Conclusions left dangling at Latino artisanal fishing workshop
by Brian O'Riordan
Date: 11-08-2008
Email: briano@scarlet.be
Samudra Exclusive
In the coming weeks a virtual editorial panel will attempt to achieve what eluded 80-odd delegates from 12 countries during the four-day workshop on "Artsianal Fishing (Consolidating and Securing Arisanal Fishing Access and Use Rights) in Latin America", from 4 to 8 August in Punta de Tralca, Chile.
The panel has been tasked to produce a common statement from Latin America with concrete proposals to be submitted to the World Conference on Small-scale Fisheries, to be organized by the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) in Bangkok, Thailand, from 13 to 17 October.
The Punta de Tralca Workshop was the third in a series of workshops organized and supported by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), designed to focus discussions, and reach some common understanding on the rights and responsibilities of coastal and artisanal fishing communities whose livelihoods depend on access to, and use of, resources in marine and inland fisheries. Similar meetings in Asia and in eastern and southern Africa had produced common statements and drafted proposals for action.
But reaching such agreement proved elusive for the fishworker representatives, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), functionaries and researchers at the Punta de Tralca workshop. On several occasions during the workshop, tensions and frictions within, and between, national delegations threatened to disrupt the process sketched out by the organizers of the event. The ICSF, the National Confederation of Chilean Artisanal Fishermen (CONAPACH), Centro Ecoceanos and CeDePesca, had been planning, discussing and making arrangements for the workshop since April 2008, building on discussions going back four years to the “Santa Clara Workshop” of March 2005. It therefore came as a surprise that several delegates appeared to be both ill informed about, and little prepared for, the event.
Particular issues of contention included that of fishmeal production, where certain interests claiming to belong to the artisanal fishing sector use industrial methods to catch small-pelagic resources for reduction to fishmeal. Another bone of contention concerned the role of other social actors in the sector – notably, NGOs and indigenous people. Some felt that only fishworker representatives should decide on rights issues, and that other social actors should be excluded from the process. These frictions meant that such important issues as rights-based fisheries management, the threats and opportunities of aquaculture, and how globalization processes impact at all levels were not given the prominence and attention they merit.
Despite such difficulties, the virtual committee has a rich source of material to draw on, including the proposals produced as a result of a three-hour open discussion among fishworker representatives, which others observed. There are also the reports from the six panels of working groups who deliberated and made recommendations on the three main themes of the forthcoming FAO Conference. These working group discussions focused on those rights of importance to artisanal fishing and coastal communities (inland and marine) in Latin America as regards access to, and use of, resources, post-harvest benefits, and social, economic and human rights. Each group drew conclusions and made recommendations on how to secure such rights, ensure their recognition, and defend them against other interests.
The key lesson in the run-up to the FAO Conference in Bangkok is that preparation is vital for a successful outcome. Delegates in Punta de Tralca were clearly ill prepared or otherwise unwilling to focus on the task of producing consensus. This must be avoided at all costs at Bangkok, feel supporters of small-scale and artisanal fisheries.
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Theme(s):
Communities and Organisations
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