Finally, the fine-scaled empirical data generated offer various policy implications in terms of enriching socioeconomic data on the fishing sector, and knowledge around the
interactions between job switching through fishing and conservation governance. First the 2012 Livelihoods Survey adds much detail to the intricacies of labor movement and preferences not before known in the Galápagos. Survey data show for instance, that most individuals who have moved out of fishing work in tourism in various capacities, although work taken up ranges from manual labor to the professions (Fig 3.2). In addition the majority of the fishing sector in 2012 could be described as waiting to exit, however compared to the few who did leave raise the question of bottlenecks to doing so.
Behind policy applications of livelihoods work to poverty alleviation is often a belief in raising the “asset status” of the poor as a means through which individuals can have greater capabilities to better their lives, since assets are “fundamental to …the strategies [the poor] adopt for survival, and their vulnerability to adverse trends and events” (Ellis 2000: 28). However, conclusions around the equal or greater importance of access to various livelihood pathways over asset building implies that policy makers might do well by taking a two-pronged approach. Rather than focusing exclusively on programs designed to build up individual
household assets such as financial credit and educational skills (while important), it is equally necessary to consider how policies might be retooled to widen various routes through which fishers can and have left the industry. Regulations demanding destruction of fishing boats stands out as detrimental to fisher capital in ways that are unusual in other areas globally. In addition the rarity of trainings to become certified naturalist tour guides might slow some from leaving fishing in this route that might adopt such a pathway as others have in earlier generations.
V. Conclusions
This chapter has provided a nuanced understanding of recent individual-level job switching through Galápagos fisheries. Boat ownership, higher educations, and vertical social connections stood out as the key factors enabling some to move out of fishing in recent years, although differences in asset bases are far from strongly distinct. The weak differentiation likely reflects the variety of occupational pathways found out of fishing over time, the equally
influential mediating processes of conservation governance and a segmented labor market, and the fact that measured asset bases likely represent both the “capability” from which people draw to switch work, and the social outcomes of those changes (analyzed in Ch 4).
Several major points can be summarized. First, the prominence of institutional
intervention for those experiencing rising wealth when moving away from fishing (and no one else) and the National Park’s control over the radical fluctuation in exchangeability of boats as financial assets underscore institutional influence on livelihood pathways and options for Galápagos residents. The GNP channels allowable occupational pathways to prioritize
conservation over economic needs. Those with less education, wealth, and more horizontal social ties were disadvantaged from participating in the highest revenue pathway (i.e., the tour
competition) out of fishing in recent years. The influence of conservation governance on
fisheries change is a common thread that runs through this entire dissertation project, and will be further discussed in Chapters 4 and 5. Applying a sustainable livelihood analysis of “assets- mediating activities-access” therefore shows that individual level occupational changes can be better explained (i) with greater focus on the “mediating activities” and “access” enabled by institutional governance than on differential asset bases, and (ii) against the backdrop of broader labor market dynamics. Second, because non-fishing work was often the limiting factor in
transitioning out of fishing, I conclude that fluctuations in fishing activity are closely linked to comparable compensation and space within other economic sectors.
Third, while the sustainable livelihoods approach has been widely taken up in
development and aid circles (e.g., Bebbington 1999; DFID 2000), it has yet to make inroads in modeling and management efforts and outside of largely developing countries and subsistence contexts. The bioeconomic framework assumes income predicts labor mobility; while individual motives for fishing participation do include profit maximization, they also build out from income in diverse ways that reflect longer-term concerns and responsibilities. Modeling based on higher income triggers is therefore insufficient to understand Galápagos fisher behavior in this period of decline. Work is intended to compliment past studies on the social dimensions of fishing in the Galápagos that have emphasized proximal dynamics such as choosing fishing grounds (Castrejon 2011) and quantitative analysis of fishing effort (Bucaram et al. 2014). The initial attempts at providing explicit nodes of intersection between livelihoods and modeling work is hoped to spur more such interdisciplinary research in the future.
Fourth, results extend existing scholarship on fisher livelihoods and behavior by
presenting an outward facing understanding of fisher entry and exit, and data-driven testing of the
potentially retentive effects of job satisfaction and poverty traps on fishing employment. Past studies on job satisfaction have relied on hypothetical scenarios of when fishers would leave, and shows that unlike other areas, high job satisfaction does not have any retentive effects on labor in this Marine Reserve. Whether these results hold over other marine reserves remains to be
investigated in future studies. It is possible that as marine reserves age, conservation policies that become more effective over time in terms of both monitoring and enforcement and propaganda may affect the desire to leave the profession despite strong attachments to it and competitive
profit margins, as evidenced by those leaving who did not find comparable compensation in other jobs.
In the following chapter, results presented here will compliment analysis of the social effects of fisheries change in the Galápagos, and a more in-depth discussion of how other economic sectors have affected such outcomes on the individual as well as societal levels.