33. Coordination, Development and Governance of Senegal Small-Scale Fisheries

Small-scale fisheries in Senegal are extremely diverse, diffuse, and dynamic, and they dominate export and local markets. They have defied conventional management efforts, and Senegal is currently transitioning to participatory co-management. Because much of small-scale fisheries fall under “development”, we focus on the role international actors have on issues of legal plurality, governance structure and contextual fit. For example, Senegal fishers involve diverse contexts and cultures, complex gendered relations and cultural and spiritual value systems that affect governance interactions and legitimacy but are not often recognized. This is compounded when international actors frequently bring their own images of problems and principles for solutions with little knowledge of local context, but have significant influence on governance structures and processes. Also multiple independent programs and projects with their own values, rules, “governors”, images and principles contribute to a complex legal plurality and fragmented information, impeding coherence and synergy. We introduce coordination as an important interactive process in governance. Coordination problems are endemic to development, economics, and collective action, and impede effective policies and governance. For example policy coherence is an important coordination process and desired state for fisheries. Co-management introduces a very different scale of world views, histories, knowledge systems and outcome desires that will need to be addressed in multi-scaled policy coherence. Downward accountability needs to be improved with fisher perspectives, values and feedback. Also cultural inclusive processes such as institutional syncretism can enhance social sustainability, functional effectiveness and cultural legitimacy of decentralized institutions.