FAO participates on the discussions regarding small-scale fisheries in the 8th World Fisheries Congress

Held every four years, the World Fisheries Congress is the key international fisheries conference, bringing together research, industry, and management sectors to discuss the latest advances in fisheries world-wide.  This year’s thematic was “Sharing our oceans and rivers – a vision for the world’s fisheries”. Discussions related to small-scale fisheries were carried throughout the congress, here are some highlights:

Nicole Franz from FAO’s fisheries division made a presentation about National Plans of Action in Support of the Implementation of the SSF Guidelines (NPOA-SSF). Nicole shared experiences from the implementation of the SSF Guidelines in Costa Rica, Tanzania and Senegal and presented the NPOA-SSF Toolkit developed by FAO and its application in Namibia and Madagascar.

Presenting on small-scale fisheries resilience in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic, Ruben Sánchez Daroqui, also from FAO, provided examples of strategies by the small-scale sector that have increased the sector’s adaptive capacity and overall resilience and will identify factors that have contributed to its recovery process. His presentation offered examples that can be replicated in other contexts to build forward better.

David Mills, from Worldfish, talked about the results from two discrete analysis completed under the Illuminating Hidden Harvests (IHH) initiative. The first one on new estimates of the regional nutrition potential of small-scale fisheries and the second on the use existing Demographic and Health Survey and environmental spatial data to examine the link between fish consumption and childhood nutrition.

Amplifying the scope and discussing about the legal reflections on the SSF Guidelines, Phd researcher, Julia Nakamura, addressed some questions related to the legal nature and legal weight of the SSF Guidelines, what are its strengths and shortcomings and how have the SSF Guidelines, following its adoption, been reflected in legal and policy instruments, at various levels of governance.

Also, this year, Professor Manuel Barange, director of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division at FAO was invited as one of the key speakers to talk about “Blue transformation: Safeguarding the contribution of fisheries and aquaculture to the food and nutrition security of 10 billion people”, addressing the benefits and challenges of the increase of fish consumers worldwide.

All presentations and the complete program are available on demand, for those who have registered: https://wfc2021.com.au.