The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) has just published the latest issue of SAMUDRA Report, its triannual journal on fisheries, communities and livelihoods. The current edition, SAMUDRA Report No. 85, dated May 2021, features a range of articles from Africa, Asia, South America and the Caribbean, specifically from Turkey, Cambodia, South Africa, Brazil, Tanzania, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Mozambique, Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, India, France, the Philippines, Brazil and Thailand. The issue also carries articles that analyze the Blue Economy, destructive fishing, small-scale fisheries (SSF) and the SSF Guidelines, among other topics.
The current issue has three articles on food security (from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Cambodia) and five articles on social development and sustainable fisheries (from Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, India, the Philippines and Thailand).
The editorial Comment in SAMUDRA Report No. 85 discusses how the COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the global inadequacy of social-protection floors in safeguarding marginalized communities, in the process exacerbating poverty and vulnerability.
The article on the Blue Economy focuses on a study that illustrates the deep influences that guide the gilded ocean economy and how a mere 100 companies generated 60 per cent of revenues from the largest ocean-based industries in 2018.
The piece from Turkey highlights the effects of COVID-19 on SSF in Istanbul, bringing out the need to address the structural inequalities and power asymmetries that bind the sector.
A correspondent from South Africa reports on the Regional Small-Scale Fisheries Governance Training Course for Africa, held in February 2021, a week-long virtual course, a collaboration between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the International Ocean Institute – Southern Africa (IOI-SA), which brought together seven African countries.
Another article explains how the Community Fisheries organizations in Cambodia form a vital framework for collective, rights-based fisheries management that persists and thrives in inland and coastal settings.
A research report, the focus of another piece, uncovers the historical injustice meted out to Indian-origin subsistence fishers in South Africa who have to deal with the COVID-19 restrictions.
According to a report from Brazil, one year after an oil spill hit the Discovery Coast, the COVID-19 pandemic has worsened the lot of the region’s indigenous fishing communities.
An early champion of the interests of small-scale fishers, points out another report, the East African nation of Tanzania is among the trailblazers in plans to implement the SSF Guidelines.
As the COVID-19 pandemic ravaged the fisher economy of Sri Lanka, says another article, households were left indebted and distressed, and co-operatives emerged as a beacon for the small-scale fishing sector’s well-being.
Through a mix of downplaying, intransparency and undertesting, Indonesia, the largest archipelago nation in the world, paid little heed to its vulnerable fishers during the COVID-19 pandemic, says another article in SAMUDRA Report No. 85.
Natural disasters like cyclones, more than the COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with lack of research on the conditions of the poor, threaten the well-being of small-time fishers in Mozambique, according to another piece in the issue.
The last six articles in SAMUDRA Report No. 85 focus on social development and sustainable fisheries in Antigua and Barbuda, Bangladesh, Costa Rica, India, The Philippines and Thailand.
The current issue also carries a review of the much-lauded Pêcheurs du Monde film festival in Lorient, France, which had to virtually reinvent itself to produce a rich and intense experience of visual delight.
The Roundup section of SAMUDRA Report No. 85 carries news snippets, event announcements, briefings on fishery-related matters, and more.
SAMUDRA Report No. 85, May 2021 can be accessed at:
https://demo2.icsf.net/en/samudra/article/EN/85.html?limitstart=0
ICSF is an international NGO that works towards the establishment of equitable, gender-just,self-reliant and sustainable fisheries, particularly in the small-scale, artisanal sector.
For more, please visit demo2.icsf.net
2021 ICSF