Assessing poverty and the relative importance of small-scale lobster fishing activity in coastal communities, southeast Madagascar

Over 1.3 billion people worldwide are living in multidimensional poverty, where income and access to critical goods, services and utilities is limited. A lack of reliable, accessible, and resource-efficient methods of measuring poverty is a barrier to assessing the effectiveness of conservation and development initiatives designed to alleviate poverty and promote prosperity. This study employed the Basic Necessities Survey (BNS) as a context-specific tool for measuring multidimensional poverty. The approach produces a BNS score based on the level of access to assets (e.g., cooking equipment) and services (e.g., access to a doctor) that are locally considered basic necessities. The BNS was applied in southeast Madagascar to assess levels of prosperity in six coastal communities and gain insights into the relative importance of lobster fishing as an economic activity. All households surveyed (n=533) were found to be below the context-specific poverty line, with most households lacking access to multiple basic assets and services. Across all six communities, households engaged in the lobster fishery were found to be experiencing significantly lower levels of poverty, demonstrating the socio-economic importance of this fishery. Poverty levels were similar between communities, despite differences in non-governmental organisation (NGO) interventions and community-based fishery management, with the exception of one community experiencing significantly higher levels of poverty. The findings demonstrate the pervasive nature of poverty and deprivation in this region and have implications for ongoing efforts to promote sustainable management of marine resources. The BNS survey was found to be a resource-efficient tool, capable of measuring multidimensional poverty in a context-specific manner to support comparison within and between communities. The study demonstrates the BNS approach is an accessible and powerful tool for conservation and development practitioners. It is a nuanced measure of multidimensional poverty in communities, providing a means to monitor the impact of conservation and development interventions.