The absence of tenure security threatens the traditional livelihoods of the fixed bag-net fishworkers in India’s eastern state of West Bengal.

Conflicts over use of natural resources are common in coastal areas globally. Fluid environmental frontiers, historical marginalization of fisher communities, and overlapping tenure systems coded in formal law or customary institutions make governance of coastal and marine resources complex. In the midst of such conflicts, fishworkers in small-scale fisheries (SSF) find themselves situated at the bottom of the ladder of development in terms of priorities, despite their useful contribution towards securing livelihoods of coastal communities and ensuring nutritional security of the global population at large.