Alternatives to Crisis: Social Movements in Global Fisheries G Overnance

Abstract

Narratives of crisis in the fisheries tell us about declining catches, vanishing species, and displaced fishers. We hear little about the agency of fishing communities themselves, and their long history of militant mobilization at a variety of scales in defense of their resources, livelihoods, and communities. This paper seeks to fill this gap. It traces the changing role of social movements representing fishing communities in global fisheries governance, from their emergence in the period of state-led developmentalism to their contradictory positioning within the new global governance of voluntary codes and market-based mechanisms. In contrast to technoscientific, economistic and managerial solutions for sustainability, these movements place the human-ecological relationship at the centre, asserting the importance of livelihood, place-based community, and fishers’ knowledges in ensuring the sustainability of the fisheries. Despite the complexities and contradictions involved in making such claims, the movements have been successful in inserting them into global frameworks and discussions around fisheries governance. It is important that scholarship committed to the production of alternatives to the intensification of capitalism's socio-ecological crises documents, critically examines, and valorizes the work of such movements.