Overcoming the lack of political will in small scale fisheries

Weak governance is one of the main causes of the present poor condition of fisheries ecosystems. Lack of political will is one of the primary factors characterizing weak governance in fisheries. The purpose of this paper is to better understand what is meant by political will and political capacity, what the lack of these means in reference to small scale fisheries governance, and how to overcome the lack of political will, in particular, in order to improve small scale fisheries governance. The paper demonstrates the importance of political will and political capacity in determining the quality of fisheries management. Existent scholarship has largely conceptualized political will and political capacity as being the same concept, thus muddying our ability to determine exactly what is limiting a state's ability to manage not only fisheries, but also environmental resources more-generally. The paper concludes that even in low capacity states, local champions of fishery management can affect moderate progress on this complicated issue if they use community networks to engage in enforcement of fishery policies.