Some 40 environmental organisations throughout Spain together had called to participate, on Saturday, November 12, in a demonstration for climate justice and stronger efforts to curb climate change. The action was aimed at the participants of the UN Summit on climate change (COP27) meeting in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.
The analyses all show that CO2 emissions are still growing and governments and companies continue to spend massively on fossil exploration and exploitation.
The September 2022 webinar of the V2V research platform to which Mundus maris is a partner featured Melissa Marschke and Peter Vandergeest who have worked together for the last decade or so on 'Unacceptable working conditions in global fisheries: Lawlessness, Criminality or Enabling Policies and Political Economies?'. They shared the results of their research and that of campaigns by advocacy groups digging up facts about at times horrendous living and working conditions particularly on vessels ploughing the high seas outside the purview of legal regimes. The first scandal broke about labour abuse of mostly Burmise and Cambodian migrant workers in the Thai fisheries in the mid 2010s.
'Imagine the (Un)imaginable', thus was the motto of the European regional gathering of the 4th World Small-Scale Fisheries Congress convened in Malta from 12 to 14 September 2022. Three intense days of presentations and discussions in search of solutions to the open crisis of artisanal fisheries in Europe. Hosted by the government of Malta and organised by the Too Big To Ignore global research platform led by Ratana Chuenpagdee, the congress attracted some 120 participants mostly on site, but also offered online participation. Researcher turned Parliamentary Secretary, Dr. Alicia Bugeja Said, opened the congress.
Marsaxlokk, once primarily the harbour for the famous colourful traditional boats, called luzzus, of the coastal fisheries in Malta is today even more of a tourist attraction than a major seafood conveyor in Malta's economy and society. It also hosts new types of vessels where tradition meets modernity. This island in the middle of the Mediterranean, close to Sicily and Tunisia, bears witness of thousands of years of mixing cultures, colonisation and creating a unique blend of architecture, food, arts and practices influenced by the locals, past invaders and today's visitors. Nice restaurants now line the harbour promenade. On Sunday, 11 September 2022 the traditional fish festival brought out masses of people to the fish, fruit, vegetable and souvenir stands of the market along the pier with traditional boats, small tourist transport vessels and other boats anchoring in sight.
As part of the official calendar of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022), FAO and others supported the organisation of a Small-Scale Fisheries Summit from 2 to 4 September 2022 in preparation of FAO's 35th Committee of Fisheries (COFI) convened the following week to hear about the bi-annual World Fisheries and Aquaculture Report 2022 and give orientations for future work. Mundus maris contributed an Africa focused session to the SSF Summit.
Dr. Haseeb Md. Irfanullah is an independent consultant on environment, climate change, and research systems and a visiting research fellow at the Center for Sustainable Development (CSD) in the University of Liberal Arts Bangladesh (ULAB). His talk briefly introduced two emerging approaches - Nature-based Solutions (NbS) and Locally-Led Adaptation (LLA). In the context of climate crisis and he discussed the currently available standards/principles related to them. Using a couple of cases from small-scale fisheries (SSF), he explored the challenges and opportunities to capitalize on these novel concepts to influence our efforts in the context of SSF's vulnerability and viability, especially in the knowledge/evidence creation and system/policy influencing spaces.
Women fish traders have long been central to marketing catches in small scale fisheries and thus not only make their own families thrive, but also contribute considerably to food security to households at national, even regional levels. Though long ignored by officialdom and development projects these women have been coping with remarkable creativity and tenacity the many changes their social and economic context has been undergoing since quite some time. The work of the Small-Scale Fisheries Academy in Senegal has paid special attention to their needs for strengthening their capacities to continue being protagonists rather than becoming victims in the value chains.
In February of 2022, the South Africa National Department of Forestry, Fisheries and Environment gazetted the national inland fisheries policy. This marks the first time in South Africa’s history, that inland small-scale and traditional fishers are recognised within the legislative framework. Until now, South Africa’s inland fisheries has been dominated by recreational fisheries, a product of colonial priorities. In this presentation, we explore how colonial policies shaped inland fisheries and the transition to a democratic sector that is now aligned to the constitution of the country.
After postponing the event originally scheduled for 2020 event due to the pandemic, the 20th Biennial IIFET Conference was held 18th-22nd July 2022 in Vigo, Spain. Vigo has a long-time connection with the ocean. Vigo’s Bay was mentioned by Jules Verne in his book ‘20,000 Leagues under the Sea’. It is now one of the world’s largest fishing ports and one of the busiest in terms of volume. The strong connection of Vigo with its roots in the fisheries community is clearly displayed in the impressive murals dedicated to fishers and seafood around the city like the one showing a 'mariscadora' - a woman working in seafood collection with a 'percebes', a typical Galician goose barnacle (courtesy S.T. Boschetti).
On the road to Lisbon, many organisations had organised preparatory events to contribute to the mobilisation in support of the most neglected and underfunded of all Sustainable Development Goals. The Ocean Conference was co-hosted by the Governments of Kenya and Portugal. The European Parliament convened a preparatory event organised by a group of MEPs with Ambassador Peter Thomson, Special Envoy for the Ocean of the UN Secretary General, on 21 June 2022.
This month's webinar of the research platform 'From vulnerability to viability' (V2V) was delivered by Dr. Jessica Blythe on 24 June. She argued that transformations towards ocean equity and blue justice are needed to address the inequitable distribution of access to ocean benefits and resources, as well as disproportionate exposure to harms. Yet, actions that fundamentally restructure relationships between people and the ocean are highly political and can produce substantial risks for coastal communities and the marine environment. This seminar explores recent scholarship and practice on navigating this critical and complex space.