Este documento es el resultado de una investigación encargada para evaluar las implicaciones del acuerdo sobre los aspectos de los derechos de propiedad intelectual relacionados con el comercio (ADPIC) y del Convenio sobre la Diversidad Biológica (CDB). También elucida las implicaciones de ambos acuerdos para el acceso a los recursos...

Fishing is arguably the world's most dangerous vocation, reporting the highest rate of occupational fatalities among industries, made only worse by declining fish prices, overfished waters and shortened fishing seasons. As fishermen are forced to move farther away from shore in search of scarce resources, the dangers they face are...

This is the proceedings of the Indian Ocean Conference "Forging Unity: Coastal Communities and the Indian Ocean's Future". The conference as an important opportunity to explore the idea of an ‘Indian Ocean community’ by bringing together representatives from all frontiers of the Indian Ocean (with the exception of the Middle...

This paper reviews marine biodiversity, coastal communities' traditional ecological knowledge systems (TEKS) and the biodiversity they have conserved, and the industrial exploitation of marine genetic resources; it then analyzes TRIPS and the CBD as applied to marine biodiversity, and the implications of TRIPS and CBD for both coastal States and...

Small-scale, family fishing enterprises manage to persist despite the difficult economic and ecological changes and disruptions they almost constantly have experienced during the past several decades. Drawing upon long-term ethnographic and historical research in the Bigouden region of France, this paper asks why and how family-based fishing enterprises continue in...

Mountains of the world cover about one-fifth of the land surface, are home to one-tenth of the world's population, and provide livelihood to some of the poorest communities in the world. Mountain lakes and streams are a source of freshwater for countless riparian human communities, support industries, provide water for...

These guidelines provide general principles and basic considerations for those involved in providing microfinance services to fisheries and aquaculture and for those who intend to include fishing and fish farming communities as part of the client base of their operation. The guidelines further elaborate on lending models, methodologies and policies...

The Trans-Himalayan region encompasses a number of countries situated in the midland and highland areas of the Himalayas, Karakoram, and in a broad sense also in Hindu Kush and Pamir. The mountains are characterized by a very low level of human development, with full exploitation or overexploitation of the natural...

Organic agriculture is defined as an environmentally and socially sensitive food supply system. This publication examines its many facets, looking at the contribution of organic agriculture to ecological health, international markets and local food security. It builds on empirical experiences throughout the world and analyses the prospects for a wider...

In the winter of October 1999, as part of a programme of ICSF, three persons converged on the Treasure Guest House in Accra, Ghana. They came from three very distinct parts of the world, each bringing along a different baggage of culture and upbringing. What they shared, however, was a...

Fisheries, and in particular, the artisanal fisheries sector, is a vital source of livelihood for the communities that live along the approximately 4,545 km long coastline of West Africa. There are around 1.8 Million people, mostly women, directly engaged in processing and marketing fish in the region. Nonetheless, despite the...

Pour les populations qui vivent sur les cotes d'Afrique de I'Ouest, longues de 4545km, la peche, tout particulierement la peche artisanale, est une activite vitale. Envirom 1.8 million de personnes, surtout des femmes, transforment et vendent le poisson. Ce secteur dynamique est toutefois confronte a de nombreux problems et les...

En Afrique de l’Ouest, le Collectif international d’appui à la pêche artisanale (ICSF) collabore avec des organisations de pêcheurs et des Ong depuis 1986. Il a tenu un certain nombre de réunions et de stages ayant trait aux problèmes de la pêche artisanale dans divers pays de la région :...

A long-standing demand of the women of fishing communities in the region has been towards enhancing regional fish trade. It is against this background that the Workshop on Problems and Prospects for Developing  Artisanal Fish Trade in West Africa was organized from 30 May to 1 June 2001,  followed by...

This video provides an overview of the issues involved, and highlights many of the concerns of the actors in the sector. It also reports briefly on the workshop on Problems and Prospects for Developing Artisanal Fish Trade in West Africa and the West African Fair for Artisanally Processed Fish held...

Nets for Social Safety is a first –of –its-kind study, specially commissioned by the ICSF, to focus on the growth and changing composition of social security provisions in the fisheries sector of Kerala, a small coastal State in southwest India. John Kurien and Antonyto Paul, the authors of the study,...

The Too Big to Ignore (TBTI) Digest contains all of the project's recent activities and outputs.

The thirteen papers presented in this publication review fish stocks and fisheries of mountainous areas of Asia: Himalayas (Bhutan, Nepal, northern states of India within the Himalayas), Western Ghats (India), Karakoram-Hindu Kush (Pakistan, Afghanistan), Pamir (Tajikistan), Tien Shan (Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan), Altai (Kazakhstan, Mongolia, China), high altitude lakes of Mongolia and...

The recent effort by two global organizations, the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Anglo-Dutch multinational, Unilever, to establish an independent Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) as a conservation partnership to create market incentives for sustainable fishing has attracted a great deal of attention-as well as controversy. In this...

The present study is an update of an earlier assessment of warm-water fish farming potential in Africa, by Kapetsky (1994). The objective of this study was to assess locations and areal expanses that have potential for warm-water and temperate-water fish farming in continental Africa. The study was based on previous...