Short abstract

In small-scale fisheries, patron-client relationships (patronage) between traders and fishers are often blamed for the failure of sustainability-based development interventions aimed at improving human and ecological wellbeing. Patronage has been shown to affect adaptation to the unprecedented market and resource changes fishers face in today’s globalized world e.g. pandemics, climate change. The role of the relationship, although an important source of insurance for low-income fishing households worldwide, is hotly contested by fishery practitioners and managers who often want to break it. This project aims to significantly advance understanding of patronage for adaptation and how it may support or hinder the sustainable development of fisheries by using a multi-method approach. I use interpretive research to prioritise the experiences and understandings of fishers and traders within patronage. Behavioral economics examines key fishing and trading decisions in response to resource and market changes that emerged as important for adaptation. Participatory methods allow us to understand what future scenarios participants envision for patronage in their fishery. This intersection of traditions and perspectives will provide more traction in assessing the unique position patrons hold today linking globalizing markets with small-scale fishers and their fishing practises.

Summary of the project

In small-scale fisheries, patrons – also called middlemen, intermediaries or traders – are often blamed for the failure of sustainability-based development interventions aimed at improving human and ecological wellbeing. Essentially, patrons finance their clients’ (fishers) activities through loans and credit, receiving a supply of seafood and loyalty in return. Client households become indebted, morally and financially, and payback relies on fishing. Patron-client relationships, prevalent globally in small-scale production systems, have been shown to undermine individual agency, choice and adaptive capacity, increase economic instability in client-fisher households and incentivise unsustainable fishing practises- all of which affects adaptation processes and the future of the fishery. Small-scale fisheries are challenged with adapting to today’s global threats, like climate change, market shocks or pandemics. However governance and enforcement issues, widespread biodiversity loss and ecosystem health decline characterise many of these fisheries. For fisher communities, with restricted access to technology, formal support and finance, patrons provide essential and flexible capital to respond to some of the many changes e.g. catch variability, typhoons, or household income loss.

Small-scale fisheries have never before been so intensely embedded in global economics, nor have the nature of today’s global changes been experienced before. This places patrons in a historically unique position in linking fishers and markets. As such, the role of the patron-client relationship, although an important source of insurance for low-income households worldwide, is hotly contested by fishery practitioners and managers who often want to break it. Although the patron-client relationship is widely studied, we still know little about the complex roles it plays in adaptation processes and the sustainable development of small-scale fisheries long-term.

This project aims to address this question and understand what aspects of patronage (used here as short for patron-client relationships) contribute, when, how and for who in adapting to market and resource changes. Especially how these adaptations promote or undermine sustainable livelihood and fishery development. We take a well-studied empirical case of patronage in the small-scale fisheries of the Philippines, locally referred to as the suki system.

To address the aim the project is split into three work packages as follows;

1. We draw on qualitative methods from interpretive social science research to examine patronage as a deeply engrained relationship within the Philippine fishery society. A relationship which is understood and negotiated differently according to socio-institutional factors e.g. gender. Here individual narratives and dyadic interviews of spouses will be used to map and examine environmental and market changes that patron-clients have navigated in the past and the ways they have adapted.
2. We will use data from 1. to design and contextualise behavioural economic experiments to test key fishing and financial decisions that emerged as important for making adaptive changes. This approach allows us to better understand influences on decisions that are less consciously recognised e.g. risk attitudes, cultural norms, through presenting participants with choices that have financial consequences.
3. We will use participatory scenario planning to collaboratively explore, with fishers and traders, the good and bad of patronage long-term, possible alternatives and how patronage should be incorporated into government planning for improving fishery livelihoods, market systems and marine ecosystem health. Resulting scenarios will be presented to policy and management.

A gender lens throughout research allows us to examine the socio-institutional factors that shape differences in behaviour, relationships and adaptation processes. This makes our work sensitive to the social differences and inequalities that impact the complex role patronage has in the governance of small-scale fisheries. Together these work packages will significantly advance understanding of patron-client relationships and their influence on sustainable fishery and market outcomes under change.