Day IV – June 7: Justice & Equity

What is the role of small-scale fishers and indigenous fisherfolk in food security, employment generation and cultural solidarity? These are the key questions that our community-based practitioners from Indonesia and the Philippines will try to answer in a virtual online session of the Pangingisda Natin Gawing Tama (PaNaGaT) network, a loose coalition of NGOs and fisherfolk organizations. Small-scale fishers and indigenous fisherfolk are indeed important sectors in our society as our conversation will highlight how securing tenurial rights will help to achieve sustainable fisheries and promote indigenous knowledge and beliefs on fishing in Southeast Asia.

Session moderator: Dennis Calvan, Senior Manager, Rare

Panellists:

• Abdul Halim (Executive Director,Center for Maritime Reform for Humanity, Pusat Kajian Maritim untuk Kemanusiaan, Indonesia
• Dinna Umengan (Executive Director, Tambuyog Development Center, Convenor, PaNaGaT Network, Philippines
• Dave de Vera, Executive Director, Philippine Association for Inter-Cultural Development

Language: English

Format: Live panel discussion

Duration: 100 minutes

Rights-based governance of SSF is an important part of Oxfam’s and our partners’ works in South and Southeast Asia. In addition to leveraging all available global and local frameworks (including SSF Guidelines and ILO Work in Fishing Convention) in our policy advocacy and community-based works in water governance and SSF, we are following a combination of other approaches that we call the ‘FISH’ framework. This discussion panel will highlight the challenges and opportunities for the FISH framework to achieve distributive and economic justice for fishers in these regions. The participants will be from Oxfam partners and allies in the civil society, academia, and the private sector.

Organizers: Jyotiraj Patra (Oxfam) & Md Kutub Uddin (Sagar Seba)

Format: A mix of pre-recorded videos and live panel discussion

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

Full title: Sustainable Ocean Economy for Small-Scale Fisheries: Lesson Learned in Achieving Ocean Equity

Small-scale fisheries play a significant part around the world. However, their condition is currently under threat, due to various problems, including: (i) climate change threatening the coastal areas, (ii) the depletion of fish stocks in some locations, and (iii) lack of access to market; (iv) the dominance of a large-scale fishing industry, which often uses environmentally destructive fishing gear. This makes it more difficult for small-scale fishers to achieve prosperity and a decent living. At present, many efforts have been made by the state and civil society to improve the welfare conditions of fishers, ranging from improving policies so that they are more supportive of efforts to achieve ocean equity to strengthening and applying local traditional wisdom that fishers have previously had. In this webinar we will discuss more on the problems, challenges, opportunities, and solutions related to protecting the welfare of small fishermen in various countries to locate best practices that might worth replicating.

Moderator: Margaretha Quina

Opening remarks: Mas Achmad Santosa

Panellists:

• Nathan J. Bennet, People and the Oceans Specialist Group for the International Union for IUCN
• Gloria Ramos, the Philippines Executive Committee of OCEANA
• Naly Rakotoarivony, Blue Ventures Madagascar
• Mursiati, FORKANI, Wakatobi

Format: Panel discussion

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

Small-scale fisheries management is at the heart of Fauna & Flora International’s programme of work in SE Asia. In this session we will share case studies of our successful work to improve the management of small-scale fisheries. Our approach seeks to strengthen traditional local governance systems and promote local marine tenure to ensure fisheries initiatives are embedded within local communities and effective over the long term. We will share challenges encountered and lessons learned from our focal countries and discuss the range of different approaches required to adapt to the specific needs of local fishers.

Format: Live session – a mix of  presentations, discussions and interactions

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

This hour-long session will focus on methodologies for understanding how small-scale fishery interventions are experienced, understood and simulated by stakeholders and researchers. We spotlight the rapidly spreading periodic octopus closure in the Western Indian Ocean. The session will reflect on multiple understandings and explorations of what ‘success’ means for this intervention process, particularly in the long term. We start by introducing our project, team and cases. Next, a storytelling exercise presents and prioritizes stakeholders’ ideas of closure activities and outcomes while an agent-based model helps to investigate phenomena they identified as important. We end on reflections and discussions from the team and audience on our approach.

Organizers/Moderators: Liz Drury O’Neill, Emilie Lindkvist and Tim Daw 

Language: English

Format: Mix of live and pre-recorded presentations

Duration: 60 minutes

Justice is a major concern in sustainable ocean development. One way to deal with this is through the lens of ‘Blue Justice’, which argues for due attention on small-scale fisheries given their prominent role in the ocean, as users and contributors to its sustainability. This session presents many experiences of ‘Blue Justice’ in small-scale fisheries from around the world, followed by a panel discussion about what change and transformation is required, in order to incorporate Blue Justice in the discussion about Blue Growth and Blue Economy. The session is a “sneak preview” of the new TBTI Book in the MARE Series (Springer) on ‘Blue Justice for Small-Scale Fisheries’.

Session Chair: Ratana Chuenpagdee, TBTI Global

Speakers:

• Svein Jentoft, UiT The Artic University of Norway, Norway
• Moenieba Isaacs, PLAAS, University of Western Cape, South Africa
• Evan Andrews, Ocean Frontier Institute, Memorial University, Canada
• Cornelia Nuan, Mundus maris – Sciences and Arts for Sustainability, Belgium

Session format: short video presentations of the case studies, plus moderated panel discussion

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

In 2014, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) endorsed the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) and outlined a series of core objectives to protect and enhance the impact of small-scale fisheries around the world. The SSF Guidelines call for social development, employment and decent work of small-scale fishing communities so they can enjoy their human rights, including the right to adequate access to social protection. The webinar will provide a platform to discuss and share how social protection systems that are shock-responsive and that adequately cover fishers, fish-workers and fish-farmers represent an important pillar for achieving blue justice, sustainable fisheries and social-economic development. Experts will provide compelling arguments on how greater coherence between social protection and fisheries policies can support pairing social development with equitable sustainable fisheries management. Experts will also discuss how social protection can be best leveraged as a tool to mitigate the impacts of shocks (e.g. COVID-19) in small-scale fisheries, as well as the challenges and opportunities for building back better.

Organizers: Daniela Kalikoski and Greta Campora, Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO)

Moderator: Daniela Kalikoski

Panelists:

• Sebastian Mathew, International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), India
• Mauricio Mireles, Policy Officer for Indigenous Peoples and Social Inclusion, FAO RLC (Latin America and the Caribbean)
• Fabio Veras, Senior Research Coordinator, International Policy Center for Policy Growth, IPC IG, Brazil
• Kosal Mam, Fisheries Specialist at World Fish, Cambodia
• Yuko Okamura, Senior Economist, World Bank, Washington
• Bosse Dörte, European Commission, Bruxelles

Format: webinar

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

The contingency generated by COVID-19 made evident weaknesses and inequity among stakeholders of the fishing sector worldwide. Most attention has been placed on the sanitary contingency and it will take time to assess socio-economic impacts and learn about the adaptive strategies developed during the lockdown and different stages since then. COVID will not go away, and SSF need to move forward to adapt to the “new normality”. In this panel, generate discussion about the path and the necessary steps to help the sector moving forward in the context of inequity and a challenging context. The panel will be led by a presentation integrating the pandemic and lockdown effects (economic, sanitary, and commercial impacts), from global to local arenas, followed by enlisting some strategies developed by the actors dealing with crisis and changing markets. It will close with an interactive discussion regarding challenges and opportunities for strengthening SSF under different scenarios.

Chairs: Sebastián Villasante & Silvia Salas

Discussant: José Pascual

Speakers:

• Cristina Pita
• Francisco Arreguín-Sánchez
• Maria Jose Espinosa

Format: Live panel discussion

Language: English

Duration: 90 minutes

Perdido en el Espacio Marítimo: Las comunidades indígenas y afrodescendientes desposeídas en la Reserva de la Biosfera Seaflower de Nicaragua y Colombia

In 2012 the International Court of Justice ruled on a longstanding maritime border dispute between Nicaragua and Colombia over claims both countries brought forward on their shared territorial sea in the Caribbean – which included the inhabited islands, cays and banks in the San Andres Archipelago. The scope of our panel will be on exploring the tangible effects for indigenous and afro-descendant communities in both countries resulting from the ICJ ruling and the follow-up decision making dynamics by corresponding national governments. We hope the panel, comprised by anthropologists, marine biologists, political scientists and local leaders, will address the multifaceted expressions of the transborder conditions, including conservation strategies of marine protected areas and impacts on the livelihoods of small-scales fishing communities in both countries. 

Chair and organizer: Miguel Gonzalez, York University (chair and organizer)

Speakers:

• Jadder Mendoza Lewis, independent researcher, Bilwi Nicaragua
• Ana Isabel Márquez Pérez, Universidad Nacional de Colombia – Sede Caribe
• Patrick Christie (discussant)
• Sally García Taylor, independent researcher, San Andres Island (Colombia)
• Edgar Jay Stephens, fisherman and local leader, Old Providence Island (Colombia)
• Patrick Christie, University of Washington
• Joe Ryan, Ensome
• Marcos Williamson, URACCAN

Language: English and Spanish, with simultaneous translation / La sesión se realizará en inglés y español, con traducción simultánea

Format: Live panel discussion

Duration: 120 minutes