest conducting further research on this topic to gain a better understanding of how it relates to the controversy.
Minor comments:
I suggest reviewing all acronyms throughout the text to ensure consistency in usage. Additionally, to improve readability, it may be beneficial to avoid abbreviating terms that appear only once in the paper. This is particularly important because there are a significant number of acronyms and direct quotations which can make it difficult to understand while reading.
- Line 33: Remove the double parenthesis
- Lines 54-59: The sentence “the paper concludes by showing how co-management (which, as a form of decision-making shared between government and the fishing industry, has potentially strong democratic credentials (Wilson et al 2003)) can play a supporting role in implementing the human rights of SSF” is hard to read and it is presenting important information that can be easily lost. I would suggest rewriting it.
- Line 197: Missing “by” in “been endorsed the UK”.
- Line 204: Replace “SSCF” with “SSF”
- Line 242: Replace “SSCF” with “SSF”
- Line 263: Remove “As noted in the Abstract”
- Lines 324 to 326: To improve readability, I would suggest reorganizing this sentence to something like: “In a bid to deal with marginalization from decision-making (the third challenge), an initiative from the Future of Our Inshore Fisheries (FOIF) project in 2019 recommended co-management of the English SSF”.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.doc
Reviewer 2 Report
This article is really fascinating and intriguing since it discusses how small-scale fisheries have unique social, cultural, and human well-being features that need to be taken into consideration when awarding fishing rights within them. It involves factors including traditional use, conservation efforts, and reliance on the fisheries for a living and basic needs. It would be more transparent and perhaps help with other fisheries' management. You have done a great job
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 3 Report
This paper reads as an opinion piece rather than novel research; I suggest submitting to an outlet that is willing to publish it as such. In addition, while elements of the discussion are interesting and well-written, I found the over-reliance on lengthy quotes from prior work problematic. I believe the discussion of the contrasting human rights approach can be condensed, as can the discussion of the nine potential objections to fishing rights as human rights (as an aside, not all of which are adequately refuted). In places, the paper needs to be better integrated and reorganised. And finally, the central desired human rights for UK fishers (quota rights and exclusive access rights) offered here really stretch the definition of human rights that the authors themselves discuss in the paper. To me these proposals are clearly policy prescriptions meant to secure human rights (of access to traditional livelihoods, for example), not human rights in and of themselves - and the fact that the authors take issue with property rights approaches while simultaneously defining human rights around property rights (both quotas and access are property rights) really undermines the coherence of their argument.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Reviewer 4 Report
I appreciate the opportunity to read this manuscript on stablishing English small scale fisheries’ rights as human rights to assure their viability. Overall, the manuscript is well written, presenting an argument in favor of the human rights-based approach for SSF by providing counterarguments to known criticisms of the approach. However, there are weaknesses that should be improved to make the manuscript a scientific article. Mainly:
The strongest claims are based more on assertions than evidence, and the core literature to back them is not peer-reviewed. Sections ‘materials and methods’ and ‘results’ (required by the guidelines), or anything resembling them, are not present. The application (section 3) is justified by quotes from field work publish in a book that was not peer-reviewed. Fixing these issues will require improving and updating the literature (with peer-reviewed work), and to include methods and results (e.g. qualitative analysis) of the work done on the field.
If the manuscript were to be publish as an opinion (or similar), there are changes that can strengthen it:
a) Section 2 can be almost eliminated, presenting briefly the argument of democracy-first, and stating why the human-rights-first will be used for the discussion.
b) Change ‘controversy’ for criticism
c) Line 403: What would that level be, can it be determined, how?
d) Lines 428-429: should be strengthen with more literature
e) Lines 450-458: Needs more recent literature
f) The fifth controversy should be better argued
g) Lines 586-587: is not the point of the manuscript that practical rules are not enough?
h) Line 596: what/where is the evidence?
i) The literature needs to be updated with more recent work (especially where co-management has been implemented)
j) Check typos (e.g. line 204,330,341,655), and the references (e.g. lines 757, 920)
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
Round 2
Reviewer 4 Report
I appreciate the authors effort to reply and accommodate some of the comments. I will leave the decision of suitability of the manuscript for the journal in the hands of the editorial team.
There are a few things that can improve the manuscript:
Line 19: change ‘demonstrate’ for ‘debate’
Line 63: change ‘refuted’ for ‘debated’. The manuscript present compelling arguments against the criticisms or how to deal with them, but they are never refuted.
Section 2: The argument for normative analysis should be strengthen.
Line 91: [It is not an opinion piece but original and novel research.] And lines 94-96: [Sustainability’s ‘Subject Areas’ include “Ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development”: the current paper falls into this category.] Should be eliminated. I appreciate the authors effort to explain and justify the research but these lines should not be included. Lines 97-98 should be modified accordingly.
Line 103, change ‘data’ for ‘information’
Section 4. change section name from ‘results’ to ‘analysis’ or ‘discussion’ (and section 5 to ‘conclusion’ only)
Three of the four problems identified in the manuscript derive from the interviews carried out for the book (line 272), but there is no information (in the manuscript) regarding how representative these interviews are of the state of English SSF. Section 2 will benefit from information regarding the methodology used to collect this information, how representative is the sample, and how were the challenges identified.
Line 362 to 365: Regardless of how important they seem; these two rights seem arbitrarily chosen. Why are they particularly crucial for English SSF?
Line 405-412: TURFs have had mixed results in countries where it has been introduced. Their success often depends on the resource extracted and the social characteristics of the communities that use them. I recommend the authors to expand on the use of TURFs, their characteristics, and limitations if they want to use them as an example.
Line 474-475: Will there be different quotas from HRBA and PRBA? This line seems to be in conflict with lines 469-471.
Line 579: Typo
Line 603: This should have references and be substantiated.
Author Response
TSG’s response to Reviewer 4’s second round of comments on Sustainability 2140650 paper on Democracy & HRs in English SSF 24-1-23
Reviewer 4’s 15 comments are stated first, then the authors’ responses are provided in italics
- Line 19: change ‘demonstrate’ for ‘debate’
Author response - Line 19 reads as follows: “we draw on normative arguments to demonstrate that human rights are prior to democratic processes”. We assume the reviewer’s point is that ‘demonstrate’ is too strong a word, but we prefer to substitute the weaker word ‘assert’ rather than the neutral word ‘debate’
Lines 63: change ‘refuted’ for ‘debated’. The manuscript present compelling arguments against the criticisms or how to deal with them, but they are never refuted.
Author response – Lines 69-70 read as follows: “Eight criticisms of this argument are identified, discussed, and (largely) refuted”. Again, we see where the reviewer is coming from, but we prefer to substitute the weaker word ‘challenged’ rather than the neutral word ‘debated’
Section 2: The argument for normative analysis should be strengthen.
Author response – We accept this point and have added the following paragraph to Section 2:
“This paper is a normative analysis of the issue of human rights for the English SSF. Normative analysis is different from empirical analysis in that is engaged with ethical values rather than with positive facts. More accurately, normative analysis examines the ethical values that lie behind the positive facts. Normative theorists point out that the meaning and significance of a ‘fact’ depends on the values that the observer of that ‘fact’ brings to the table (Frost 1994: Brown 1992), and they criticise some positivists for failing to recognize the values that lie behind their own empirical analyses (Cochran 1999; Neethling 2004). During the last 30 years, there has been a move towards normative analysis in fisheries research. For example, Allison (2011), Allison et al (2012), Charles (2011), Davis & Ruddle (2012), Isaacs & Wibooi (2019), Lam & Pauly (2010), Quynh et al (2017), Ratner et al (2014), Ruddle & Davis (2013), Sharma (2011), Singleton et al (2017), Song (2015), Song & Soliman (2017), Teh et al (2019); Wagner & Davis (2004); and Willmann et al (2017) discuss the claims of fishers in terms of human rights, property rights, community rights, and territorial use rights. The present paper goes further than many of these writers in not only using normative terms, but also analysing the moral strength of the arguments employing those terms”.
Line 91: [It is not an opinion piece but original and novel research.] And lines 94-96: [Sustainability’s ‘Subject Areas’ include “Ethical and philosophical aspects of sustainable development”: the current paper falls into this category.] Should be eliminated. I appreciate the authors effort to explain and justify the research but these lines should not be included. Lines 97-98 should be modified accordingly.
Author response – We agree with these observations and we have revised the section accordingly (see lines 100-119).
Line 103, change ‘data’ for ‘information’
Author response – done (see line 133)
Section 4. change section name from ‘results’ to ‘analysis’ or ‘discussion’ (and section 5 to ‘conclusion’ only)
Author response – We have changed ‘Results’ to ‘Analysis’ (see line 283) and we have changed ‘Discussion and Conclusion’ to ‘Conclusion’ (see line 810)
Three of the four problems identified in the manuscript derive from the interviews carried out for the book (line 272), but there is no information (in the manuscript) regarding how representative these interviews are of the state of English SSF. Section 2 will benefit from information regarding the methodology used to collect this information, how representative is the sample, and how were the challenges identified
Author response – We have added information on the interviews conducted for our book to Section 2, which now reads as follows:
“With regard to the materials used in this paper, there are three main sources of information: peer-reviewed literature; grey literature; and interviews carried out for the authors’ book; Resilience in the English Small-Scale Fishery: Small Fry but Big Issue (Korda et al 2021). Section 2.3 of that book describes in detail how the interviewees were selected and what themes were chosen for the interview questions. Suffice it to say here that a total of 112 key informant interviews were conducted and a total of 14 focus group discussions were organized. The respondents came from all ten Inshore Fisheries Conservation Authorities (IFCAs) in England and included 88 inshore skippers and all ten IFCA Chief Fisheries Officers. The questions focused on five major themes – challenges facing SSF; their coping strategies; community culture; relations between stakeholders; and managerial efficiency” (see lines 136-144).
Line 362 to 365: Regardless of how important they seem; these two rights seem arbitrarily chosen. Why are they particularly crucial for English SSF?
Author response – We say on lines 511-514 that “The reason we have chosen these two rights is because quota and access are particularly crucial to the sustainability of the SSF, and the lack of them exposes the SSF fleet to the most direct form of discrimination in favour of the LSF fleet”. We have added “They are the minimum conditions for the SSF to obtain the basic human values of fairness, dignity and respect, and to be protected against unjust treatment by a public authority” (see lines 514-517)
Line 405-412: TURFs have had mixed results in countries where it has been introduced. Their success often depends on the resource extracted and the social characteristics of the communities that use them. I recommend the authors to expand on the use of TURFs, their characteristics, and limitations if they want to use them as an example.
Author response – We have deleted the paragraph on TURFS
Line 474-475: Will there be different quotas from HRBA and PRBA? This line seems to be in conflict with lines 469-471.
Author response – Lines 474-475 state “‘security and safe and decent working and living conditions’ (Charles 2011: 61)”. Lines 469-471 state “depended for their life and livelihoods; (c) to use, restore, protect and manage local aquatic and coastal ecosystems; (d) to participate in fisheries and coastal management decision- making; (e) to basic services” We do not understand the reviewer’s comment.
Line 579: Typo
Author response – Line 579 states “’operators’. WFFP (2016: 8) describe the PRBA as ‘a tool for”. We cannot find a typo here
Line 603: This should have references and be substantiated.
Author response – Lines 603-604 state “inshore areas. The human rights of SSF to quota and access are not property rights: they do not entail ownership but only usage”. This is an interpretation that we are putting forward to clarify the difference between HRBA and PFBA: it is not an argument that we have found in other studies so no reference is provided.
Author Response File: Author Response.doc
