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The Small Island Developing States (SIDS) are unique. Wonderful landscapes immersed in peculiar geographic conformations, small dimensions, and separation from mainland: this nature makes the approximately 60 million inhabitants who populate SIDS highly dependent on fisheries for their economy and well-being. While many countries around the world have reported an increase in the contribution of sustainable fisheries to their Gross Domestic Product (GDP), this quota for SIDS has been stable since 2011. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic has affected food imports and tourism, putting a strain on the resilience of these countries that import up to 80% of their food and whose incomes from tourism and exports contribute significantly to national economies.

FAO is teaming up to support a value chain development approach to recover from the impacts of COVID-19 on production and distribution sectors. The value chain approach aims at enabling stakeholder capabilities by analyzing and intervening at all stages of the seafood value chain. Increasing fishermen participation in value chains can revert to a GDP growth by minimizing losses and waste, diminishing the carbon footprint and adding value to the final product.

The first step is to carry out a value chain analysis (VCA), which is conducted utilising the FAO Sustainable Food Value Chains (SFVC) methodology (end-market analysis, VC mapping, functional analysis, economic, social and environmental analysis, support services and enabling environment analysis). This is a system approach intended at identifying problems and promoting innovative thinking to find effective solutions.

Several initiatives are already in place, including the SVC4SIDS project which is focusing on identifying high-value species and products to bolster trade and facilitate market access in SIDS. Moreover, focusing on species of higher value will enable SIDS fisheries actors to cover recurring high trade-related costs, thus increasing the incomes from exports. Furthermore, the value chain improvement would bring benefits not only in terms of access to foreign markets, but also in terms of strengthened and improved utilization of aquatic resources for domestic markets. Due to a combination of factors, such as delicate ecosystems, poor development of the tertiary sector and lack of infrastructures, SIDS are often highly dependent  on imports and the domestic food production is not as beneficial as it could be; a new and more sustainable approach to food systems transformation, combined with a renewed use of domestic resources, would lead to a positive change for the well-being of the population.  

Adding a nutrition lens in the process will leverage opportunities to enhance nutrition value, not only with market purposes but also to enhance well-being. Fish, in fact, is the main source of proteins in SIDS diets, with some of them reaching up to 50% of total intake.

The same SFVC methodology to mitigate the impacts of the pandemic on the fisheries sector has already been  adopted by other FAO projects, such as FISH4ACP, who recently trained an international team of researchers to use the value chain analysis as a tool to reactivate the fisheries sector in Peru.