Mancha-Cisneros, Maria Del Mar

Small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a big role as drivers of employment, economic growth, social development and environmental recovery. They produce 40% of the total global capture fisheries and prove employment to 60.2 million people (~90 % of the total employed in fisheries globally). However, these fisheries are complex given the range of targeted species and ecosystems, economic value of different species, harvesting methods, labor organization, management strategies and governance dynamics. Global studies like the “Illuminating Hidden Harvests: The Contributions of Small-scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development” (IHH) have highlighted a wide diversity of institutional arrangements across formal policies and institutional arrangements in 52 countries, including local-level specific policies to small-scale fisheries and national-level general fisheries policies that affect both small- and large-scale fisheries, as well as formal co-management provisions with varying levels of fisher participation. The IHH study also introduced a novel way to compile SSF data within fishery units that offer the potential to allow connections among species-specific catches, landed values, fleet characteristics (including harvesting methods and labor organization), and institutional arrangements governing these fisheries. The fishery units were most prominently related to four main groups of attributes: a) biological/ecosystem-related, b) operational (e.g. gear and vessel types, motorization level), c) spatial, and d) catch utilization (e.g. subsistence or commercial). This paper uses these IHH dataset to analyze how connecting SSF environmental, economic, and governance data via these fishery units produces unique insights into the specific benefits of SSF beyond volume of catch for revenue, whether current formal institutional arrangements reflect or enable these benefits, and whether these assessment units corresponded with existing management units in the country.

The diverse characteristics and contexts of small-scale producers underpin their multidimensional contributions to sustainable development, including food provision, resilience, poverty alleviation, and cultural heritage preservation. However, their diversity is often oversimplified, limiting their impact on global development and hindering effective food systems transformation. We use the case of small-scale fisheries, a diverse subsector capable of feeding one in four people globally, to challenge the dominant narrative that small-scale producers are too complex and context specific to be effectively categorised. Our analysis of over a thousand small-scale fisheries representing 66% of global marine small-scale fisheries using a model-based clustering approach, found five global archetypes of small-scale fisheries. Each archetype was characterised by different operational, socioeconomic, technological, and post-harvest attributes. Our findings start to unlock small-scale fisheries’ potential to contribute meaningfully to food systems transformation. Our approach is low-cost, simple to apply and well-suited for decision-making processes in data-limited contexts, particularly in the Global South. The case of small-scale fisheries is fully transferable to small-scale producers across other food sectors, paving the way for more precise policy-making and enabling their full contributions to sustainable development potentially benefiting millions of people globally.

Sustainable and equitable aquatic food systems represent critical drivers of employment, economic growth, social development and environmental recovery. Small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a big role in these systems as they produce 40% of the total global capture fisheries per year, providing employment to 60.2 million people (~90 % of the total employed in fisheries globally) and nutritious food for subsistence to 52.8 million people. Yet these fisheries are complex given the range of targeted species and ecosystems, harvesting methods, labor organization, cultural values, and governance mechanisms, and they vary in their capacity to respond to new and evolving stressors (e.g. climate change, transitions of terrestrial landscapes for freshwater fisheries, etc.). Transformation of aquatic food systems towards more efficiency, inclusivity, and resiliency requires adoption and effective implementation of international instruments, regional coordination mechanisms, national plans of action, and guidelines that can support the integration of fisheries related policies in development agendas considering tradeoffs and addressing ecological, social and economic objectives. International instruments like the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable SSF in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) support this vision, yet implementation at national policy levels represents significant challenges for many countries. Global studies like the “Illuminating Hidden Harvests: The Contributions of Small-scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development” (IHH) have highlighted the prevalence of local-level over national-level SSF-specific policies granting management rights to fishers, and very limited devolution of management, exclusion, and transferability rights in legislations. This paper uses the IHH dataset, the Institutional Grammar tool, and the Coupled Infrastructure Systems Framework to assess systematically how configurations of 976 formal policies and institutional arrangements spanning 52 countries impact the ability of their SSF to facilitate the implementation of the SSF Guidelines, and transition towards providing nutritious and affordable healthy diets for the most vulnerable, while fostering equitable growth.