Sustainable Fisheries

Special collection

Worldwide, small-scale coastal fisheries contribute significantly to providing food, employment, and incomes to many very poor people. But these same fisheries, and the ecosystems upon which they rely, are under increasing threat from a combination of climate change, pollution, over-fishing, and the exploitation of resources.


Fisheries management has been a major component in trying to address some of these issues, but with limited global success. The potential of fisheries, if managed well, is considerable but what form that potential will take will depend on how and why fisheries are managed.


This collection of reports and presentations explores just this question, describing some of the challenges faced by small-scale fisheries worldwide and their efforts to address these challenges and improve the health and well-being of the people who are dependent on these threatened environments.


The collection brings together the "grey literature" of the field, valuable work that is not readily available through academic journals and databases but is instead spread across dozens of organizational websites. This set of reports was initially identified as part of a synthesis review of key lessons commissioned by the Rockefeller Foundation's Program on Oceans and Fisheries. We are pleased to make it more easily available for others to use and build on and encourage researchers and practitioners to add relevant work to the collection.

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Integrated Management: A Coastal Community Perspective

January 1, 2010

This paper was prepared for the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations Regional Workshops on Small-Scale Fisheries "Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development". It presents a review of what are seen as 'good practices' globally in policy and governance of small-scale fisheries, with a particular focus on addressing rights-based issues, viewed broadly as incorporating fishery rights, other rights to natural resources, and rights and entitlements in relation to human, social and economic rights. It draws extensively on the 1995 Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and related technical guidelines, particularly those concerning small-scale fisheries and their roles in poverty alleviation and food security, and the human dimensions of the ecosystem approach to fisheries. The paper is also strongly informed by the papers prepared for and outcomes of the 2008 Global Conference on "Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries: Bringing together responsible fisheries and social development" and the relevant rights-oriented components of the 'Bangkok Statement' produced by the Civil Society Preparatory Workshop for the Global Conference. It also draws upon a set of research documents in the international literature focusing on small-scale fisheries and related policy issues [e.g., Allison et al. (2010), Charles (2009, 2011), McConney and Charles (2009); Kurien (2000, 2007)].