Small is Beautiful

Whilst covering the artisanal fishermen in Mauritius, the title of E.F. Schumacher's work on people-centred economics sprang to mind. For those of you not familiar with his seminal work, 'Small is Beautiful' critiques modern economic systems of mass production, where big organisations are stripping satisfaction out of work, degrading the worker to being no more than a cog in a large machine of the production line. As neither craft skill, nor the quality of human relationships is any longer important, the economic system becomes dehumanising, making decisions on the basis of profitability rather than human need.

Schumacher's core argument centres around a model of economic enterprise that put relationship, craft and environment at the heart of people's way of working. This, he argued, would enable environmental and human sustainability - a hallmark of radical 60s and early 70s political ideas.

In Mauritius, this idea can easily be seen in reality by visiting the artisanal fishermen working in their little boats up and down the coast. Small-scale fishing is one of the biblical professions that's been around since time immemorial, and is arguably the least harmful way of reaping benefits from the ocean. 

Sadly, the fishermens' story is all-too-familiar: catch rates and fish stocks are in decline, and they squarely blame the large, foreign industrial fishing fleets for their demise. As their government is more interested in quick cash from the sale of unlimited fishing licences to the purse seiner fleets than in a future for its own fishermen, these guys struggle for survival. Making their discontent known, the local fishermen escorted our ship with a small flotilla of boats to the IOTC meeting where they held a small protest. To the cynical, this may seem futile and naive, but if I try to put myself in their shoes, what else would I do?

It may seem romantically idealistic to be praising the virtues of small, but I feel these fishermen deserve our sympathy, support and a degree of protection from industrial fishing fleets.