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...

The Government of Indonesia and FAO have recognized the need for thorough analysis and modelling of Indonesia’s food systems to support food systems transformation efforts in the country. This is needed to provide a better understanding of the governance context in food systems, including the political economy dynamics influencing performance,...

This article describes the construction of the Luenberger soil quality indicator (SQI) using data on crop yield, non-soil inputs, and soil profile from three irrigated agroecological zones of Punjab, Pakistan, namely, rice–wheat, maize–wheat–mix, and cotton–mix zones. Plot level data are used to construct a soil quality indicator by estimating directional...

Often called the Land of Rivers, Bangladesh boasts a remarkable riverine landscape that has nurtured a flourishing fisheries sector. With about 230 rivers crisscrossing it, the country is one of the world’s largest deltas along with the world’s largest flooded wetland. The fisheries industry is a vital pillarof the national...

Climate change and variability affect virtually everyone and every region of the world but the effects are nowhere more prominent than among rural marginalized communities that rely heavily on agriculture and fishing for a living and they face numerous livelihood challenges including risk posed by variability of climate. Using phenomenological...

The past 75 years in Sri Lanka have seen a shift in tenure rights in small-scale fisheries, heralding a new era.  Tenure rights have a strong influence on access, use, management and conservation of aquatic resources. The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) defines tenure rights in fishing...

On KIARA’s current work KIARA still does advocacy. The Indonesian government is focusing on the Blue Economy, with emphasis on massive expansion of production from marine resources, affecting the community. We have also been working on the climate crisis, especially as it relates to the sinking and drowning villages in...

Vietnam’s largest deltaic region, the Mekong Delta offers great potential for rice production and aquaculture. With an area of 747,000 hectares in 2022, it is the country’s largest shrimp-producing area. The shrimp-rice area covers nearly 190,000 hectares, accounting for 26.8 per cent of the total shrimp farming area in the...

Every corner along Japan’s long coast has a fishing port. Where there are fishing ports, there are fishing communities working diverse small-scale and coastal fisheries daily. Its beautiful coastal landscape is Japan’s identity. It is no exaggeration to say that the Fisheries Co-operative Association (FCA) system has supported such an...

As small-scale fishers in China increasingly lose the sea areas that have supported their livelihood, it is necessary to protect fishery tenure rights. The Blue Economy has contributed to the economic development in China in the past decades. This has also resulted in over-exploitation of marine resources and damage to the...

The term “aquapark” refers to an innovative aquaculture organizational model designed to facilitate and empower small-scale aquafarmers at every stage of the aquaculture value chain. This model encompasses comprehensive planning, zoning, and infrastructure development for roads, water and electricity, as well as vital aquaculture inputs like seed, feed, extension services...

An approach first piloted in India’s Rampur District is turning flood water into irrigation for hundreds of communities.

Key discussions revolved around the gender analysis within the Char Development and Settlement Project (CDSP), its findings, and the co-creation process for GTAs, leading to the development and piloting of a toolkit to address gender biases in project implementation. Testimonials underscored the toolkit’s utility and the transformative potential of GTAs...

W ildfires have raged across the mountains of the Hindu Kush Himalaya this year. The Indian state of Uttarakhand lost over 1,500 hectares of forest while Nepal saw hundreds of forest fires in March and over a thousand in April. As frightening and destructive as these fires have been, for over 10,000 years, everywhere from the Central...

Drive five hours north of the capital, Colombo, and the air hangs dry with a sun that seems to scorch just about anything it touches. The so-called Dry Zone is the agricultural heartland of Sri Lanka where life revolves around a single, most-precious resource: water. For decades, farming communities here have looked...

As global temperatures rise, heat stress has become a significant concern with varied effects on agricultural production, human health and productivity, and sustainability. Heat stress threatens food security and can exacerbate existing social and gender inequalities. Seventy percent of global agriculture will be exposed to the risk of heat stress...

About 14.6 million people (20 percent of the analysed population) experienced high levels of acute food insecurity, classified in IPC Phase 3 or above (Crisis or worse) between February and March 2024. An estimated 14.3 million people are in IPC Phase 3 (Crisis) and about 0.3 million people are in...

On a rainy day in August, when the availability of fisheries resources is high in the Teesta river here, Bimal Das returned from a four-hour fishing trip with only three kg of fish. While sorting the fish from the ice slabs, a dejected Das contemplated quitting fishing to looking for...

The International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022 (IYAFA) was celebrated worldwide. It provided a global platform to highlight the importance of small-scale fisheries and artisanal aquaculture, their role in sustainable development and the myriad of ways they ensure food security and poverty alleviation in dependent coastal and rural...

Co-innovation is a process in which researchers work together with stakeholders to realise innovations of different kinds, such as combined technological and institutional innovation (Bossink, 2002; Dogliotti et al., 2014; Klerkx et al., 2017). Co-innovation goes beyond participatory and transdisciplinary research in the form of doing joint experiments, given that...