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Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Ocean & Coastal Management

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ocecoaman

Exploring fisheries dependency and its relationship to poverty: A case

study of West Sumatra, Indonesia
Richard J. Stanford a, b, *, Budy Wiryawan a, Dietriech G. Bengen a, Rudi Febriamansyah b,
John Haluan a
a
Institut Pertanian Bogor, Bogor, Indonesia
b
Universitas Andalas, Limau Manis, Padang 25163, Indonesia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Like many nations Indonesia is pressing ahead with a marine spatial planning process intended to bring
Available online 3 September 2013 coherence to marine management. As a contribution to this, broad scale oceanographic surveys are being
undertaken at considerable cost to the tax payer. While the desire to deepen understanding of the
marine environment is admirable, the limited social and economic component of this process is
regrettable. Ironically, these socialeeconomic data are routinely collected and it is the process of inte-
grating these data that is missing. As a step in the right direction, this paper outlines a simple meth-
odology using socialeeconomic statistics consistently collected by government agencies and applies it to
one coastal province of Indonesia, West Sumatra. Two indices are developed to map fisheries depen-
dence and incidences of poverty amongst fishers at three spatial scales. Using census data of employ-
ment and poverty across all economic sectors, incidences of poverty amongst fishers are placed in the
wider poverty context in order to begin to answer the question of whether ‘fishery truly rhymes with
poverty’ using empirical data. This study identified the following trends; 1) that the number of fishers in
a state of poverty is increasing, 2) fishing together with crop farming are the two sectors in which in-
cidences of poverty are greatest, 3) there is no significant correlation between high fishing dependency
and high proportions of poverty amongst fishers, 4) there is a significant correlation between agricultural
dependence and total percentage poverty in coastal communities and 5) there are inverse correlations
between the strength of other economic sectors and poverty in the agricultural sector. Implications for
poverty alleviation initiatives and policy recommendations are briefly discussed. The methodology
described in this paper is instantly applicable to the ongoing implementation of the national marine
spatial planning program.
Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction Macfadyen and Corcoran, 2002) with an implicit understanding

Ninety-five percent of the world’s fishers are small-scale oper-
ators and more than ninety percent of these are found in devel-
oping countries (FAO, 2007). Small-scale fisheries have the
potential to generate significant profits, prove resilient to shocks
and crises, provide employment, alleviate poverty and meaning-
fully contribute to food security for millions of people (Allison and
Ellis, 2001; Andrew et al., 2007; Castilla and Defeo, 2005; FAO,
2003; Kent, 1997; Thorpe et al., 2006). Despite this, they often
referred to synonymously with poverty (Cunningham, 1993;
* Corresponding author. Institut Pertanian Bogor, Bogor, Indonesia. Tel.: þ62
8126657720.
E-mail address: rzstanford@gmail.com (R.J. Stanford).
that poverty equals fisheries and fisheries equal poverty (Béné,
2003). This “conventional wisdom on poverty in fisheries” (Copes,
1989) is based on the premise that fisheries are an open access
and common pool resource. The logic follows that this allows more
people to enter the fishery, leading to overexploitation and
impoverishment of the community (Gordon, 1954; Hardin, 1968).
In the ‘good times’, short-term economic surpluses in the fishery
provide an incentive for labour to move from lower paid jobs in
other economic sectors into the fishery (Cunningham, 1993). Even
where there is no economic surplus in the fishery, labour may
continue to be attracted into small-scale fisheries both in response
to short-term shocks and natural disasters (Machena and
Kwaramba, 1997), or as a long-term livelihood strategy for the
landless poor (Bailey and Jentoft, 1990). Combined with increased
mechanisation, as demonstrated off the coast of South India

0964-5691/$ e see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ocecoaman.2013.08.010
 Author's personal copy
R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
(Kurien, 1993), these conditions cause a downward spiral of over-
exploitation leading to poverty and poverty leading to over-
exploitation. In contexts of poverty and high discount rates,
overharvesting of the resource “may be necessary and unavoidable”
(Andrew et al., 2007; Ruddle, 1994). Population growth, together
with the effects of climate change, will place greater strain on
marine fisheries already in a state of crisis (Adger, 2000; Pauly et al.,
2003) and when fish stocks are depleted, poverty is likely to worsen
(Pauly, 1988; Stobutzki et al., 2006). In the wider natural resource
management literature, this is referred to as ‘a povertyeenviron-
ment trap’ (WCED, 1987). Communities stuck in this ‘trap’ are
characterised by high natural resource dependency coupled with
high vulnerability (Humphrey et al., 1993; World Bank, 2000) and
are prevalent in developing countries with limited adaptive ca-
pacity (Adger et al., 2003; Freudenburg, 1992). A fisheries example
of this ‘trap’ are the coastal small-scale fisheries of Bangladesh
(Islam, 2003, 2006). High population growth means that approxi-
mately 11.5 million people live in households dependent on fish-
eries for their livelihood. The majority of these do not own land and
rely heavily on common pool resources. Although the Bay of Bengal
is prone to cyclones and tropical storms, fishers routinely disregard
warnings and continue to fish, leading to many fatalities. Storms
destroy homes, community infrastructure and paddy fields, wors-
ening food security in the region. In the face of few alternatives,
fishers’ response has been to lean even more heavily on common
pool resources, using illegal gears and targeting protected species.
However, one must be careful not to oversimplify the relation-
ship between population growth, resource exploitation and
poverty (Leach et al., 1999). There is an increasing body of literature
that, while recognising the reality of ‘povertyeenvironmental
traps’, demonstrates the need to incorporate other causative factors
in a more comprehensive understanding of poverty and the envi-
ronment (Scherr, 2000). Barbier (2010) writes “given the resource-
dependence of rural populations in developing countries, and given
that many natural environments and habitats are declining in these
countries, it is tempting to conclude that poverty is a major cause of
environmental degradation in poorer economies. However, such a
conclusion may be too simplistic”. Macro and micro causative fac-
tors such as conflict, colonialism and postcolonialism, market and
demographic changes, disease, natural disasters and climate
change all have the potential to play a significant determining
factor in poverty and resource degradation (Thomas and Twyman,
2005). Rather than being passively trapped in endless cycles of
vulnerability (Freudenburg, 1992), many natural resource depen-
dent communities are dynamic places with a heterogeneity of
values, socio-economic structures and populations (Flint and Luloff,
2005) that are resourceful in responding to risks, often through
diversification both within and beyond agriculture (Ellis, 2000). It is
also not always the case that it is only the poor who rely heavily on
common pool natural resources. Generally studies associate
increasing incomes with declining natural resource dependency
(e.g. Cavendish, 2000; Jodha, 1986), but Narain et al. (2008) found,
in the case of households in Jhabua, India, dependence on some
natural resources increased with income and were not only a last
resort for the poor but a productive means of generating income.
Increasingly, studies specific to small-scale fisheries are uncov-
ering these wider social and economic factors that influence
poverty and resource degradation. In the example of Bangladesh
above, small-scale fishers continue to be trapped in poverty
through entitlement and capability deprivation and under-
performing institutions (Jentoft et al., 2010) with the poorest
fishers being excluded from the most fertile fishing grounds
(Kremer, 1994). Even after fisheries enhancement programs had
been technically successful, a lack of rights for the poorest families
left them powerless to recoup any of these benefits (Béné, 2003). In
141
the Pacific Ocean Territories coral reef exploitation rates were
influenced by human population growth, but also by the avail-
ability of alternative livelihoods and the strength of the wider
economy (Kronen et al., 2010). In the Western Indian Ocean human
population growth was negatively related to fish biomass (Cinner
et al., 2009) and lower developed locations were more dependent
on fishing. However fish biomass was four times lower at sites of
intermediate socio-economic development compared to locations
with low and high development. In lower economically developed
sites there was less mechanisation of boats and the presence of
socio-cultural institutions that limited marine resource exploita-
tion. Modernisation and the breakdown of these socio-cultural
institutions led to overexploitation and the use of destructive
fishing gears as occurred in Kenya (McClanahan et al., 1997). Béné
(2003) argues that “poverty is a complex phenomenon which en-
compasses, alongside low income, other concepts such as illness
and lack of education, social exclusion, entitlement failure,
vulnerability to shocks and political powerlessness”. For fishers
themselves, concern about the sustainability of the natural
resource may rank far below other ‘basic’ concerns such as food
insecurity and disease (Mills et al., 2009; Roy, 1993). Because the
causes of poverty are broader than biological exploitation alone,
marine resource management needs to address the social, eco-
nomic and ecological factors that are the root causes of vulnera-
bility (Anon, 2006).
1.1. Role of socio-economics on spatial planning processes
Because social wellbeing is intrinsically linked with ecological
wellbeing (Wilkinson, 1991), it is generally acknowledged that an
integrated socialeecological systems approach is needed (Berkes
et al., 2001; Charles, 2001; Cinner, 2011; Cinner et al., 2009;
Worm et al., 2009) that aims towards not only biological sustain-
ability but socio-ecological resilience (Marshall et al., 2007).
Despite the strong conceptual case for integration, in practice the
socio-economic and biological components of marine management
commonly remain disconnected. This is evident in the design and
monitoring of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). An MPA can be a
biological success, with thriving fish stocks, and yet a social failure,
with a breakdown of livelihoods and communities (Christie, 2004).
In other cases, such as MPAs in Kenya (Cinner et al., 2010), the
ecological components are well studied but the social components
much less so. There is a ‘disjuncture’ between the biological and
social components of MPA planning and implementation and this
arises from not understanding how fisheries relate to people
(Coulthard et al., 2011).
Sadly, even the social components of MPA sites are better
studied than the majority of non-MPA sites, regardless of the de-
gree of fisheries dependency. Globally, the coral triangle in South
East Asia is a hub of marine biodiversity with the nation of
Indonesia containing some of the world’s most biologically diverse
coral reef habitats (Hoeksema, 2007). Biodiversity hotspots con-
taining MPAs like Bunaken and Wakatobi have become hubs not
only for tourism but for scientific research (Edinger et al., 1998; Pet-
Soede and Erdmann, 2003; Sheppard and Wells, 1988). This
research has generated a significant contribution to the scientific
literature, predominantly written from a conservation angle.
Where these hotspots overlap with significant fishing communities
the relationship between fisheries and conservation has been re-
ported (e.g. Cassels et al., 2005). Elsewhere, much of the published
research available on Indonesia fisheries since 2005 can be grouped
into a response to the Asian tsunami (e.g. Garces et al., 2010; Tewfik
et al., 2008), global or regional overviews of fisheries that touch on
Indonesia (e.g. Allison et al., 2009; Stobutzki et al., 2006; Thorpe
et al., 2006) and lessons learnt from Integrated Coastal Zone
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142 R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
Management in Indonesia and the Philippines (e.g. White et al.,
2005; Sievanen et al., 2005). Beyond these, peer-reviewed pub-
lished research papers exploring poverty in Indonesian fisheries are
limited. There is a wealth of national research in the form of
research reports in both English and Indonesian however peer
reviewed socio-economic fisheries research from Indonesia is
scarce. Even within national programs the socio-economic aspects
of fishers form only a minor contribution. The Indonesian Marine
Spatial Planning (MSP) process is one example of this. MSP has
been described as an “idea whose time has come” (Ehler, 2008).
Many nations are pressing ahead with MSP (Kidd, 2013) initiatives
designed to meet social, economic and ecological objectives (Foley
et al., 2010). Although there is ambiguity concerning implementa-
tion of MSP typically it means a combination of ecological and
human use data (Ban et al., 2013; Dalton et al., 2010) and the
involvement of stakeholders in a decision making process
(Pomeroy and Douvere, 2008). In Indonesia, MSP was given a legal
foundation through the National Law No. 27 Year 2007 on Coastal
and Small Islands Management, which originated from a desire to
bring coherence to the planning and development process in the
marine environment and specifically, to “strengthen community
involvement”, “increase social, economic and culture value” and
“empower communities to improve welfare” (chapter 2, article 4
and Chapter 7, article 63 in Law 27 2007 (UU, 2007)). As well as
integration of existing data from a range of disciplines, new studies
have been initiated to fill in the gaps. Indeed a process of marine
mapping and zonation, including costly environmental surveys, is
underway in Indonesia. Having been analysed, these results
become available in a GIS format or as research reports (see for
example KKP, 2010a,b,c). While these documents are thorough in
covering the physical and chemical oceanography, their socio-
economic coverage is sparse. Moreover, there is no reference in
any of these documents to poverty despite this being a significant
issue in coastal communities in Indonesia. While social factors are
included in theory in MSP both in Indonesia and internationally,
most reviews view the benefits of MSP from an ecological, eco-
nomic and administrative perspective (see for example Ehler,
2008). This may reflect the bias in the literature towards studies
of MSP from Europe and North America where poverty alleviation
is not of primary importance. We contend that there is much social
data that could be incorporated into the Indonesian MSP process
that will enable MSP to achieve societal wellbeing aims as well as
ecological, economic and administrative goals. The challenge, as
Phillipson (2000) argues, is that there is a separation between
different disciplines of policy and administration using different
data traditions and frameworks and that “there has been little
progress in relating fisheries data to the socio-economic charac-
teristics of coastal regions.” With some 2 million small scale fishers
scattered across the Indonesian archipelago a more integrated
method is needed, that incorporates a broad range of social in-
dicators (Anon, 2010; Symes, 2000), and that straddles interdisci-
plinary boundaries (Phillipson and Symes, 2013) to ensure that
fishery dependent regions receive the attention they deserve in the
marine spatial planning process.
1.2. Fisheries dependency approaches
Although it is widely accepted that poor rural households have
a high dependence on natural resources, there is no consensus on
how to measure this dependency (Narain et al., 2008). Jodha
(1986) used nine different measures of household resource de-
pendency including income based measures, time allocation
measures and the proportion of members of the family involved in
gathering common-pool resources in rural India. Small-scale
fisheries in South East Asia are multispecies tropical fisheries
characterised by a high degree of occupational multiplicity where
fishers are dependent upon a whole ecosystem rather than on a
single resource (Bailey and Pomeroy, 1996). Livelihood portfolios
are highly context specific, varying from village to village
depending on factors such as access to markets and the ecological
goods and services available seasonally. In this context, household
resource dependency measures provide helpful insights into the
livelihood choices that poor families make. However, household
level analyses are burdensomely labour intensive if scaled up to a
regional level, especially if the intention is for these data to feed
into a national MSP process. At the regional level, routinely
collected statistics by government agencies are commonly the
basis for fisheries dependency analyses. Meaningful measures of
fisheries dependent regions need to capture the sense that “the
industry provides an essential backbone to its economic or social
structure” (Phillipson, 2000). Where a high proportion of the
working population are employed in the catching and down-
stream industries this is a strong indication that the region is
fisheries dependent. Some authors propose that 5% (Lindkvist,
2000) or 10% (Symes, 2000) of the working population should
be employed in fisheries to constitute fisheries dependence. Other
authors emphasize the socio-cultural component of fisheries as “a
way of life” that characterize the community and that contribute
much more than a source of revenue alone (Van Ginkel, 2001;
Jacob et al., 2001; Ross, 2013). Having weighed up the different
approaches Brookfield et al. (2005) define a fisheries-dependent
community as “a population in a specific territorial location
which relies upon the fishing industry for its continued economic,
social and cultural success”. The value in this looser definition is
that it 1) explicitly includes cultural aspects, 2) highlights the
reliance of fisheries for ‘success’, therefore hinting that a com-
munity may survive without fishing and 3) is not tied to a specific
percentage of employment in the industry. Certainly, meaningful
measures of fishing dependence need to couple fisheries statistics
with social indicators (Phillipson, 2000). The Scottish Government
writes “basic data on direct employment, first and sales value of
landings and the fishing fleet are adequate. What is missing is the
array of social data on demographics, housing, education, health
and social exclusion that can help to describe the varying eco-
nomic and social circumstances in which fisheries dependence
may occur. Such data exists but often with different spatial
formatting (Anon, 2010).”
The European Union uses a two-stage approach to determine
fishing dependent regions (Phillipson, 2000). This framework
firstly identifies fisheries dependent areas using absolute and
relative fishing activity rates (employment, landings and fleet data)
to determine the activity level and regional distribution of the
fishing areas. The second stage is economic and social profiling to
highlight those areas particularly vulnerable to a decline in fish-
eries activity by using a wide range of indicators including
demography, health, education and housing. The framework was
designed to develop a fisheries dependence index which includes
the contribution of fishing employment to the total employment of
an area, the absolute activity rate and the economic significance of
fishing within the regional economy. Symes (2000) suggests that
economic criteria for defining fisheries dependent areas should be
based on employment, added value and the contribution of fish-
eries to the regional economy because they are the most accessible
and straight forward. Certainly this concept of accessibility, or
availability, of data is important. Criteria must be selected that
meaningfully describe fisheries dependence but that are available
at the scale of the analysis. Typically there are complete data sets at
a macro-level which hide fisheries dependent communities. More
localized studies have the advantage of highlighting the de-
pendency of discrete areas but the disadvantage that data may be
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R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
sporadic. Whatever criteria are selected there must be a combina-
tion of both absolute and relative values in the index of fisheries
dependence otherwise important components of the fishing in-
dustry may be hidden (Symes, 2000). Relative numbers for example
tend to focus on the stereotypical more remote, sparsely populated,
rural fisheries dependent regions but ignore the existence of
important concentrations of fishing activity in the more populous
urban settings.
Analyses of fisheries dependency in developed countries
typically link fisheries to the regional or national economy
through some form of inputeoutput analysis (Seung and Waters,
2006; Kwak et al., 2005). In developing countries these analyses
are useful at macro-scales, and have been used to demonstrate the
importance of fisheries exports to the Indonesian economy (Yusuf
and Tajerin, 2007) and the importance of fisheries to a given re-
gion (Dault et al., 2009). However the intention of this paper is to
analyse fisheries dependency at multiple scales where the data
requirements of inputeoutput model are prohibitive. Even in the
comparatively data-rich, highly managed fisheries of the US, the
authors of one review of inputeoutput models concluded that
“published data for these variables are not sufficiently detailed to
be used for regional economic analysis of fisheries” and “to sup-
port accurate regional economic analysis of fisheries, it is critical
to have a comprehensive data collection program” (Seung and
Waters, 2006). Like many developing nations, data availability
and validity is one of the key stumbling blocks for conducting
research in a context such as Indonesia. The multi-species nature
of tropical coasts combined with widely dispersed landing and
sales sites and the reality that many of these transactions occur
through the informal non-tax paying sector, mean that the human
component of fisheries management data can be already inaccu-
rate even before the inherent uncertainties of stock assessment
are considered. Much of the fisheries statistics collected by fish-
eries staff through interviews also face the underlying incentive of
respondents to over-exaggerate the catch, boats or numbers of
fishers in order that they may have greater access to financial
support. In the face of these challenges, multi-sector census data
helps to reduce the incentive to over-exaggerate (see methods
below).
This study describes a fisheries dependency index, based on
routine fisheries statistics, and a poverty index, based on the
Indonesian Government’s definition of poor households, to explore
fisheries dependency and deprivation in coastal communities of
mainland West Sumatra. Fisheries dependence is analysed at three
different spatial levels to ensure that fisheries dependent com-
munities are neither overlooked nor artificially highlighted
(Phillipson, 2000). Next this study sets poverty amongst fishers in
the context of cross-sectoral poverty in order to explore broader
trends in poverty and specifically to probe the following question
with empirical data; to what extent does fisheries dependence go
hand in hand with poverty or, in the words of Béné (2003), “does
fishery rhyme with poverty?” These explorations form the pre-
liminary findings of an on-going research project into poverty in
fishing communities in West Sumatra and are included to
encourage debate and discussion about the relationship between
fisheries and poverty.
2. Materials and methods
Indonesia is politically structured into provinces (Provinsi), dis-
tricts (Kabupaten), sub-districts (Kecamatan) and villages (Kelur-
ahan). This study analysed fisheries dependence and poverty at
each of these political levels through the following steps; collation
of secondary data, verification of secondary data, analysis and
interviews.
143
2.1. Collation of secondary data
Secondary data were collated from three sources. From fisheries
statistics annually collected at the provincial and district level by
the Department for Fisheries (DKP). Through a once a decade
census, most recently conducted in 2010. Through a socialeeco-
nomic survey (Pendataan Sosial Ekonomi Penduduk) conducted by
the Centre for Statistics (BPS) that began in 2005 and was formal-
ized into the social protection program in 2008 and repeated in
2011 (BPS, 2011). In order to coincide with the decadal census of
2010, fisheries statistics were used from 2010 and combined with
poverty statistics from the closest year available, namely 2011.
2.2. Verification
Both through human failings (see for example Heazle and
Butcher, 2007), distrust between government departments and
the reality that much of the catch of West Sumatra is landed at
widely dispersed sites and quickly sold on the beach, making
monitoring very difficult, there are concerns over the reliability of
some fishing statistics. In the face of this uncertainty this research
has taken a slightly different approach. Census data, rather than
fisheries statistics, were used for four of the five measures in the
two indices in order to overcome the common obstacle in
measuring fishing dependency of inadequate data (Phillipson,
2000). These were routine censuses, using a standardized meth-
odology that covered all economic sectors of society. No interview
based data is impervious to mistruths yet the census interviews
were conducted by local members of the community and because
these interviews were not tied to financial help from a specific
sector there was little incentive to misreport. Besides data accuracy
the advantage of using census data is that it is available at an
extremely detailed spatial scale, valuable for GIS mapping. Data
from the 2010 census data were triangulated with fisheries statis-
tics collated from both the BPS and the DKP to identify discrep-
ancies. Where these existed, data from adjacent years were
compared to identify if the anomaly was an input error for 2010.
Where repeated discrepancies occurred these were brought to the
attention of the relevant local staff in the DKP for clarification.
The only measure of fishing dependency that originated from
fisheries statistics was production data. A sensitivity analysis was
used to assess the effect that inaccuracies in these data would have
on the fishing dependency index. The fishing dependence index
was run with and without the production data to identify the
changes that resulted, and the results from the fishing dependency
index using 2010 data were compared with 2008 data. This sensi-
tivity analysis demonstrated both robustness in the analysis and
consistency between results from 2008 to 2010 (see Section 3.2).
2.3. Analysis
2.3.1. Generating the fisheries dependence index
The challenge in measuring fishing dependency at a regional
level is to identify indicators that 1) meaningfully indicate depen-
dence on the fishing industry and 2) that are universally available.
In this analysis we selected the following:
1) Total number of fishersSmall-scale fisheries in West Sumatra, as
in much of South-East Asia, exist in a context of occupational
multiplicity (Bailey and Pomeroy, 1996) where incomes from
fishing may be supplemented through, for example, rice
farming, animal husbandry or tourism. The total number of
individuals fishing at some point in the year can be two or three
times the full-time fishers. To begin to assess the importance of
fishing in an individual’s livelihood portfolio and address this
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144 R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
uncertainty, the most recent fisheries statistics from some
districts separate fishers into three groups, full-time, part-time
major and part-time minor. However, in other districts the only
data available were the total number of fishers, which can
grossly inflate the numbers. In order to address this problem,
data were used from the 2010 census which forced an indi-
vidual to choose their main source of income. The fishing de-
pendency results below are therefore based on the most
conservative estimates and do not include individuals where
fishing is a minor source of income.
2) The percentage of the workforce employed as fishersThese data
were used from the 2010 census and referred to individuals
over 15 years of age who were actively employed in fishing as a
percentage of the total workforce.
3) The total production of fish and shellfishWhile the previous two
indicators emphasized the importance of fishing as an
employer, estimates of production and value give an indication
of the wider importance of the fishing industry and how sig-
nificant a certain location is in the fishing industry of the
province as a whole. Production means the total weight of fish
and shellfish landed into a particular area. Production data was
chosen because unlike value data it was universally available in
each district and sub-district, and because preliminary analysis
demonstrated that value at the sub-district level had been
calculated on the basis of a fixed ratio to production.
There are other criteria that could be included in an analysis
such as this. The direct and indirect contribution of marine fisheries
compared to other economic sectors would be a clear indicator of
how important the fisheries sector really was to the regional
economy. Similarly, the downstream effects of the fishing industry
through the processing and retail sectors are important multipliers
of the catching sector that are part of fishing dependency. However
although these indicators would meaningfully indicate dependence
on the fishing industry they were unavailable at the level of the
sub-district and village.
Simply converting these data to ordinal data and ranking their
position would have hidden the degree of difference between each
sub-district and made a composite index less precise. Instead the
data were normalized using the following equation:
Z ¼ ðX uÞ=S
where X is the data (e.g. total fishers in one sub-district), u is the
mean and S is the standard deviation. The advantage of normal-
izing, as long as the data are an approximately normal distribution,
is that the relative difference between values for any districts
continues to remain the same (Manarolla, 1989). This normalized
data for the three indicators was used to calculate a composite
statistic, the mean of the individual normalized data. Each indi-
vidual indicator was weighted evenly and summed to form a
composite index, using the methodology of Manarolla (1989). Us-
ing this method a positive value ranked the location above the
mean and a negative value below the mean.
2.3.2. Generating the poverty in fishing communities index
The dual criteria of meaningfully indicating poverty and uni-
versal availability were also used in the development of a poverty
index. There have been localized poverty studies in West Sumatra
but for universal availability the only option is the social economic
census. Poor households (Rumah Tangga Miskin) are identified
based on the following 14 criteria (BPS, 2011):
1. Floor space in the house is less than 8 m2 per person.
2. The floor is made from earth, bamboo or cheap wood.
3. The walls are made from bamboo, poor quality wood or blocks
without plaster.
4. There is no toilet in the house or one shared with someone else.
5. There are no electric lights.
6. Drinking water comes from a well, river or rainwater.
7. Cooking fuel is wood, kerosene or charcoal.
8. Only eats red meat, chicken or milk once per week.
9. Only buys one set of clothes per year.
10. Only eats once or twice a day.
11. Not able to pay for medicine at the local healthcare clinic.
12. The head of the household works as a farmer with land less
than 0.5 ha, farm labourer, fisher, building labourer or other
employment that brings in less than Rp. 600 000 per month.
13. The highest education level achieved by the head of the
household was only primary school.
14. They have no savings or assets above Rp. 500 000 that can be
sold quickly such as motorbikes, livestock, gold, boats or others.
If a household fulfilled 9 or more of the criteria they would be
classified as poor (Rumah Tangga Miskin) and both the number of
households and number of individuals in a state of poverty were
recorded. The disadvantage of this methodology is that some of the
criteria used to measure poverty above are less appropriate for
fishing communities. Fishers typically prioritize their catching as-
sets (boats and gear) rather than their houses so criteria 1e5 may
not be clear measures of poverty in coastal communities. Similarly,
criteria 8 specifies the eating of red meat or chicken but does not
mention fish, a high source of protein easily obtainable by fishers.
Despite these shortcomings, this methodology incorporates ele-
ments of healthcare, sanitation, education, shelter, nutrition as well
as income to generate a composite understanding of poverty.
The composite poverty index comprised two indicators:
The first of these was the total absolute number of individuals in
a state of poverty where their main income source was fisheries.
This measure was used to give an indication of where most poor
fishers are concentrated in West Sumatra. Note that these data
referred to individuals between the ages of 18 and 60 rather than
the census 2010 which recorded any of the workforce above 15
years of age.
The second indicator was the percentage of total fishers in a
state of poverty. This measure was used to identify areas that did
not necessarily contain the most poor fishers but that contained
higher than average proportions of poor fishers.
As for fisheries dependency above, these two indicators were
normalized and weighted evenly to generate a composite index of
poverty in fisheries households.
Fishing dependency and poverty amongst fishers were
compared to dependency and poverty in all other economic sectors
using a KendalleTau correlation matrix.
2.4. Interviews
Purposive sampling was used to identify initial interviewees
based on their knowledge and field experience of poverty in small-
scale fisheries and fisheries statistics, from regional and provincial
DKP offices in West Sumatra. These initial interviews led to further
potential interviewees through ‘snowballing’ (Cook and Crang,
1995). Semi-structured interviews were conducted with office
based staff and extension officers of the DKP, village heads and
fishers/fishers wives in sixteen sub-districts including all of the
fishery dependent sub-districts. These interviews were aimed to; 1)
verify that observations from secondary data concurred with the
reality in the field (ground-truthing), 2) answer specific question
that the analysis had raised, 3) identify the main types of poor
fishers in an area and 4) explore the broader implications of the
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R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
analysis with stakeholders. Interviews were recorded, translated
and typed up. Iterative analyses were used to display the data and
draw conclusions (Miles and Huberman, 1994). Key points and
recurring themes were highlighted through data display and these
were triangulated, compared and contrasted with other
interviewees.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Overview of fisheries in West Sumatra
Mainland West Sumatra comprises six coastal districts that
contain thirty one sub-districts. Thirty seven percent of the work-
force from these sub-districts are employed in agriculture,
including marine capture fisheries which contributes 5% of total
employment. Of these 23 029 fishers, 85% live and fish in three
districts, Pesisir Selatan, Pasaman Barat and Padang. However,
production from each district is not proportionately related to the
numbers of fishers. For example, the fishers of Pesisir Selatan,
Padang and Agam land on average 3e4 tons of fish per year per
fisher compared with Pariaman (8 t/yr/fisher), Padang Pariaman
(14 t/yr/fisher) and Pasaman Barat (17 t/yr/fisher). These differ-
ences are caused by fleet structure with Pasaman Barat containing
twice as many large boats (>10 gross tons) as Pesisir Selatan,
including a fleet of 29 purse seines that in 2010 landed 29 578 t, the
equivalent of the entire production of the whole of Pesisir Selatan.
When landings data were analysed in conjunction with poverty
the results of several districts were counter-intuitive. In Fig. 1
positive values mean that the district is performing better than
the provincial average; it is earning more value or has less poor
fishers than the province. In Pesisir Selatan, Padang and Agam the
value of the catch per fisher is worse than the provincial average of
0.11 billion Indonesian Rupiah per fisher, yet the proportion of poor
fishers is, surprisingly, better than the provincial average (39%). The
reverse is true in Pasaman Barat and Padang Pariaman. Of all the
districts Pasaman Barat lands the most fish and the value of the
catch per fisher is higher than average but Pasaman Barat performs
the worst of the districts in terms of the proportion of poor
households. The distribution of the wealth generated from fishing
in Pasaman Barat is an issue in this district where one in every two
fishers is classified as poor. The poverty data does not reveal which
Fig. 1. Catch value and poverty for each district compared to the provincial average.
Value refers to the total catch value of a district divided by the total fishers in that
district compared to the provincial average (grey bars). Poverty indicates the per-
centage of fishers in a district that are poor compared to the provincial average (black
bars).
145
fishing sector the poor fishers are in but existing studies of Pasaman
Barat (Elfindri and Zein, 2001; Zein et al., 2007) coupled with the
field interviews of this present study identify two main groups of
poor fishers. Firstly, there are the crew members who do not own
their own boat or fishing gear and who work as labourers and
receive a small share of the catch value. According to Elfindri and
Zein (2001) these crew are trapped in poverty, rarely able to
accumulate the financial capital to become independent. There
were mixed responses about the nature and extent of this ‘poverty
trap’ (Barrett and Swallow, 2006). The majority of crew in-
terviewees protested that their share of the catch was only enough
for daily needs and that they were in a constant debt cycle making
upward social mobility impossible. Long hours at sea left them with
little time to develop other alternative livelihood sources. However
skippers disagreed, maintaining that the two issues holding crew
back from a more prosperous future were wastefulness and a lack of
initiative. They recounted several examples of crew members who
had saved and worked hard to become a captain of the vessel. Being
a captain guarantees a larger share of the profits which provided
the financial capital to purchase their own vessel. Some skippers
conceded that when they made the step up from captain to vessel
ownership the natural resource was in a healthier state than it is
presently. The truth may be somewhere between these two ex-
tremes and appears to depend on factors such as the age of the
crew member, access to financial credit, the number of dependents,
and attitudes to risk, with one crew member admitting that he did
not want the stresses and strains of working independently.
Secondly, there are traditional fishers using small boats that
they own themselves powered by long-tail machines or paddles
and fishing with gillnets or hand-lines. A third and much smaller
group of the poor who are dependent on fishing are the small-scale
fish processors who dry fish on the beach. What is striking in this
analysis is that the modernisation of the fleet on its own may not
lead to improvement in the livelihoods of the poor if profits are
concentrated in a few hands through an inequitable system of catch
sharing. Pariaman performs more predictably with both a higher
than average catch value per fisher and a lower than average inci-
dence of poverty. This is what would be expected in an equitable
system.
3.2. Identification of fishing dependent areas
Sub-districts scoring negatively for the fishing dependency in-
dex were classified as non-fishing dependent locations and those
scoring positively as fishing dependent locations. Fishing depen-
dent sub-districts were further categorised into highly fishing
dependent locations, with a dependency index of above 0.50, and
fishing dependent locations, with a fishing dependency index of 0e
0.50. The highly fishing dependent group included the six sub-
districts Sei Beremas, Sasak Ranah Pasisie, Tarusan, Sutera, Linggo
Sari Baganti, Bungus Teluk Kabang (Fig. 2). In these districts, per-
centage employment in sea fishing ranged between 9.1% (Linggo
Sari Baganti) and 33.5% (Sei Beremas). Sei Beremas and Sasak Ranah
Pasisie are the most highly fishing dependent areas. Not only are at
least one in four of the workforce employed as fishers, but together
these two sub-districts are responsible for landing 45% of the total
catch from all six districts (71 191 tons). The fishing dependent
group comprised five sub-districts; Lengayang and Batang Kapas
from Pesisir Selatan, Sungai Limau from Padang Pariaman, Tanjung
Mutiara from Agam and Koto Tangah from Padang. Ten of the
eleven fisheries dependent sub-districts in West Sumatra have
employment in fisheries greater than 5%. The one exception to this
was Koto Tangah. For Koto Tangah, the geographical area of the sub-
district is so large that the coastal fishing population is dwarfed by a
large working population (54 654), which reduced the proportion
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146 R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
Fig. 2. Fishing dependent sub-districts ( ) and highly fishing dependent sub-districts
( ) in mainland West Sumatra. District names are shown in italics.
of employment in fishing to 3.2%. For this reason Koto Tangah is an
example of the necessity of using a composite measure to calculate
fishing dependence that incorporates total fishers and production
rather than relying solely on the percentage of fishers in an area.
Together these eleven fishing dependent sub-districts included 70%
of the total fishers and 73% of total production in the six districts.
The sensitivity analysis demonstrated that possible inaccuracies
in the fishing production data did not affect the identification of the
fishing dependent communities. When the fishing index was
calculated with and without the production data, no sub-district
moved between the two categories of fishing dependent and
non-fishing dependent and the six most highly fishing dependent
sub-districts remained unchanged. The eleven fishing dependent
sub-districts from the 2010/2011 analysis also demonstrated fishing
dependency using data from 2008. The main difference observed in
the 2008 data was the inclusion of four new sub-districts in the
fishing dependent category. Of these IV Jurai has simply migrated
from just below the average to just above the average. The move-
ment of the remaining three sub-districts can be explained by the
difference in survey technique between the DKP surveys which
documented the total fishers including those that may seldom fish
and the 2010 census which forced interviewees to choose their
main source of livelihood. Both of these sensitivity analyses
demonstrated robustness of this method and the veracity of the
underlying data.
Just because an area is non-fishing dependent at the sub-district
level it does not mean that there are not pockets of fishing
dependency at the village level. Using disaggregated data available
from 2008 it was possible to run the analysis to the village level.
While most of the fisheries dependent villages could be predicted
on their location within a fisheries dependent sub-district there
were two exceptions. Both Kinali (in Pasaman Barat) and Lubuk
Begalung (in Padang) contained highly fishing dependent villages
with 25% and 19% employment in fishing respectively. Similarly,
until the analysis moved to an increasingly detailed spatial scale it
was not obvious how fishing dependent certain pockets of the sub-
district of Tarusan are. Sungai Pinang is an example of this. Sungai
Pinang is an isolated village in Tarusan surrounded by jungle with a
total population of 1396. Although the 415 fishers are fewer than
some other villages, 47% of the total workforce are employed in
fishing. Highly fishing dependent areas such as these only begin to
stand out as the level of spatial resolution became increasingly
detailed and these village examples provide powerful evidence for
poverty and fisheries dependency to be viewed at multiple spatial
scales.
3.3. Fisheries dependence in relation to poverty
The total number of fisheries households living in poverty is
increasing in mainland West Sumatra. Twenty five of the thirty one
coastal sub-districts recorded an increase in poor fisheries house-
holds between 2005 and 2011. Only one of the eleven fishing
dependent areas (Tanjung Mutiara) showed a decline in household
poverty. According to the results of this analysis, 39% of the total
fishers in the province are poor. Despite a raft of projects and
programs aimed at alleviating poverty in fishing households, these
data confirm that in mainland West Sumatra the proportion of poor
fishers is growing.
If poor households were evenly distributed throughout the
population one would expect that the sub-districts that contain
most fishers would also contain most poor fishers. This assumption
proved to be generally true with a strong Kendall Tau correlation
(0.84, p < 0.01). Nine of the eleven fishing dependent sub-districts
ranked highly on the poverty index (Fig. 3) and there was a sig-
nificant positive correlation between the poverty index and the
fishing dependency index (0.45, p < 0.01). These nine sub-districts
represented in the top right of the scattergraph are the poor fishing
dependent group. They include Sasak Ranah Pasisie where 28% of
the workforce are fishers and 58% of these are poor. This means that
16% of the entire workforce of this sub-district are poor fishers.
Similarly, in Sei Beremas 15% of the total workforce across all eco-
nomic sectors are poor fishers. These sub-districts clearly demon-
strate exceptionally high fishing dependency coupled with high
incidences of poverty amongst fishers.
The second group, represented in the bottom right corner of the
plot, are the two exceptions, namely those fishing dependent sub-
districts that demonstrate a low poverty index. In both Tanjung
Mutiara and Sutera the proportion of fishers in poverty (23% and
27% respectively) is considerably lower than the provincial average.
The analysis of poverty amongst all economic sectors (Section 3.4)
coupled with the interviews provided some explanations for the
low poverty index amongst fishers in Sutera. Proportions of poverty
in all major economic sectors in Sutera including agriculture, con-
struction, transportation and trade are lower than average. Poverty
amongst fishers appears to be lower because poverty amongst all
sectors in Sutera are lower, seemingly because of the wider avail-
ability of fertile flat land. Tanjung Mutiara is similar, it also has a
strong plantation and smaller crop farming sector which contrib-
utes to lower total poverty. Site visits to both locations suggested
that two mechanisms were resulting in the spillover of ‘prosperity’
to fishers. The first was occupational multiplicity meaning that
some fishing households had alternative land based sources of
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R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
Fig. 3. Fishing dependency and poverty amongst fishers in coastal sub-districts of mainland West Sumatra. Sub-districts are ranked using normalized composite indexes.
livelihood. Secondly, through occupational multiplicity or through
prosperous family members, fishers were able to access financial
credit in order to invest in better fishing boats and equipment in
these locations. These two factors were helped by the physical
geography of both areas where sheltered mooring was available in
contrast to adjacent fishing communities. These conditions in the
case of Tanjung Mutiara resulted in migrant workers moving to the
area and living in simple houses on the beach. As was the case in Sei
Beremas, it was these migrant workers as opposed to the original
residents who were often the poorest section of the fishing com-
munity according to the community leaders.
The third group of note are those sub-districts that exhibited
low fishing dependency and yet had exceptionally high incidences
of poverty amongst fishers (top left of the plot). In Kinali, Bayang
and Koto Balingka 58e64% of fishers are poor. Although none of
these areas registered as highly fisheries dependent at the sub-
district level these data suggest pockets of significant deprivation
exist amongst fishers. Again, the information gleaned from the
wider sectoral analysis helps to explain what is happening in
Bayang, Koto Balingka and Kinali. In each of these sub-districts both
agricultural dependency and total poverty across all sectors is
higher than average. Hence what seems to be happening is that
these sub-districts are poorer than average and that no sector,
including fisheries, is immune from this effect. The poverty
amongst fishers in Kinali is further magnified by geographical
isolation and the use of simple traditional fishing gear (Zein et al.,
2007).
Does fishing dependency go hand in hand with poverty? The
data has demonstrated that more fishers means more poor fishers
in absolute terms but is it also the case that highly fishing depen-
dent areas have greater proportions of fishers in a state of poverty
as well? Because the poverty index contained an absolute measure
of poor fishers, it was necessary to test the correlation between the
fishing dependency index and the percentage of poor fishers and
this showed that there was no statistically significant relationship
between the two (0.07). This is important because it demonstrates
147
that highly fishing dependent areas do not necessarily need to
“rhyme with poverty” and that poverty in fisheries needs to be
understood in the context of poverty amongst other economic
sectors.
3.4. Cross-sectoral poverty and its relationship to fisheries
Fishing ranks as the second poorest economic sector. The
average incidence of poverty amongst fishers in the coastal sub-
districts of West Sumatra (39%) is higher than both the average
incidence of poverty across all economic sectors in these sub-
districts (23%) and, in particular, the total agricultural sector
excluding sea fishers (36%). Outside of agriculture, the construction
sector (average 31%) is the closest to the fishing industry in terms of
the incidence of poverty. The only sector to have a higher incidence
of poverty than the fishing sector is crop farming (average inci-
dence of poverty, 42%). This sector employs more people than any
other and is four times larger than the fishing sector.
Of those actively employed in the 31 coastal sub-districts
included in this analysis, 37% of the workforce were employed in
agriculture but 59% of the total poor work in agriculture. From in-
dividual economic sectors there are significant positive correlations
between total poverty and percentage employment in the crop
farming (p < 0.01), fishing (p < 0.05) and plantation sectors
(p < 0.01) (Table 1). This correlation coefficient is increased
(although not significantly) when all agricultural sectors are
correlated with total poverty. Outside of the agricultural sector
there is an inverse relationship between total percentage poverty
and employment in all the other economic sectors. All of the cor-
relation coefficients are negative and for the finance, service,
transportation, construction and trade sectors there is a statistically
significant inverse correlation (p < 0.01) between higher employ-
ment in these sectors and higher poverty. In the West Sumatra
context the phrase “fishery rhymes with poverty” could legiti-
mately be replaced with “agriculture (including fishery) rhymes
with poverty”.
 Author's personal copy

Table 1
Relationships between poverty and dependency across all economic sectors. Correlation coefficients from a KendalleTau analysis. Names of sectors with a white background refer to percentage employment in that sector. Names of
sectors with a grey background refer to the percentage of poor in that economic sector.

Percentage employment in Percentage poverty in this

this economic sector economic sector

Plan Fish. An. Tot. Ind. Con. Trad. Fin. Hot. Tran. Serv. Crop Perk Fish. An. Tot. Ind. Con. Trad. Hot. Fin. Tran. Serv. Tot. Tot
Hus. Ag. Hus. Ag. pov. pov e
fish.

Crop farming 0.38** 0.08 0.30* 0.58** 0.11 0.44** 0.66** 0.60** 0.19 0.33** 0.51** 0.30* 0.13 0.19 0.07 0.27* 0.10 0.03 0.01 0.15 0.16 0.33* 0.13 0.38** 0.40**
Plantation 1.00 0.15 0.08 0.73** 0.41** 0.65** 0.61** 0.41** 0.53** 0.46** 0.70** 0.40** 0.09 0.09 0.02 0.15 0.15 0.08 0.08 0.09 0.12 0.28* 0.17 0.34** 0.33**
Fisheries 0.15 1.00 0.09 0.17 0.18 0.12 0.03 0.11 0.03 0.03 0.15 0.26* 0.30* 0.14 0.09 0.25 0.35** 0.08 0.11 0.02 0.06 0.09 0.00 0.30** 0.27*
Animal 0.08 0.09 1.00 0.00 0.27* 0.14 0.07 0.23 0.26* 0.09 0.04 0.09 0.08 0.10 0.16 0.18 0.21 0.10 0.07 0.25 0.07 0.19 0.02 0.13 0.14
husbandry
Total 0.73 0.17 0.00 1.00 0.38** 0.71** 0.79** 0.58** 0.38** 0.61** 0.80** 0.47** 0.16 0.20 0.00 0.26* 0.10 0.12 0.02 0.11 0.08 0.22 0.14 0.45** 0.46**
agriculture
Industry 0.41 0.18 0.27 0.38 1.00 0.39** 0.29* 0.15 0.41** 0.28* 0.26 0.28* 0.13 0.19 0.07 0.12 0.36** 0.03 0.23 0.01 0.05 0.13 0.28* 0.18 0.15
Construction 0.65 0.12 0.14 0.71 0.39 1.00 0.55** 0.41 0.41** 0.56** 0.66** 0.37** 0.10 0.16 0.03 0.20 0.20 0.11 0.02 0.11 0.17 0.18 0.17 0.39** 0.40**
Trade 0.61 0.03 0.07 0.79 0.29 0.55 1.00 0.54** 0.27* 0.54** 0.67** 0.39** 0.09 0.15 0.03 0.22 0.12 0.07 0.02 0.17 0.07 0.24 0.15 0.41** 0.43**
Finance 0.41 0.11 0.23 0.58 0.15 0.41 0.54 1.00 0.15 0.41** 0.60** 0.41** 0.19 0.30* 0.01 0.38** 0.04 0.08 0.17 0.14 0.18 0.16 0.01 0.50** 0.49**
/insurance
Hotel 0.53 0.03 0.26 0.38 0.41 0.41 0.27 0.15 1.00 0.18 0.31* 0.09 0.04 0.00 0.05 0.03 0.26* 0.03 0.33** 0.23 0.09 0.19 0.28* 0.05 0.05
/restaurant
Transportation 0.46 0.03 0.09 0.61 0.28 0.56 0.54 0.41 0.18 1.00 0.57** 0.31* 0.00 0.16 0.05 0.18 0.14 0.14 0.11 0.06 0.02 0.01 0.09 0.33** 0.32*
Services 0.70 0.15 0.04 0.80 0.26 0.66 0.67 0.60 0.31 0.57 1.00 0.47** 0.14 0.20 0.03 0.29* 0.05 0.16 0.11 0.11 0.12 0.16 0.05 0.51** 0.51**
Crop farming 0.40 0.26 0.09 0.47 0.28 0.37 0.39 0.41 0.09 0.31 0.47 1.00 0.14 0.23 0.13 0.61** 0.15 0.24 0.26* 0.15 0.07 0.02 0.10 0.67** 0.66**
Perkebunan 0.09 0.30 0.08 0.16 0.13 0.10 0.09 0.19 0.04 0.00 0.14 0.14 1.00 0.23 0.11 0.32* 0.19 0.22 0.15 0.00 0.15 0.12 0.11 0.28* 0.28*
Fisheries 0.09 0.14 0.10 0.20 0.19 0.16 0.15 0.30 0.00 0.16 0.20 0.23 0.23 1.00 0.20 0.48** 0.14 0.32* 0.33** 0.03 0.06 0.29* 0.23 0.45** 0.42**
Animal 0.02 0.09 0.16 0.00 0.07 0.03 0.03 0.01 0.05 0.05 0.03 0.13 0.11 0.20 1.00 0.16 0.25* 0.24 0.28* 0.14 0.13 0.32* 0.16 0.19 0.21
husbandry
Total 0.15 0.25 0.18 0.26 0.12 0.20 0.22 0.38 0.03 0.18 0.29 0.61 0.32 0.48 0.16 1.00 0.27* 0.39** 0.39** 0.05 0.00 0.15 0.28* 0.73** 0.69**
agriculture
Industry 0.15 0.35 0.21 0.10 0.36 0.20 0.12 0.04 0.26 0.14 0.05 0.15 0.19 0.14 0.25 0.27 1.00 0.24 0.44** 0.04 0.08 0.33** 0.39** 0.26* 0.27*
Construction 0.08 0.08 0.10 0.12 0.03 0.11 0.07 0.08 0.03 0.14 0.16 0.24 0.22 0.32 0.24 0.39 0.24 1.00 0.47** 0.08 0.06 0.50** 0.33** 0.43** 0.44**
Trade 0.08 0.11 0.07 0.02 0.23 0.02 0.02 0.17 0.33 0.11 0.11 0.26 0.15 0.33 0.28 0.39 0.44 0.47 1.00 0.11 0.03 0.51** 0.55** 0.42** 0.43**
Hotel 0.09 0.02 0.25 0.11 0.01 0.11 0.17 0.14 0.23 0.06 0.11 0.15 0.00 0.03 0.14 0.05 0.04 0.08 0.11 1.00 0.23 0.07 0.11 0.13 0.13
/restaurant
Finance 0.12 0.06 0.07 0.08 0.05 0.17 0.07 0.18 0.09 0.02 0.12 0.07 0.15 0.06 0.13 0.00 0.08 0.06 0.03 0.23 1.00 0.01 0.02 0.05 0.04
/insurance
Transportation 0.28 0.09 0.19 0.22 0.13 0.18 0.24 0.16 0.19 0.01 0.16 0.02 0.12 0.29 0.32 0.15 0.33 0.50 0.51 0.07 0.01 1.00 0.38** 0.14 0.16
Services 0.17 0.00 0.02 0.14 0.28 0.17 0.15 0.01 0.28 0.09 0.05 0.10 0.11 0.23 0.16 0.28 0.39 0.33 0.55 0.11 0.02 0.38 1.00 0.24 0.25
Total poverty 0.34 0.30 0.13 0.45 0.18 0.39 0.41 0.50 0.05 0.33 0.51 0.67 0.28 0.45 0.19 0.73 0.26 0.43 0.42 0.13 0.05 0.14 0.24 1.00 0.95**

A single asterisk * with a pale grey background means significant p < 0.05 and a double asterisk ** with a dark grey background means significant p < 0.01. Tot. Pov e fish means the total percentage poverty of all sectors minus the
fisheries component of poverty.
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R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
High dependency on agriculture correlating with poverty and an
inverse relationship between the other economic sectors and
poverty suggested an urban rural divide. At the district level the
divisions between urban and rural areas are clear. The district
Pasaman Barat has the highest employment in the agricultural
sector (74%), followed by Pesisir Selatan (57%), Agam (56%) and
Padang Pariaman (40%). The two cities, Padang and Pariaman have
much smaller agricultural sectors (8 and 14% respectively) and
much larger service sectors (32%). A similar trend follows regarding
poverty distribution. Eighty five percent of the working poor in
Pasaman Barat, are in the agricultural sector, 81% in Pesisir Selatan,
68% in Agam and 60% in Padang Pariaman. In Padang and Pariaman
the poverty is more evenly distributed between the agricultural,
construction, trading, transport and service sectors (between 8%
and 24% in each). There is a degree of similarity in the total per-
centage poor between the two urban districts Padang and Pariaman
(17% and 18% poverty) and between Pesisir Selatan, Agam and
Padang Pariaman (24, 25 and 26% respectively). Pasaman Barat
stands alone with a total proportion of poverty much higher than
the other districts (35%). The reasons for this appear to be both
geographical and political in nature. Interviews with government
staff and community leaders highlighted that the major road
network to Pasaman Barat was only built in the 1980s and that this
area only became an independent district in 2004 and prior to this
was overlooked. There is also the issue of the palm oil industry in
Pasaman Barat. The relationship between the plantation (mostly
palm oil) economic sector and poverty both within and outside the
fisheries sector is complicated. Large palm oil companies negoti-
ated agreements with community leaders in the past to use vast
tracts of land for palm oil. This agreement provides that a propor-
tion of the land will be cultivated with the profits going to local
communities. So in some villages all of the families are receiving
regular substantial monthly payments direct into their bank ac-
count in addition to their normal source of livelihood. Culturally
these payments are having a huge effect with people now able to
borrow money secured on the basis of these palm oil payments. In
other areas the payments are much smaller and infrequent and
fishing families bemoan that their land was sold off without any
benefit to them. In these contexts all that the palm oil offers is the
opportunity to work as a labourer for a small daily wage. Besides
the large-scale company plantations some fishing families also
have their own land where they grow palm oil. Typically those that
do not own land are the families that move to the fishing centres of
Sei Beremas and Sasak in order to look for work in the fishing in-
dustry often as crew members. It is these migrant workers (per-
antau) that form a significant proportion of the poor fishing
families in Pasaman Barat. Some of these migrant workers have an
identity card registering them to a different location making them
ineligible for government assistance.
At the sub-district level these same urbanerural trends are
demonstrated by urban pockets situated in predominantly rural
districts. An example of this is the sub-district of IV Jurai (in Pesisir
Selatan) which contains the district capital of Painan. Despite
having a large fishing fleet IV Jurai had lower than average
employment in the whole agricultural sector because of a large
service sector comprising government employees who are based in
this sub-district (32%). Across all sub-districts there is a significant
inverse correlation between employment in the service sector and
total poverty (p < 0.01) and IV Jurai demonstrates this with a low
total poverty of 15% of the population (compared to the average of
23%). This low poverty effect seemingly spills over into the agri-
culture sector so that incidences of poverty amongst farmers and
fishers in this sub-district are lower than average.
The logic can be summarized as follows. In urban areas where
the service, trade and financial sectors are strong and agricultural
149
dependence is low then total poverty is low as demonstrated by
significant inverse correlations between these sectors and total
poverty. Where total poverty is low even those agriculturalists
that are present will have lower percentage poverty. This is
demonstrated by a significant positive correlation between total
percentage poor and total percentage fishing poor and between
percentage crop farming poor with total poor (both p < 0.01).
Where there are pockets of fishing dependency in urban areas
(such as Koto Tangah or Lubuk Begalung in Padang), both the total
proportion of poverty across all sectors and the proportion of
poverty in the fishing sector is lower than in rural areas. Fishing
ranks as the second poorest economic sector (as defined by the
percentage of that economic sector that are poor), however the
degree of poverty in fishing communities varies widely and it is
the wider geographic and economic context that those fishers find
themselves in which will determine the level of poverty. A fisher
born into a pocket of fishing in an urban context (such as Padang
Barat), is less likely to find themselves in poverty than a fisher in a
rural community in Pasaman Barat. However, it would also be true
to recognise that someone born into a fishing family in Padang
Barat where the rate of poverty is 37% is much more likely to be
poor than if you are born into any other non-agriculture sector in
Padang Barat. The limited and localised ability of strong service
and financial sectors in the urban centres to reduce rural poverty
concurs with the thrust of the wider literature which maintains
that growth in non-agricultural sectors is less important for
poverty reduction than growth in the agricultural sector
(Cervantes-Godoy and Dewbre, 2010; Montalvo and Ravallion,
2009; Ravallion and Datt, 2002). Specifically, Christiaensen and
Demery (2007) demonstrate that the effect of growth in
reducing poverty in Africa is 1.6e3 times larger in the agriculture
sector compared to growth in other sectors. Significantly, a study
examining pathways out of rural poverty in Indonesia concluded
that while employment in the non-farm sector was an important
pathway out of poverty, most of the rural agricultural poor escape
poverty while remaining in rural areas, employed in agriculture,
rather than through rural to urban migration (McCulloch et al.,
2007). While diverse economic sectors in urban areas in West
Sumatra have the potential to boost poverty alleviation efforts
locally, these wider studies confirm that to coherently tackle
poverty in the rural areas growth must come from within the
agricultural sector.
4. Conclusion
The aim of this paper has been to demonstrate that there is a
rich mine of multidisciplinary data that could be integrated into the
Indonesian marine spatial planning process to ensure that research
and poverty relief/fishing development activities are targeted
where they are most needed. In West Sumatra the analysis has
identified the following specific conclusions relating to poverty and
fishing dependency:
 Despite poverty relief efforts the numbers of fishers in a state of
poverty is growing. There are two main types of poor fishers;
those that use simple, traditional boats/fishing gear and crew/
labourers. Some poor fishers depend entirely on the sea for
their income and others have diverse livelihoods. Many of the
poorest fishers in the highly fishing dependent sub-districts
(e.g. Sei Beremas) are migrant workers.
 If poverty alleviation and the improvement of livelihoods is the
aim of government policy, modernisation of the fleet may not
be the most effective method of achieving this if there con-
tinues to be an inequality between the income of the owner
and the crew.
 Author's personal copy
150 R.J. Stanford et al. / Ocean & Coastal Management 84 (2013) 140e152
 There is no linear correlation between fishing dependency and
poverty amongst fishing communities. There are however
significant correlations between total dependency on agricul-
ture and total poverty.
 Fishing and rice farming are the two sectors with the highest
incidences of poverty. Exactly how high this is relates to in-
cidences of poverty in other sectors and the strength of other
economic sectors.
 The difference between urban and rural contexts emerges from
this analysis. Incidences of poverty in the agricultural sector
decrease where there is a stronger wider economy (urban
areas). Strengthening the wider economy and the development
of non-agricultural livelihoods is an important pathway out of
poverty, yet growth in the agricultural and fisheries sector
needs to be the first priority in government poverty alleviation
policy and programs.
Through the process of compiling the data and interviewing
government staff and stakeholders three challenges were identified
and recommendations to tackle these are given below.
 Fisheries statistics need improving. The multi-species and multi-
landing sites nature of the fisheries makes gathering statistics
time consuming and there are not the staff available to
adequately do this. Because the Indonesian government is
currently encouraging fishers to form groups to access financial
capital we recommend that one of the conditions of receiving
aid is that these groups gather simple statistics that could be
used to calculate catch-per-unit effort for their group members.
In the absence of this kind of monitoring there is a real danger
of over-capitalisation as the financial capital of these groups is
invariably used to increasing fishing effort.
 There is a fundamental distrust between different government
departments. Despite the census data being designed to enable
integration of government departments and coherence of in-
terventions around a single data set, various departments still
insist on using their own statistics for their own projects.
Different departments do not trust each others’ data and are
reluctant to share. Because some fishers are migrant workers
and/or demonstrate occupational multiplicity there will always
be a degree of inconsistency between the data set from the
previous year and the reality on the ground. We recommend
ground-truthing of statistics by extension officers in conjunc-
tion with community leaders to streamline wasted effort and
inspire confidence in the data.
 A lack of coherence in poverty alleviation efforts. Poverty
alleviation and community development initiatives are costly
and the number of interventions from the government is
limited. However, on many occasions community leaders
bemoaned the fact that their needy area had been over-
looked. This is precisely why the type of broad scale socio-
economic analysis outlined in this paper could bring priori-
tisation to the marine spatial planning process. Part of the
marine spatial planning process identifies the suitability and
carrying capacity for various activities such as aquaculture.
We recommend that this component should be used in
conjunction with socio-economic data in order to prioritise
the most needy areas for interventions and ensure evidence
based decision making.
The contention of this paper is that the simple methodology
described here is instantly applicable to the ongoing implementa-
tion of the national marine spatial planning program and will add
considerable integration of a much needed socio-economic compo
nent to that process.
Acknowledgements
We gratefully acknowledge the time commitment of staff from
the centre for statistics (BPS), Padang, the provincial planning and
development department (BAPPEDA) Padang, and the provincial
and district departments of fisheries (DKP) for making data avail-
able. We thank the extension officers from the DKP who helped
conduct the field research and the community leaders, fishers and
fisher’s wives who shared their knowledge. We also thank the three
anonymous referees for their constructive feedback.
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