Die "Blaue Revolution": Eine erneute Entwicklungstragödie? Indonesiens Seefischerei heute

Abstract

Although tremendous improvements in agricultural production have been achieved on Java during the last decade, it was criticized that those measures, which are commonly referred to as "Green Revolution", generally lead to an increasing concentration of land ownership, thus contributing to the growing pressure on the limited resource of land. Hence, it is small wonder that de- velopment planners became increasingly interested in the seemingly unlimited Indonesian marine resources. Despite its present, relatively small contribu- tion sea fish, particularly in its traditionally processed and marketed form, is the only source of animal protein the poor majority of the Indonesian population can afford, and in principle its supply-potential can still be increased enormously. But, despite the imperative necessity of improving the nutritional situation of the still fast growing population, both government and private investors were attracted by the high profits in foreign currency obtainable through export of certain marine commodities, shrimp and tuna in particular, that are generally becoming more scarce and therefore reaching ridiculously high, and still increasing prices on the world market. Consequently, modern highly efficient fishing technology penetrated the Indonesian fisheries (accompanied by heavy investments in the marketing-infrastructure and modernization of post-harvest technology), causing a dramatic transition from a generally subsistence-oriented, non-industrially organized activity, restricted to the vicinity of coastal villages, to a more and more commercially oriented, in- dustrially organized, and highly mobile form of commodity production. This development has had particularly tragic results on the coastal marine fishing of the densely populated island of Java, namely ruinous exploitation of coastal marine stocks, processes of dualization, growing social differentiation, and partial marginalization of the original producers, i.e. the small-scale fishermen.