Announcement
Dear Readers,
We are planning to publish Yemaya No. 61 July 2020 as a special issue on SSF contributions and rights to food and nutrition security.
The last date of submission for articles, case studies, interviews with fishing community members, review of legislation and policy related to food safety, photo essays, film and book reviews, reviews of online resources, cartoons (maximum 2000 words for articles, case studies, interviews and reviews, ten photos or paintings or cartoons) is 10 July 2020.
Please send your contributions to venu at (icsf@icsf.net)
Small-scale fisheries (SSF) play a unique yet frequently hidden role in assuring nutrition and food security in today’s world, in which 2 billion people are still considered food insecure and zero hunger’ continues to be an important Sustainable Development Goal. Provided with adequate support, SSF will likely continue to play this part in the future too. The special issue will pay special attention to how SSF adds to the four dimensions of food security, namely: (1) the availability of food, (2) its accessibility (with a focus on price and income), (3) its quality, and (4) the stability of supply over time. In doing so, we note that these contributions, like many other aspects of SSF economies, are largely undocumented and therefore are still in the process of being understood.(see Costello, C., L.Cao, S. Gelcich et al. 2019. The future of food from the sea. Washington D.C.: World Resources Institute.)
SSF plays a dual role in nutrition and food security. First, it ensures that the approximately 200 million people who are involved in the SSF economy fishers, processors, traders, transporters, and many others are able to sustain themselves and thereby enjoy their human right to a better standard of living.
The second role played by SSF is in supplying aquatic foods for large rural and urban populations. Most small-scale fishers sell a major portion of their produce to traders, who transport it to markets both adjacent to coasts and inland. In inland contexts, both wild-caught native fish and sustainably farmed herbivorous species provide bioavailable protein, vitamins and minerals for local communities, including Indigenous Peoples.
SSF communities face many challenges in maintaining their livelihoods and their food provisioning capacities particularly, inequitable access to resources and markets. To address this, fishers’ and farmers’ movements have articulated food sovereignty as an alternative vision for democratizing food systems and markets. While SSF trade networks serve diverse domestic and international markets, their major contribution is in providing low-income populations with a variety of aquatic foods that are not only affordable, but also cater to local tastes. In this context, this campaign will address the multiple dimensions of food security in fisheries and raise the profile of SSF in related international processes.
ICSF would be defining food security’ consistent with paragraph 15 under the right to adequate food and the achievement of food security of the 2004 FAO Voluntary Guidelines to Support the Progressive Realization of the Right to Adequate Food in the Context of National Food Security and within the framework of a human rights-based approach (which is referred to in paragraph 19). As you are aware, the human rights-based approach is reiterated in the 2014 SSF Guidelines.
The articles in this special edition will examine the gender dimensions in fisheries and also can report on changes and new trends in the supply and distribution of fish in both marine and inland small-scale fisheries value chains. They can describe the effects of these changes on fishers, fishworkers and fishing communities, especially women, who play an important role in securing the health and nutrition of their communities.
Yemaya Editorial Team
