Coastal and indigenous fishing communities have a long-term stake in the conservation and protection of biodiversity. In several parts of the world, drawing on their traditional ecological knowledge systems (TEKS), communities have been regulating use of coastal and marine resources, including through setting up conservation zones, restricting entry and rotating access. Coastal fishing communities—the “beacons of the sea” as it were—have also consistently been drawing attention to degradation of coastal and marine resources, and the related impacts on their livelihoods.

Coastal fishing communities can be powerful allies in the efforts to conserve, restore and protect coastal and marine biodiversity. Critical to this involvement, however, is the need to recognize, protect and strengthen their rights to access and use biodiversity in a responsible manner, to pursue sustainable livelihoods, and to participate in decision-making and resource management processes at all levels.

The target set by Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to bring at least 10 per cent of the world's marine and coastal ecological region under protection by 2012, as against the current 0.6 per cent, needs to be viewed against this background. If coastal and marine conservation initiatives are to be effective from a biodiversity conservation perspective, and if they are to contribute to poverty alleviation and sustainable livelihoods, the starting point for conservation initiatives must be coastal communities themselves, and the solutions proposed by them. Marine protected areas (MPAs) need to be seen as one of the available tools for coastal and marine conservation, within a wider fisheries, and marine and coastal management framework.

On 8 and 9 February 2008, the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) organized a two-day workshop on Social Dimensions of Marine Protected Area (MPAs), with specific relation to fishing communities. The six studies facilitated by ICSF in India, South Africa, Brazil, Mexico, Thailand and Tanzania, drawing on on-the-ground experiences of fishing communities, were presented at this workshop. A study undertaken by WALHI in Indonesia drawing on five MPA experiences in Sulawesi and Komodo-NTT, and experiences on initiation and implementation of protected area programmes from France and Spain were shared. Inputs were received as well from the representative of the World Forum of Fisherpeople (WFFP) present. The issues identified, and related proposals, drawn from the discussions at this workshop, are available here