This week, representatives of fishermen’ organizations, women and men fish workers, Indigenous Peoples and social movements are meeting in Rome to prepare for the Global Small-Scale Fisheries Summit, which will take place at FAO from 4 to 6 September.
The Summit will be immediately followed by the FAO Committee on Fisheries – COFI, from 7 to 11 September. For fishers’ movements, the challenge is therefore twofold: to have a space to compare experiences and build common priorities, but also to ensure that these messages can then be carried into one of the main international spaces where fisheries policies are discussed.
Pêche & Développement is present in Rome alongside the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers – WFF, with which the association has pursued the same objective for many years: helping ensure that fishers and communities can speak directly in debates concerning their resources, territories, livelihoods and food systems.
This initiative is also supported by CDPMEM 29, which has exceptionally authorized Virginie Lagarde, who is also a project officer at CDPMEM 29, to carry out this mission during her working time in support of Pêche & Développement and the WFF; all travel and participation costs are covered by the IPC – International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty.
Different realities, but many shared concerns
The preparatory days bring together several international movements. Each comes with its own history, realities and struggles, but the exchanges quickly show how many concerns are now shared.
Climate change and its consequences for fishing resources and fishing communities are central. Several organizations have also stressed the deterioration of water quality, pollution, and the destruction or alteration of habitats on which fish and the people who depend on them rely.
The grabbing of aquatic spaces and resources – blue grabbing – is another major concern. Industrial fishing, industrial aquaculture, energy, infrastructure, tourism, conservation and new investments linked to the blue economy can compete with the historical uses and rights of communities.
Behind these issues lies a simple question: who decides the future of aquatic territories, who benefits from the resources, and who bears the consequences of the decisions taken?
The discussions also highlighted continuing forms of marginalization affecting fishermen, women fishworkers, women, young people and Indigenous Peoples. In several countries, communities face even more serious situations: violence, repression, militarization of territories or criminalization of their mobilization.
Fishers who no longer want to be merely consulted
One of the strongest shared messages is the need to move beyond participation limited to consultation.
Fishers’ organizations want to be recognized as rights-holders, knowledge producers and political actors, able to participate directly in shaping policies concerning their territories and livelihoods.
This issue is central to the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries – SSF Guidelines, adopted by FAO in 2014.
More than ten years after their adoption, simple recognition is no longer enough. Several participants called for implementation based on real roadmaps, with clearly identified responsibilities, resources, timelines, indicators, monitoring and accountability mechanisms.
Some movements want to go further and question the purely voluntary nature of the Guidelines, calling for more binding instruments to better protect community rights.
Recognising peoples of the waters and their territories
The discussions also underlined the importance of recognising the customary, historical and collective rights of communities and peoples of the waters and the sea.
Their relationship with the environment cannot be reduced to a simple right to harvest a resource. It also concerns access to fishing grounds, beaches and landing sites, coastal uses, spaces for processing and marketing, and participation in the governance of these territories.
This reflection connects directly with the work undertaken in recent months within the WFF around aquaecology: building, from the movements themselves, a vision of aquatic food systems that links rights, territories, knowledge, food, ecosystems, social justice and food sovereignty.
The objective is not to create a new label or a new technocratic concept, but to enable communities to formulate their own political vision for the future of aquatic food systems.
Building common strategies
The group work organized during these preparatory days also helped identify possible lines of action.
The movements stressed the need to strengthen their own organizations, their capacity to train, produce knowledge, communicate and participate sustainably in political processes.
Direct funding for fishers’ organizations is essential: participating in international meetings is not enough if movements do not have the means to organize their members, consult their communities, produce their analyses and follow up on commitments made by States and institutions.
The exchanges also covered legal strategies, public campaigns, documentation of human rights violations, exchanges of experience and international solidarity.
One idea sums up the spirit of these discussions particularly well: exchanging not only about struggles, but also about victories.
From Rome to COFI: carrying strong common messages
The Global Small-Scale Fisheries Summit is therefore not an end in itself.
From the following week, several WFF members will participate in or follow the work of COFI, where they will continue to defend the priorities built with fishers’ organizations.
In a context where movements face very different national realities, one challenge is to carry a number of strong common political messages: protection of rights and territories, genuine participation in decision-making, effective implementation of the SSF Guidelines, food sovereignty, ecosystem protection and recognition of community knowledge.
Unity between movements is all the more important because decisions concerning fisheries, oceans, climate, trade and food are increasingly interconnected.
After Rome: ensuring fisheries are fully part of the Nyéléni process
Another important step for Pêche & Développement and the WFF will be to ensure that small-scale fisheries are fully represented in the process emerging from the Nyéléni Global Forum for Food Sovereignty.
Nyéléni brings together movements of peasants, fishermen, Indigenous Peoples, women, youth and workers around a shared vision: food systems cannot be considered only through markets and production. They must be built around people’s rights, territories, access to resources, social justice and communities’ ability to decide about their food and their future.
In this reflection, aquatic food systems must have their full place.
Fishers and peoples of the waters are not a peripheral component of food sovereignty. They produce essential food, maintain knowledge and cultures, depend on fragile ecosystems and face the same dynamics of grabbing, industrialization and concentration as other food producers.
This is also the purpose of Pêche & Développement’s presence in these spaces: to build bridges between struggles, circulate experiences and help ensure that fishermen can speak for themselves about the future of their livelihoods, territories and resources.
source : pêche et développement
