Sustainability at Scale: Connecting Small-Scale Fishers for the Mobilization of Local Knowledge, Solutions and Capital Opportunities – thus is the full title of the V2V on 24th November 2022 webinar presented by Dr. Maria José Espinosa, CEO of the Mexican non-profit organisation Comunidad y Biodiversidad (COBI).  Through their field work, COBI found and documented that small-scale fishers and their organisations are flexible and make daily decisions to adapt to local, national, and international stressors.

The mobilization of local decisions towards sustainability and social benefits represent a great opportunity for the viability and resilience of small-scale fisheries in Latin America and the Caribbean. Through the use of technology, especifically the PescaData App, COBI is promoting the mobilisation of local knowledge, solutions, and capital opportunities for communities‘ resilience in combination with ocean sustainability.

Over many years they worked with artisanal fishing communities tapping into local knowledge and seeking to understand and promote local solutions to changing – and often degrading – environments. Starting out in Baja California, then also expanding onto the Pacific coast and more recently into the Gulf of Mexico and the Caribbean coasts of the country, it became clear that they had to look for ways to test good solutions found in different places and find out whether they could be scaled up. Documenting the findings from field work and collecting more than 100 positive examples of coping with challenges, they are uploading these cases to their PescaData app and develop in parallel a social entreprise to be able to sustain the app and associated activities beyond external project funding.

If you want to know more, watch the recording of the webinar on YouTube.