Investigating the role of social capital - fishing cooperatives and the resilience of the coastal poor in Sri Lanka

03/03/2009 - 15:30

3 March 2009
15.30-17.00 hrs

AMIDSt & IIAS Lecture by Dr Oscar Amarasinghe, Ruhuna University, Sri Lanka. Discussant: Dr. M. Bavinck

Venue:
Roetersstraat 11, Amsterdam
Building E - Room E.020
drinks afterwards in the lobby of building G (First floor)

The major thrust of this presentation is that, social capital is a resource small-scale fishers can draw upon to cope with vulnerability. Social capital is defined as, social groups, networks which foster cooperation among individuals, forming a resource, which members of such organisations could draw upon at times of distress. Fisheries cooperatives in the Hambantota District of Sri Lanka fit well into this definition. Strong interpersonal relationships glued by trust, fostering cooperative behaviour among members of cooperatives, have facilitated fishers to secure the required livelihood capitals and deal effectively with inadequately developed markets and other shocks. Nevertheless, the success of co-ops has been associated strongly with their access to state, non-state and development agencies- the ‘linking social capital'. If fishers can secure the required livelihood capitals through cooperation, this will have a positive impact on poverty alleviation. However, the impact on resource health still remains uncertain. The role of the cooperative has been more welfare-centric than resource-centric. Thus, the success of fisheries cooperation in the long run depends on successful intervention on resource management.

Oscar Amarasinghe - B.Sc (agriculture); M.Sc. (agricultural development); Ph.D. (economic and social Sciences) -is an academic from the University of Ruhuna Sri Lanka. After successfully completing his B.Sc. degree in agriculture, he joined the University of Ruhuna, in the South of Sri Lanka as a teacher in agricultural economics. He pursed his postgraduate studies in Belgium; in the State University of Ghent and Facultes Universitaires Notre Dame De La Pais in Namur. Dr. Amarasinghe has nearly 25 years of experience in working with small scale fishing communities and has worked in the fields of risk management, credit, marketing, and production relations in southern fishing communities of Sri Lanka. He was involved in preparing the ‘white paper' of Sri Lanka's National Fisheries Policy in 2004. He has been involved as a member of an array of international groups engaged in fisheries related research work; the IDPAD project on ‘Legal Pluralism in fisheries' led by Maarten Bavinck of MARE, UVA, the ‘Poverty Alleviation in Fisheries' project initiated by Svein Jentoft of MAREMA, University of Tromso, and ‘Building Capacity for Sustainable Governance in South Asian Fisheries: Poverty, Wellbeing and Deliberative Policy Networks" a project initiated by Allister McGregor of University Bath, are some of his recent international involvements. Dr. Amarasinghe is a member of the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF).