The COVID-19 pandemic represents a health crisis and an emerging socioeconomic disaster. In small-scale fisheries, impacts have been wide-ranging, on markets and prices, as well as on fishing activities, which have been affected by physical distancing and other restrictions and disruptions in transport. We are also seeing remarkable innovation in response to this crisis, including use of technology to reach new markets, new ways to preserve products until markets recover, and moving towards supplementary livelihoods. These opportunities are not feasible to all small-scale fisheries or across gender. Innovation thus will have to take into consideration inclusiveness, equity and social justice as the main principles. The session will provide overview of the ways in which small-scale fisheries around the world are being impacted. It will further explore the social, environmental, political, and technological innovations and adaptations that small-scale fishers and fish workers in low- and high-income countries are using to cope and recover from the ongoing crisis. Finally, it will discuss opportunities and risks for small-scale fisheries in a post-Covid world.
Ratana Chuenpagdee
(TBTI/OFI, Canada)
Ratana Chuenpagdee is a university researcher professor at Memorial University in St. John’s. She leads the global partnership for small-scale fisheries, Too Big To Ignore (TBTI), which aims at elevating the profile of small-scale fisheries and rectifying their marginalization in national and international policies. Some of the current activities are ‘Blue Justice’ for small-scale fisheries, transdisciplinary capacity training to support the implementation of the SSF Guidelines, and innovative fisheries governance. Ratana also co-leads a research module on informing governance responses in a changing ocean for the Ocean Frontier Institute, another major collaborative research between universities, governments, private sectors and communities.
Marianne Manuel
Dakshin Foundation, India
Marianne Manuel is the Assistant Director of Dakshin Foundation and currently coordinates Dakshin’s covid-response efforts to support fishworkers across the Indian coast. In the pre-Covid era her work addressed the impacts of coastal laws and policies on traditional fishing communities and the dynamics between traditional governance systems and the modern state. She has worked closely with fishworker unions and environmental organisations undertaking several grassroots activities including training and skill-sharing on coastal governance mechanisms. She has produced bilingual educational and outreach material on various Indian environmental laws for strengthening fisher leaders’ capacities in playing new governance roles.
Jenny Oates
Blue Ventures, UK
Jenny is the Knowledge Development Manager at Blue Ventures, which is a marine conservation NGO based in the UK. Our mission is to rebuild tropical fisheries with coastal communities, working across a range of field sites including Madagascar, Belize and Timor Leste. In this role, she supports field and technical teams in documenting their work and sharing lessons by coordinating the production of knowledge-based outputs for internal and external audiences. She has recently been involved in synthesizing information from across Blue Ventures’ field sites on the impacts of the COVID-19 crisis on small scale fisheries, and the community responses to this situation.
Cristina Pita
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Cristina Pita is a Senior Researcher at Center of Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She has been engaged in several projects and has published extensively on small-scale fisheries, sustainable use of marine resources, market initiatives for small-scale fisheries products, fisheries governance and coastal community development. She is part of the TBTI network since its inception. She is a co-editor of the book “Small-scale fisheries in Europe: status, resilience and governance”, recently published by Springer. She is currently leading an initiative to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small-scale fisheries.
Josh Stoll
Local Catch Network, USA
Joshua is an Assistant Professor of Marine Policy in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. His research focuses on questions about coastal community resilience, seafood distribution, ocean governance, and fisheries policy and seeks to contribute to the sustainability of our oceans and the communities that depend upon them. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Bates College, a Masters in Coastal Environmental Management from Duke University, and a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine. Prior to returning to Maine to join the faculty, he was an early career research fellow in the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere Program at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Sweden.
Maria Jose Espinoza
COBI, Mexico
María José Espinosa Romero is a Conservation and Fisheries Program Director at Comunidad y Biodiversidad. Happily working in the field of fisheries in partnership with coastal communities, academia, governments over the last two decades. Graduate studies in resource management and environmental studies at University of British Columbia. Currently, undertaking research on the role of the state and fisheries governance as part of a PhD joint-programme on public policy and governance with the United Nations and Maastricht University.
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development affirms that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) “seek to realize the human rights of all.” The Agenda and human rights are tied together in a mutually-reinforcing way, with about 92 % of the 169 SDG targets linked to international human rights instruments. The cross-cutting principle of “leaving no one behind” is indeed one of the most transformative elements of the 2030 Agenda. It reflects the human rights principles of equality and non-discrimination, and human rights can help identify groups of people in the risk of being left behind. Arguing from human rights perspective, the webinar will first illustrate how human rights data can help identify challenges and opportunities when states implement SDG target 14.b on access of small-scale artisanal fishers to marine resources and markets, including the commitment by states to leave no one behind. Next, the webinar will discuss challenges and opportunities in implementing SDG target 14.b with examples from the North and the South.
Moderators
Josh Stoll
Local Catch Network, USA
Joshua is an Assistant Professor of Marine Policy in the School of Marine Sciences at the University of Maine. His research focuses on questions about coastal community resilience, seafood distribution, ocean governance, and fisheries policy and seeks to contribute to the sustainability of our oceans and the communities that depend upon them. He holds a B.A. in Environmental Studies from Bates College, a Masters in Coastal Environmental Management from Duke University, and a PhD in Ecology and Environmental Sciences from the University of Maine. Prior to returning to Maine to join the faculty, he was an early career research fellow in the Global Economic Dynamics and the Biosphere Program at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences in Sweden.
Niaz Dorry
NAMA, USA
Niaz has been a community organizer for over 30 years. The life changing moment came in 1994 when as a Greenpeace campaigner she switched from organizing in communities fighting for environmental justice to organizing fishing communities. From the start she recognized the similarities between family farmers’ fight for a more just and ecologically responsible land-based food system and that of community-based fishermen fighting to fix the broken sea-based food system. She has been serving as the coordinating director of the Northwest Atlantic Marine Alliance since 2008. One of the first things NAMA did after Niaz took the helm was to join the National Family Farm Coalition as its first non-farming member. The two organizations entered into an innovative shared-leadership model on May 1, 2018, putting Niaz in the new role of serving the work of both organizations and further cementing the relationship and interdependence between land and sea.
Speakers
Sofie Gry Fridal Hansen
DIHR, Denmark
Ms. Sofie Gry Fridal Hansen, MSc in International development studies, works as an adviser for the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) working with human rights and development. Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda in 2015, the DIHR has been leading the way to show the concrete links between human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals and to operationalise this mutually reinforcing connection in implementation. In this context, Sofie works to promote human rights in fisheries and aquaculture by documenting & addressing human rights implications to promote a sustainable development of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors.
Alicia Said
MCAST, Malta
Alicia Said has recently finished her post-doctoral fellowship with IFREMER (Brest, France) and is now appointed Director Fisheries (Research and Policy Planning) within the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights for Malta. Through her science and policy-related career, Alicia has worked on fisheries governance matters, taking an interdisciplinary approach to investigate and inform fisheries legislative and policy mechanisms implemented at various governance levels. She has conducted research in fishing communities in the Mediterranean, and in the French Caribbean, focusing on the implications of various policy tools including marine spatial planning, quotas, marine protected areas, and has recently published work on the theory of access, and the sustainable development goals in the context of small-scale fisheries.
Cristina Pita
University of Aveiro, Portugal
Cristina Pita is a Senior Researcher at Center of Environmental and Marine Studies (CESAM) and the University of Aveiro, Portugal. She has been engaged in several projects and has published extensively on small-scale fisheries, sustainable use of marine resources, market initiatives for small-scale fisheries products, fisheries governance and coastal community development. She is part of the TBTI network since its inception. She is a co-editor of the book “Small-scale fisheries in Europe: status, resilience and governance”, recently published by Springer. She is currently leading an initiative to investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on small-scale fisheries.
Joe Zelasney
FAO, Italy
Joe Zelasney joined the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations as a Fishery Officer in 2016. Prior to joining FAO he held positions in the public, non-profit, and private sector. His experience includes a graduate fellowship with US Coast Guard’s District Thirteen Commercial Fishing Vessel Safety Program. Joe managed The Pew Charitable Trusts’ ending illegal fishing project for five years, and he has owned and operated a commercial salmon fishing business in Kodiak, Alaska.
This session takes us across seas and sectors, illustrating that globally, small-scale fisheries (SSF) exemplify the focus of the Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) aim to “leave no one behind”. Experts will speak on the key opportunities to work with SSF to progress multiple SDGs amidst three imminent transformations: food system transformation, Blue Economy and climate change. These speakers will also provide compelling arguments on known risks that sustainable and equitable development will face if the rights, values and flexibility of SSF are eroded. First, we will hear about how SSF rights and livelihoods are instrumental in achieving other SDGs, but also how SSF sustainability is dependent on other SDGs being achieved. Second, we will examine the role, risks and opportunities for small holders (fisheries and agriculture) in addressing SDG2 on food and nutrition security. Third, we will examine SDG5 on gender equality within SSF, and a presentation on SDG 13 with respect to SSF preparedness for climate change.
Moderators
Pip Cohen
WorldFish, Malaysia
Dr. Philippa (Pip) Cohen is a persistent island-dweller; born and raised in the fishing state of Tasmania in Australia, she has wandered and lived on small islands across the Pacific and Asia. Pip is the leader of the Small-scale Fisheries Research Program with WorldFish and an adjunct Research Fellow at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University. Pip leads a team of researchers working on fisheries and with fishers in the island nations of the Pacific, in the deltas of Asia and in the Great Lakes and coasts of Africa. The research Pip leads and supports is interdisciplinary and applied, focusing on improving food and nutrition security, and human well-being outcomes, through good governance of fisheries and natural resources.
Lena Westlund
FAO consultant, Sweden
Ms Lena Westlund (MSc University of Gothenburg, Sweden) has extensive experience from fisheries and development cooperation. She has lived and worked both long and short term in-country and been engaged in projects on poverty alleviation and food security in small-scale fishing and fish farming communities. At the global level, she has been involved with policy and has contributed to several FAO publications, e.g., on the ecosystem approach to fisheries (EAF) and on marine protected areas (MPAs) and fisheries. She was engaged in the SSF Guidelines development process and now supports their implementation. Ms Westlund currently lives in Stockholm, Sweden, from where she continues to work as an FAO consultant.
Speakers
Gerald Singh
Memorial University & the Nippon Foundation Nereus Program, Canada
Dr. Gerald Singh brings critical research insights to examine the challenges ocean governances face in addressing the full breadth of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals. With his research situated primarily in the science-policy interface, Gerald is committed to use research to drive policy improvements toward more equitable and sustainable ocean futures. His research brings new understandings to the dynamics between social, economic, and environmental dimensions in sustainable development. This focus takes form in the following ways: 1) assessing cumulative anthropogenic impacts on the environment and understanding the consequences to people; 2) determine priority policy actions and plans to achieve specific sustainable development objectives; 3) understand risk and uncertainty in sustainability policy and management.
Margaret Nakato
World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers
Maragaret Nakato is a passionate voice for women, fishers, and fish workers amid the challenges and pathways to sustainable development. She is the executive director of the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers (WFF). She is the coordinator and founder of Katosi Women Development Trust, a women’s organization in the fisher communities north of Lake Victoria in Uganda. For 19 years she has successfully mobilized women to work together, empowering them with knowledge and skills that centrally place women as drivers of transformative initiatives, with multiplier effects on the wider community. Margaret has a degree in development studies specializing in community development.
Mele Ikatonga Tauati
Pacific Islands small-scale fisheries professional
Mele Tauati has the sea in her veins. Mele is from the Kingdom of Tonga – a tiny island nation lying in the expanse of the Pacific Ocean. Mele presents today with the perspective of Small Island Developing States (SIDS), and as a Pacific Islands small-scale fisheries professional. Mele has extensive experience working with the Pacific Islands nations, commencing in 2006 with the Fisheries Division in Tonga. In this role Mele was a key contributor to the implementation of new, transformative legislation that re-established community rights to govern their own fishing grounds. Mele has since held roles as a Senior Fisheries Officer for Coastal Fisheries with Samoa’s Fisheries Division and, most recently, FAO’s Subregional Office as a Junior Professional Officer.
Paul Onyango
University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania
Dr. Paul Onyango is a passionate provider of research that illuminates the challenges of poverty alleviation, fisheries management and adaptation to climate change, drawing on perspectives and experiences of women and men living in agricultural and fishing communities. Paul teaches at the Department of Aquatic Sciences and Fisheries Technology and the Centre for Climate Change Studies of the University of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has been investigating the dilemmas authorities face in confronting poverty and managing small-scale fisheries as well as adaptation to climate change and variability mechanisms of communities and pastoralism as a production system. Paul holds a PhD from the Artic University of Norway, formerly the University of TromsØ.
The Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) were adopted in 2014 by the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI). They are based on internationally accepted human rights standards and are to be interpreted and implemented in accordance with those standards and by using a human rights-based approach (HRBA). This approach seeks to ensure the participation of small-scale fishing communities in non-discriminatory, transparent and accountable decision-making processes by putting particular emphasis on the needs of vulnerable and marginalized groups and on gender equality. While the HRBA is a recognised practice, there is still a need to further explore how applying human rights standards can advance the implementation of the SSF Guidelines. Accordingly, this webinar will discuss what the HRBA means in the context of small-scale fisheries. Good practices will be showcased and concrete examples presented by those directly involved and driving change.
Moderator
Manas Roshan
ICSF, India
Manas Roshan is a programme officer with the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), based in Chennai, India. ICSF is an international non-governmental organization that works towards the establishment of equitable, gender-just, self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector.
Speakers
Sofie Gry Fridal Hansen
DIHR, Denmark
Ms. Sofie Gry Fridal Hansen, MSc in International development studies, works as an adviser for the Danish Institute for Human Rights (DIHR) working with human rights and development. Since the adoption of the 2030 Agenda in 2015, the DIHR has been leading the way to show the concrete links between human rights and the Sustainable Development Goals and to operationalise this mutually reinforcing connection in implementation. In this context, Sofie works to promote human rights in fisheries and aquaculture by documenting & addressing human rights implications to promote a sustainable development of the fisheries and aquaculture sectors.
Md. Mujibul Haque Munir
COAST Trust, Bangladesh
Mr. Md. Mujibul Haque Munir has a post-graduate degree in Political Science and is active in the farmers and fishers social movement. He is the Co-Chair of the Inland Fisheries Working Group of the World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP). He is also one of the Steering Committee Members of the Farmers Forum (FAFO) of the International Fund for Agriculture (IFAD) and is the elected CSO Asia representative to the Steering Committee of Extra-Territorial Obligation Council based in Geneva. He works as the Joint Director of COAST Trust where he is the focal person for donor projects and programs.
Jesu Rethinam
National Fishworkers Forum, India
Ms. Jesu Rethinam is a Law Graduate and is active in fisheries, women and other social movements. She is an Executive Committee member of National Fishworkers Forum (NFF), Core Committee member of the Women Forum of NFF and the Convenor of Coastal Action Network. She is also an active member of the Ocean Grabbing and Women Working Groups of the World Forum of Fisher People (WFFP). She is selected as an IPC member, representing WFFP. She is also the Director of SNEHA, the NGO working for the livelihood rights of the fisher communities and protection and promotion of coastal ecology, for the past 35 years.
Vivienne Solis Rivera
CoopeSoliDar, Costa Rica
Vivienne Solis Rivera is part of CoopeSoliDar R.L a Cooperative for Social Solidarity based in Costa Rica that promotes the conservation of biological and cultural diversity as a main asset for local communities resilience. Working in Central America, the cooperative aims to strengthen the capacity of small-scale fisheries and promote a human rights base approach to conservation of marine resources and a fair and just distribution of the benefits derived from its use. She works on community-based and shared governance models and has promoted civil participation in policy making that strengthens a human based rights approach to marine conservation and small-scale fisheries.
Suzanne Kuria
AWFISHNET, Tanzania
Suzanne trained in Community Development and Counseling and has in the past worked for Development organizations. She owns a fish farm and interacts across the entire fish vale chain. She is the current 1st Vice President of AWFISHNET, Vice – Chair of African Women in Agribusiness Network- Kenya, Sec. General of Commercial Aquaculture Society of Kenya the Chair of the Fisheries sub-sectors board of Kenya Private Sector Alliance. She is also a trainer. Suzanne is passionate about what she does and believes, given a chance, right linkage, provided with an enabling environment each person’s story can have a happy ending.
For small-scale fisheries, the “blue economy” and the “blue growth” is a sink or swim. Will their rights and interests be secured? Will their potentials be enhanced? Or will they experience further marginalization? The Blue Justice concept reflects the need for a critical examination of how small-scale fisheries are coping in the blue economy, whether they achieve justice relative to other ocean users, including industrial fisheries and coastal/marine tourism, aquaculture or energy production. It also aims to explore strategies, opportunities and synergies, which may make small-scale fisheries more resilient and robust. Blue Justice has at its core a set of governance principles that recognizes the need for small-scale fisheries to have equity, access, participation and rights in order for the blue economy to be of benefit to them. The session invites reflections on what these principles are or should be, based on experiences of small-scale fisheries in the past and in the new blue economy.
Moderators
Ratana Chuenpagdee
TBTI/OFI, Canada
Ratana Chuenpagdee is a university researcher professor at Memorial University in St. John’s. She leads the global partnership for small-scale fisheries, Too Big To Ignore (TBTI), which aims at elevating the profile of small-scale fisheries and rectifying their marginalization in national and international policies. Some of the current activities are ‘Blue Justice’ for small-scale fisheries, transdisciplinary capacity training to support the implementation of the SSF Guidelines, and innovative fisheries governance. Ratana also co-leads a research module on informing governance responses in a changing ocean for the Ocean Frontier Institute, another major collaborative research between universities, governments, private sectors and communities.
Alicia Said
MCAST, Malta
Alicia Said has recently finished her post-doctoral fellowship with IFREMER (Brest, France) and is now appointed Director Fisheries (Research and Policy Planning) within the Ministry for Agriculture, Fisheries and Animal Rights for Malta. Through her science and policy-related career, Alicia has worked on fisheries governance matters, taking an interdisciplinary approach to investigate and inform fisheries legislative and policy mechanisms implemented at various governance levels. She has conducted research in fishing communities in the Mediterranean, and in the French Caribbean, focusing on the implications of various policy tools including marine spatial planning, quotas, marine protected areas, and has recently published work on the theory of access, and the sustainable development goals in the context of small-scale fisheries.
Speakers
Moenieba Isaacs
PLAAS, South Africa
Dr. Moenieba Isaacs is a Professor at the Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies, at the University of Western Cape, South Africa. Her research is on understanding the social and political processes of fisheries reform in South Africa and southern Africa, mainly through the lens of SSF policy processes and implementation. She has worked extensively with communities to find policy solutions to their problems, highlighting the need to deal with social differentiation, poverty inequalities and gender dynamics in fishing communities. Isaacs is a “Blue Justice” activist for SSF and works on finding creative and appropriate ways to engage in social processes, decision-making and policymaking in the context of diverse civil society interests.
Prateep Nayak
University of Waterloo, Canada
Prateep’s academic background is in political science, environmental studies and international development. He does transdisciplinary work with an active interest in combining social and ecological perspectives. His main areas of expertise and interest include commons, governance, social-ecological system resilience, wellbeing, environmental justice and political ecology. Currently, he teaches international development and environment. In the past, Prateep worked as a development professional in India on issues around community-based governance of land, water and forests, focusing specifically at the interface of research, implementation and public policy. Prateep is a past Trudeau Scholar, a Harvard Giorgio Ruffolo Fellow in Sustainability Science, a recipient of Canada’s Governor General Academic Gold Medal, and SSHRC Banting Fellow.
Julia Nakamura
University of Strathclyde, UK
Julia Nakamura is a lawyer qualified in Brazil, a PhD candidate with the Strathclyde Centre for Environmental Law and Governance (SCELG) at University of Strathclyde, UK, and an international legal specialist with the Development Law Service of FAO. Julia’s PhD research is about international law for small-scale fisheries, with a focus on participation of the SSF sector in conservation and management of transboundary aquatic species. Julia’s work relates to the implementation of the ecosystem approach to fisheries, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) and the SSF Guidelines.
Svein Jentoft
The Arctic University of Norway
Svein Jentoft is Professor Emeritus at the Norwegian College of Fishery Science, UiT – The Arctic University of Norway. His long career as a social scientist specializing on fisheries management and fisheries communities has yielded numerous articles and books. He has led and been involved in many international projects, working in the Global South as well as in the North. He also has a long time interest in the conditions of indigenous peoples in Nicaragua and his native Norway. In 2018, he was awarded an honorary doctoral degree at the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and a ʻFriend of Small-Scale Fisheriesʼ award at the 3rd World Small-Scale Fisheries Conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand.
