Building resilience: fisheries cooperatives in southern Sri Lanka

Among the many models proposed to address vulnerability and poverty in fisheries, this chapter takes a social capital approach. It focuses particularly on the role of cooperatives in providing small-scale fishers with linking social capital. The latter allows for the transfer of resources from other societal levels, such as government. The chapter is based on a study carried out in two landing centers in the Hambantota District of southern Sri Lanka. Fishers in this region suffer major problems as a result of weakly developed credit, product and insurance markets, increasing costs of fishing equipment, and deficient educational and training services. Cooperatives have played a positive role in all these fields, improving the resilience of small-scale fishing households significantly. Two qualifications are, however, in order. The first is that not all fishing cooperatives in Sri Lanka function effectively. The research sample, which contrasted a well-functioning with a weakly functioning cooperative, demonstrates the range of results available. Second, cooperatives have been more oriented toward promoting welfare than toward resource conservation, and have contributed to a potentially harmful increase of fishing effort. In order to remain successful over the long term, cooperative leaders will need to start paying attention to resource governance.