The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF), the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and the National Fishworkers’ Forum (NFF) today urged parties at the ongoing Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CoP11) conference at HICC in Hyderabad, India, to ensure a central focus on improving governance, participation, equity and benefit sharing in the context of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
ICSF is an International NGO that works to support small-scale fisheries and fishing communities while WFFP is a forum of national organizations representing fishing communities and NFF is a federation of state-level trade unions in India.
In a statement, the three fisher organisations said local fishing communites across the world have often opposed MPAs as they were faced with a denial of livelihoods in MPAs. The organisations said nonetheless indigenous peoples and local fishing communities were also known to have evolved effective systems, traditional and more recent, to govern their resources.