Poverty is a complex phenomenon involving failure to meet a range of basic human needs and the denial of options that have consequences for opportunities to live long, healthy and creative lives. Poverty in fishery-dependent communities, therefore, is not solely related to the abundance of the catch, market opportunities or the state of the resource. It is also critically dependent on how the benefits from the use of fishery and other resources are used and whether a range of basic services (e.g. in health and education) are provided.

Poverty is both partly an outcome of inadequate fisheries management (resulting in depleted fish stocks, overcapacity, etc.) and a constraint in improving fisheries management. It is a constraint because, in the context of generally poor communities, it is impossible to exclude people living on the edge of survival from fishing without creating alternative sources of food and livelihoods. Exhortations about reducing pressure on fisheries resources are futile as hungry people will choose, quite reasonably, to survive in the short-run rather than to preserve or rebuild a resource that they might not otherwise survive to benefit from. Increasing the contribution of fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security thus is an integral part of the larger challenge of development.

If management of small-scale fisheries is neglected in conditions where the demand for fisheries resources is greater than the productive capacity of the resources, then inevitably there will be a depletion of stocks and a consequent reduction in benefits accruing from fishing. Effective management of fisheries aims to move fisheries towards use of aquatic resources that will eventually approximate an economically optimal position which is inextricably tied to the biological health of the resources in question. In this way, benefits accruing from use of the fisheries resources are maximized for society as a whole. But it is equally important to ensure that there is an equitable distribution of the benefits that do accrue, resulting in an increase in the contribution made by small-scale fisheries to poverty alleviation and food security.