The condition of the fisher community is still closely related to poverty. Some information from the results of research that describes the profile or portrait of the life of fisher communities in Indonesia shows that 1) low education, 2) inadequate housing, 3) low income, between Rp. 2,000,000 – Rp. 3,000,000 per month, 4) Low expenditures ranging from Rp. 1,000,000 – Rp. 3,000,000; 5) these expenditures cannot meet social needs such as education costs (education is still neglected), 6) vulnerable to tidal floods, 7) traditional fishing technology, 8) low capital, 9) low welfare from the income of family members; 10) coastal rural development is low; 11) fisher’s life is identic to poverty; 12) the level of fisher’s welfare is below other sectors; 13) dominant as labor fisher or ABK (ship crew); 14) equal population of women and men.
Those backgrounds become the reason for Dr. Ir. Harsuko Riniwati, MP to conduct a study on methods of developing fisher communities, which she conveyed at the Professor Inauguration, Wednesday (26/8/2020). The title of the study he raised was Fisher Community Development with the Inverted Pyramid Method Empowerment Approach.
In the theory so far, the hierarchy of empowerment starts from welfare to the top of decision making. The inverted pyramid means that empowerment begins with decision-making skills for the resources. “It is expected that the development of the fisher community, the ability of social aspects will be improved so that the ability to analyze the problems faced, aspects of quality and sustainable resources will be guaranteed,” she said.
According to her, the social aspect has not been touched by the development in fisheries and marine affairs. So far, the empowerment of fishing communities still prioritizes economic indicators even though social aspects are also important. This is indicated by the low social index of fishing communities.
The fisher community development strategy needs to be carried out by taking a different approach, which is by adding the Main Performance Indicator (IKU) which touches the intangible social aspects. It should be noted, the management of the marine and fisheries sector uses six KPIs, which are the growth of gross domestic product (GDP), fishermen exchange rate (FER), production volume, production value, fishers’ average household income (FAHI) and fishermen’s average income. When viewed from the six IKUs, Indonesia has succeeded. However, poverty is still close to fishing communities.
Fishing communities are still vulnerable to various fishing business risks which are the risk of season, weather, price fluctuations, small fleets, simple technology, competition in coastal areas, shared resources, over fishing, conflicts of interest with local fisher, industry players and foreign fishers, the use of destructive tools, social changes, cultural, political, and others. Thus, development that is only economically oriented has not been able to solve the problem.
According to Harsuko, the methods that can be used to see the success of human-based development need to be improved with the human development index (HDI), gender development index (GDI), and Gender Empowerment Index (GEI).
Indicators in calculating HDI are education, health and economy. Indonesia at the global level is relatively low. Indonesia’s HDI ranking is in 113th position of 189 countries in 2016 and is 111th of 189 countries in 2019.
The comparison between women’s HDI and men’s HDI is a gender development index (GDI). The index shows the same basic human capabilities as HDI but particularly emphasizing the unequal achievement of men and women is the GDI. In terms of the gender empowerment index (GEI), there is also a difference between the quality of resources for men and women. Gender empowerment indicators include dimensions of representation in parliament, decision making and income distribution. The main problem or the root of the problem is that the fisheries development approach method is not yet complete and the empowerment approach requires a different paradigm.
The new paradigm is to initiate empowerment from decision making on intangible social capital-based resources. As well as developing intrinsic motivation since it is proven to be a strong factor and mediator towards improving the overall development performance of fishing communities. [Sr/ Humas UB/ Trans. Iir]
