Introduction

In this final chapter we explore what governability is for fisheries and how this can guide the ways forward. We take governability as conceived in chapter 16 as our starting point. A fisheries governor aiming to put governance into action should first examine the governability of the fishery. Then we proceed with several ideas on how to enable and enhance governability, concluding with some issues faced by fisheries governors when changing governance.

We try to communicate a perspective of how to undertake the journey towards improving governance, rather than a road map. We urge practitioners to set out on this journey, to make a start even if the way is not entirely clear. Reform is an iterative, adaptive process promoted by change agents. Often the next steps reveal themselves only after the process has reached an appropriate stage. Those who would promote better governance of fisheries may not have a clear view of the target, which will be different for each situation, but should have a strong sense of which direction to go in order to get a better view of the target.

The Concept of Governability

The concept of governability introduced in chapter 16 is central in the process of change towards better governance. Fish chains will differ regarding the extent to which they are governable, i.e., have characteristics that facilitate or hamper governance. Chains with low diversity, complexity, and dynamics may be inherently more governable than those for which these characteristics are high. This may influence the approach that actors agree to take. For example, a large commercial fishery that uses a few large vessels to exploit a few relatively stable resources with outputs that are processed and sold in supermarkets may be more governable than a widely dispersed, small-scale fishery from which products are distributed fresh by a large number of middlemen with little organisation of either fishers of distributors.

Ideally, a change agent would evaluate a fishery in terms of the characteristics that determine its governability – whether the governance is matched with the system to be governed regarding diversity of actors, levels of organisation and capacity, channels and networks for information flow, inequities in actor group empowerment – and determine where inputs would be most likely to improve governability.