JournalTOCs

Maritime Studies
Journal Prestige (SJR): 0.538

Citation Impact (citeScore): 1
Number of Followers: 13

This is an Open Access Journal

Open Access journal
ISSN (Print) 1872-7859 - ISSN (Online) 2212-9790
Published by SpringerOpen

[229 journals]

What do we talk about when we talk about integration: towards a
differentiated view on integration and fragmentation in coastal and marine
spatial planning
- Abstract: Abstract Bob Dylan once sang that he contained multitudes. So too does integration. More integrated planning of coasts and oceans has long been hailed as a goal and is seen as a pathway towards a more legitimate, cost-effective, equitable and sustainable planning of marine space. However, a reading of the literature indicates that many integration efforts have seemingly failed to reach their potential, and there is no clear understanding of what integration means or how we should best go about achieving it. The paper claims that this uncertainty partially stems from a unnuanced and static treatment of the concept, and a lack of recognition of the multitudes of integration. The paper argues firstly that fragmentation should not uncritically be seen as the antithesis to integration and as a negative property to be avoided. Secondly, there needs to be greater recognition of both the varying degrees of integration and the contextually dependent necessity of different degrees of integration. Lastly, it is more fruitful to see the multitude of nodes in the expanding ‘network of planning’ not as fragmentation, but as differentiation. Such an approach allows us to see integration as a mean towards more sustainable planning of coastal and marine areas, not end in and of itself.
  PubDate: 2023-02-01
Community-based tourism as social entrepreneurship promoting sustainable
development in coastal communities: a study in Thua Thien Hue province,
Central Vietnam
- Abstract: Abstract Community-based tourism (CBT) has been considered a popular approach to sustainable development, especially in rural areas of developing countries. However, the different trajectories of the CBT approach and mixed empirical evidence have led to a vague understanding of the impacts of CBT on sustainability. This study employs a social entrepreneurship perspective to explore CBT practices and their relationship with sustainable development in coastal communities in Thua Thien Hue, Central Vietnam. A survey collected data on 297 households in nine villages along the provincial coast. As a collective entrepreneurial initiative, tourism appears to have reconfigured the natural and sociocultural capitals of the coastal communities. CBT had different impacts on social, economic, and environmental sustainability. Although CBT brought considerable improvements to the landscape, environment, and natural resources, it caused unexpected impacts on culture preservation. Meanwhile, CBT did not provide many local household income enhancement or job creation opportunities. The study has implications for managers and policy maker to develop CBT in developing countries.
  PubDate: 2023-01-19
Towards self-determination and resurgence in small-scale fisheries:
insights from Batchewana First Nation fisheries
- Abstract: Abstract For millennia, Indigenous people across the globe have relied on fisheries and coastal environments as a part of their sustenance, well-being, livelihoods, culture, and spirituality. Despite the ongoing exclusions they face from settler colonial management systems, Indigenous communities continue to exercise their rights to fish and practice their traditional systems of governance. This paper presents insights from a setter–Indigenous research partnership project to document the efforts of Batchewana First Nation (BFN) on Lake Superior to exercise self-determination and jurisdiction over their fisheries. In 2019, twelve in-depth interviews were conducted with fish harvesters, elders, Knowledge Keepers, and community leaders to document their experiences, knowledge, and struggles of fishing and fishing rights in relation to the state and in support of cultural continuity. This paper explores the social, political, and ecological relationships surrounding BFN’s fisheries and their governance, as shared by the interview participants. Written by two settler academics in collaboration with the Chief of BFN, we consider how resurgence is expressed in BFN fisheries and opportunities for political mobilization, including links to movements for Indigenous resurgence, nationhood, and food sovereignty.
  PubDate: 2022-12-20
Jack Tar’s ink: a comparative analysis of Euro-American and
West African sailors’ tattoos during the eighteenth to twentieth
centuries
- Abstract: Abstract Sailors have commonly been identified as a heavily tattooed community, even since the eighteenth century. Euro-American sailors left some of the most detailed records we have on maritime tattoos. Yet their non-Western counterparts have often been neglected in analysis of how and why sailors tattooed themselves. This article compares tattoos of the Kru or Krumen from Sierra Leone and Liberia to that of Euro-American sailors. Both groups of mariners had difficult lives with physically demanding jobs that separated them from landed communities. In both cases, tattoos reflected the colonial world; for Euro-American sailors, tattoos signaled their time spent in exotic locations, and for Kru sailors, tattoos helped them avoid colonial exploitation and the slave trade. In both cases, tattoos were a way for sailors to differentiate themselves in a world where their bodies were exploited as disposable labor sources. They helped the wearer avoid becoming embodied property of another person, through enslavement, indenture, or conscription. And indeed, both forms of tattoos were successful in marking the wearer apart from other populations who were exploited in those ways. Ultimately, the story of how and why sailors from many different cultures acquired tattoos is intricately entangled with the larger stories of imperialism and labor in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.
  PubDate: 2022-12-16
Sustaining transformations: changing marine governance, environmental
meaning, and ‘left behind’ Brexit narratives on the Yorkshire East
Coast
- Abstract: Abstract Transformations to sustainability are frequently framed as key to blue growth, but they often engender complex consequences for communities. This article illustrates the role of environmental meaning in these processes through the lens of the Brexit vote on the Yorkshire East Coast. Based on discursive institutionalist analysis of narrative materials from semi-formal interviews conducted in 2017 alongside textual documentation from media, policy, and regional archives, I trace connections between transforming marine governance regimes, environmental meaning, and the British relationship with the EU from the Cod Wars to today. The transformation towards ecosystem-based management in British maritime governance post UNCLOS III left local communities feeling ‘left behind’ not only economically but also in terms of marginalised local meanings of place, labour, and environment. The Brexit vote, in this context, shows the multivalence of transformational processes and the importance of considering environmental meaning as part of their just execution.
  PubDate: 2022-12-06
Building planning spaces for the integration of coastal and maritime
cultural heritage in local and regional spatial development
- Abstract: Abstract Coastal and maritime cultural heritage (CMCH) is a relative newcomer on spatial development policy agendas and in spatial planning activities. Cultural heritage (CH) may assist in reconstructing place narratives and identities in local and regional strategies and plans, and it may create stronger place attractiveness for outsiders. This article explores the challenges and opportunities of integrating CMCH aspects in spatial development and planning activities at local and regional levels. It specifically investigates contemporary attempts at building planning and governance spaces concerned with CMCH, based on case studies in Scotland, France, Northern Ireland, and Denmark. Emphasis is on mandatory as well as non-mandatory spatial policy and planning activities for a more sustainable and resilient coastal development. The cases show how attempts at building planning spaces concerned with both CH and CMCH have sometimes led to, or contributed to, new types of planning collaborations and products, facilitated changes in existing ones, or illuminated a lack of community involvement to be dealt with in next generation planning. Together, the cases illustrate the importance and challenges of enabling a more place-sensitive planning and of ‘finding the right planning space’ for CH integration.
  PubDate: 2022-12-01
Market women’s skills, constraints, and agency in supplying affordable,
safe, and high-quality fish in Ghana
- Abstract: Abstract In Ghana, the role of female informal traders (“market women”) in making low-cost smoked and dried fish available in urban and rural marketplaces is the key to explaining the high consumption of fish in the country. However, market women’s contribution to food security and nutrition (FSN), as well as to fish quality and safety is underrated and poorly understood. Fish marketing requires proficient distribution and preservation skills, economic and sociocultural competence, and a high degree of mobility. Fish traders face numerous constraints related to fish supplies, credit access, hygiene, storage facilities, transport, and market governance, all of which affect their incomes and may affect the quality and safety of fish. The article, which is based on semi-structured interviews with fish traders and fish consumers in coastal and inland markets in Ghana, documents how traders operate and exhibit agency to deal with constraints by activating a range of skills in their profit-making and their fish quality and safety enhancement strategies. The authors argue that policies grounded in knowledge about fish traders’ activities, skills, and working conditions, with budgets that prioritize investment in public infrastructure that caters for market women’s professional and personal needs, can further enhance their ability to supply affordable, safe, and high-quality fish to Ghana’s population.
  PubDate: 2022-12-01
Steering resilience in coastal and marine cultural heritage
- Abstract: Abstract Coastal and marine cultural heritage (CMCH) is at risk due to its location and its often indefinable value. As these risks are likely to intensify in the future, there is an urgent need to build CMCH resilience. We argue that the current CMCH risk management paradigm narrowly focuses on the present and preservation. This tends to exclude debates about the contested nature of resilience and how it may be achieved beyond a strict preservationist approach. There is a need, therefore, to progress a broader and more dynamic framing of CMCH management that recognises the shift away from strict preservationist approaches and incorporates the complexity of heritage’s socio-political contexts. Drawing on critical cultural heritage literature, we reconceptualise CMCH management by rethinking the temporality of cultural heritage. We argue that cultural heritage may exist in four socio-temporal manifestations (extant, lost, dormant, and potential) and that CMCH management consists of three broad socio-political steering processes (continuity, discontinuity, and transformation). Our reconceptualisation of CMCH management is a first step in countering the presentness trap in CMCH management. It provides a useful conceptual framing through which to understand processes beyond the preservationist approach and raises questions about the contingent and contested nature of CMCH, ethical questions around loss and transformation, and the democratisation of cultural heritage management.
  PubDate: 2022-12-01
Clinker, sailor, fisher, why' The necessity of sustained demand for
safeguarding clinker craft intangible cultural heritage
- Abstract: Abstract This paper examines the maintenance of the knowledge and practice of Nordic clinker boat building in the setting of coastal Denmark, characterized as a form of intangible cultural heritage (ICH). We explore the ‘working’ dimension of these boats as small-scale fishing vessels and the risks to this ICH as expressed in various policy, social, and economic domains. The paper centres around a working boatyard on the west coast of North Jutland, incorporating perspectives from a network of wooden boat builders, and those working in coastal and maritime cultural heritage in Denmark and the wider Nordic region. Threats to the continuation of the heritage in its ‘working’ form are explored using responses from semi-structured interviews, as well as documents related to the pan-Nordic application for the inscription of Nordic Clinker Boat Traditions on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity. The case highlights the challenges specific to ‘boatbuilding for industry’ as a form of ICH and opens a discussion on which actors and institutions ought to be responsible for safeguarding, maintaining and cultivating its practice and renewal.
  PubDate: 2022-12-01
Value chain of sergestid shrimp (Acetes spp.) caught in Banate Bay, Iloilo
Province, Philippines
- Abstract: Abstract In the Philippines, as in other East African and Asian countries, the shrimps of the genus Acetes, family Sergestidae, a minor planktonic crustacean group, are highly valued for their economic importance. Sergestid shrimp, locally known as “hipon,” has long been a source of food and livelihood for the fishing communities in the municipalities of Barotac Nuevo, Anilao, Banate, and Barotac Viejo that surround Banate Bay in the northern part of Iloilo Province, Philippines. A value chain analysis was conducted to assess the overall performance of this local shrimp industry. A total of 137 study participants were interviewed from January to March 2019 and were categorized based on the activities they performed. The big players in the value chain turned out to be the processor-traders, who sold 56.55% of the total volume of production in Banate Bay in 2018. The industry approximates a competitive market as most of the participants were price takers. The price of sergestid shrimp increased as it transformed from raw to processed forms. The processing activity generated the highest value-added, where women processors received PHP 68.35 (USD 1.30) per kilogram, while men processors received PHP 53.44 (USD 1.01) per kilogram. While women have incurred higher costs, they nonetheless received higher value-added than men. Catching sergestid shrimps was dominated by men, but women caught shrimp too. Processing turned out as an activity for both men and women. Women, however, dominated the trading of both fresh and processed sergestid shrimp.
  PubDate: 2022-11-29
From good intentions to unexpected results — a cross-scale analysis of a
fishery improvement project within the Indonesian blue swimming crab
- Abstract: Abstract Private actors have become prominent players in the work to drive social and environmental sustainability transitions. In the fisheries sector, fishery improvement projects (FIPs) aim to address environmental challenges by leveraging the capacity of industry actors and using value chains to incentivize change. Despite globally rising FIP numbers, the incentive structures behind FIP establishment and the role of internal dynamics remain poorly understood. This paper uses institutional entrepreneurship as an analytical lens to examine the institutional change surrounding the management and trade of the Indonesian blue swimming crab and sheds light on how global market dynamics, local fishery dynamics, and value chain initiatives interact to affect the trajectory towards sustainability over time. We contribute to the institutional entrepreneurship framework by extending it with social-ecological dynamics, different actors’ ability to realize or resist change, and outcomes of institutional change. These additions can improve its explanatory power in relation to sustainability initiatives in fisheries governance and beyond. Our cross-scale historical analysis of the value chain shows not only the entrepreneurship behind the FIP’s establishment, and its institutional interventions, but also why these have been unsuccessful in improving the ecological sustainability of fishers’ and traders’ behavior. This provides valuable empirical grounding to a wider debate about industry leadership and private incentives for sustainability at large and helps disentangle under what conditions such initiatives are more (or less) likely to have intended effects.
  PubDate: 2022-10-06
Addressing vulnerability and exclusion in the South African small-scale
fisheries sector: does the current regulatory framework measure up'
- Abstract: Abstract Small-scale fishers and fishing communities have long suffered marginalisation and discrimination in South Africa. New laws and policies promulgated as the result of a court case brought by small-scale fishers, NGOs and academics attempt to rectify this problem. Drawing on the poverty-vulnerability-marginalisation framework, the paper considers whether this regulatory regime reduces vulnerability and marginalisation within the sector as an important precursor to poverty reduction initiatives, such as improved rights allocation. While the new regulatory regime is a step in the right direction, the paper ultimately finds that there are shortcomings in these laws, many of which have been thrown into sharp relief by the rights implementation process and COVID-19 lockdowns. These include narrow eligibility criteria for fishing rights, a lack of substantive solutions when it comes to vulnerable groups, processes insufficient to prevent elite capture, and impediments to the practice of alternative livelihoods. These shortcomings must be addressed through the appropriate expansion of access rights, consultation with fishers and more inclusive drafting, if the contribution of small-scale fisheries to development and poverty reduction in South Africa is to be realised.
  PubDate: 2022-10-06
The how in fishing and fish processing: traditional artisanal fishing and
fish processing practices among the Ga people of Ghana
- Abstract: Abstract Ghana’s marine artisanal fisheries subsector is an important contributor to livelihoods, food security and nutrition. Despite formal institutions and laws, annual landings of small pelagic species, the most important fishery in local communities, have been declining. In Ghana, fisheries management using traditional fisheries knowledge could be crucial for food and economic security and critical towards achieving the UN Sustainable Developments Goals (SDG). This study was therefore conducted to document the fishing, fish processing and fisheries management practices of the Ga people of Ghana as a starting point for sustaining the fisheries, local fishing communities and fish value chains. Data were collected from three landing beaches using interviews and focus group discussions with fishermen, fishmongers and the respective chief fisherman. The results include findings on fishing gears and techniques, fish processing and sales and traditional fisheries management and leadership. The dominant gear used are varied forms of drift and purse seine nets on motorised canoes. Fishermen navigate using the moon, features on land, sea depth and the direction and sound of sea waves. Behavioural patterns of different fish species are used to identify fishes in the water during fishing. Catches are distributed by the canoe owner’s wife, and money from the sale is divided into three equal shares: a part to pay for fishing expenses and the other parts for the owner of the canoe and the fishing crew. The main fish processing method is smoking using the Chorkor oven. At each landing site, there is a chief fisherman who is respected as a repository of traditional knowledge on fishing practices and fisheries management. This study provides key insights into Ga traditional knowledge and highlights the need to incorporate and involve fishing communities in national fisheries policymaking. It is argued that traditional knowledge and leaders can contribute to a more sustainable management of Ghanaian fisheries and achieving SDGs 14, 1 and 2. The results of this study can also serve as a preliminary information basis and a guide for a possible adoption of the ecosystem approach to fisheries in Ghana. This could enable the country to fully fulfil her obligations under the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries.
  PubDate: 2022-10-05
Illuminating informal cross-border trade in processed small pelagic fish
in West Africa
- Abstract: Abstract Trade in processed small pelagic fish and informal cross-border trade (ICBT) are linked to livelihood activities in West Africa. Although these fish products are being traded informally in West Africa, research on this topic is limited. This study builds on a multi-partner supported ‘FishTrade’ initiative in Africa to illuminate the volume and value of informal fish trade across the Ghana–Togo–Benin (GTB) borders, and the socio-demographic determinants supporting participation and profitability in this trade. We used a structured survey and focus group interviews to obtain data from women fish traders, who handle the entire fish trade in three major Ghanaian markets where ICBT activities are concentrated. Our results showed ICBT across these borders constitutes significant economic and livelihood potential, estimated at about 6000 MT in volume and US$14 million in market value per annum. Furthermore, socio-demographic factors, such as fish traders’ years of experience and membership in an unofficial market cooperative, positively influence participation and profitability, but access to market information negatively affects participation. However, geographical distance, large household size and access to micro-finance negatively affect ICBT profitability. Our findings illuminate that consumers’ purchasing power, fish taste and preference, ICBT’s economic opportunities and a shared heritage and connection significantly influence this form of trading along the GTB borders. We conclude that ICBT in these small pelagic processed fish represents untapped potential for local livelihood and highlight the need for further research on this topic.
  PubDate: 2022-10-04
Fishers’ Perspectives: the Drivers Behind the Decline in Fish Catch in
Laguna Lake, Philippines
- Abstract: Abstract Aquatic ecosystems are strongly affected by global change. Fishers hold local ecological knowledge (LEK) that is especially relevant for improving our understanding of aquatic ecosystems that experience major environmental changes while also providing crucial ecosystem services. This research explores the perceptions of the ecological changes in Laguna Lake (Philippines) among local fisherfolks. In 2019, we conducted 30 semi-structured interviews with fisherfolks with up to 60 years’ experience. They reported catching 31 fish species and one shrimp genus as a staple food and income source, with more than one-third of the species being exotic or introduced. The fisherfolks noted repeated fish kill events and dramatic changes in their catch such as fewer and smaller fish. Also noticeable were the widespread catch of knifefish, a comparably newly introduced species, and the fact that all native fish species were reported to be less often caught now than in the past. This included the reduced catch of talilong (mullet), dalag (snakehead), and ayungin (silver perch). Locals emphasized various drivers behind these changes, which are linked to one another in complex interrelationships. Invasive species, the deterioration of fish habitats, and increased water turbidity were cited as the main drivers. Interviewees highlighted an additional link between declining catches and the loss of aquatic plant diversity, which has been understudied in Laguna Lake and has not been the focus of regional policy efforts. The empirical evidence provided by the fisherfolks enhances earlier existing scientific evidence of this aquatic ecosystem as well as highlights the importance of contributions coming from different knowledge systems.
  PubDate: 2022-10-04
Making a network of patches, gaps, and spaces: marine and coastal
governance in Stilbaai, South Africa
- Abstract: Abstract Based on research conducted by myself and colleagues as part of the Southern Cape Interdisciplinary Fisheries Research Project, I present an overview of residents’ perspectives on the Stilbaai Marine Protected Area, located on the Southern Cape coast of South Africa. Currently, South Africa’s marine governance sector is often fraught with politicking, inefficiencies, and other effects that strain the social-ecological system. This research shows that despite some fragmentation of governance, there are opportunities, and a general willingness, to engage in activities that take care of the local environment on the behalf of residents, that serve to educate about ocean-positive behaviours and engage visitors more meaningfully on the benefits and value of the Stilbaai Marine Protected Area. Problems that residents perceive to be associated with the Marine Protected Area are noted, and suggestions are made to enhance a sense of caretaking, or sorgskap, within the community to fill the gaps of certain governance or regulation inadequacies. Indeed, I argue that in lieu of efficient formal governance structures and collaborations, it is the informal characteristic of caretaking activities by the community that renders these activities more sustainable, long term, and effective in building a “culture” of caretaking.
  PubDate: 2022-09-29
Transnational fishers’ movements: emergence, evolution, and
contestation
- Abstract: Abstract Global transformations in fisheries have contributed to the expansion of transnational movements, as they continuously seek out new ways to strengthen their global linkages and find spaces and platforms for engagement. As more platforms emerge for addressing international concerns, intergovernmental bodies have become increasingly implicated in navigating the political integration of diverse global actors, such as transnational fishers’ movements. Focusing on the World Forum of Fisher Peoples and the World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers, this article tracks their engagement in the politics of global fisheries. It explores the history of these movements, beginning with the first steps that were taken toward building an international fishers’ network between 1984 and 1997, and follows their evolution into the movements they are today. It also examines their political agendas and strategies, and their representation of small-scale fishers in international spaces over the last two decades. The article argues that three pivotal developments offer important insights into the politics of transnational fishers’ movements. First, they are internalizing overlapping fisheries, food and climate crises, and are aligning their activities and demands accordingly. Second, fishers’ and agrarian movements and platforms are increasingly converging around common struggles. Third, international intergovernmental bodies have broadened their attention to fisheries issues in their analysis and activities. These developments have been crucial in shaping the movements’ political agendas, and for building alliances in order to scale up and strengthen their advocacy work.
  PubDate: 2022-09-16
Broadening environmental governance ontologies to enhance ecosystem-based
management in Aotearoa New Zealand
- Abstract: Abstract Ecosystem-based management (EBM) is a holistic approach to managing marine environments that can potentially reconcile cross-sectoral conflicts, scale mismatches, and fulfil sustainability objectives. In Aotearoa New Zealand (Aotearoa NZ), the operationalisation of EBM has been uneven; however, a set of principles to guide EBM in Aotearoa NZ provides a useful foundation to enable and enhance its uptake and to support governance approaches that attend to the rights, values, interests, and knowledges of Māori, the Indigenous peoples of Aotearoa. In acknowledging the need to give attention to the governance of marine environments, we apply insights from the ‘relational turn’ in social sciences and sustainability science to explore the ontological and epistemological broadening of ‘governance’ to identify opportunities for alternative forms of governance that accommodate Indigenous ways of knowing. We propose four pou (or enabling conditions) that generate alternatives to governance models underpinned by a ‘modernist’ (dualistic, technocratic) ontology: (i) enacting interactive administrative arrangements; (ii) diversifying knowledge production; (iii) prioritising equity, justice, and social difference; and (iv) recognising interconnections and interconnectedness. Our analysis of seven governance examples exposes evidence of radical and progressive transformations occurring within Aotearoa NZ regarding conceptions of the environment and the role of people in it that could support the wider uptake of EBM. Rather than advocating a ‘perfect model’ of governance for EBM, we find potential in EBM as a strategic approach to managing marine environments because of the synergies with Indigenous and relational ontologies, which lie in the emphasis on interconnectedness, inclusivity, diversity, and relationality.
  PubDate: 2022-09-10
Testing a model to assess women’s inclusion and participation in
community-based resource management in Solomon Islands
- Abstract: Abstract Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) is a standard management framework in Melanesia. Yet, there is increasing evidence that women, among other marginalised groups, experience barriers to inclusion in decision-making processes. Through a case study in three communities in Marovo Lagoon, Solomon Islands, we adapted Agarwal’s 2001 participation typology for a Melanesian CBFM context to present a participation model for assessing gender inclusivity in CBFM. We defined six levels of women’s participation, including, (1) no participation, (2) nominal, (3) passive, (4) consultive, (5) active, and (6) interactive (empowering) participation, defined as actively participating in all aspects of the decision-making process, and holding leadership roles that increase women’s influence and power across the community. The model should be broadly useful throughout Melanesia across many different cultural contexts, though we anticipate that aspects will need adaptation in different contexts, both within and beyond Solomon Islands. We found that the three study communities respectively fell within the passive, consultive, and active levels. Our results show that gender parity, that is equal representation of women and men, is not a reliable indicator of gender equity. The utility of the model lies in its implementation, which requires engagement with gender power structures. This work contributes to the gender, small-scale fisheries, and community-based management literature by assessing women’s participation in CBFM decision-making processes through use of a participation model, and providing recommendations to fisheries practitioners on implementation of the model to assess gender equity in a community’s CBFM structures.
  PubDate: 2022-09-08
What does gender have to do with the price of tuna' Social-ecological
systems view of women, gender, and governance in Fiji’s tuna fishery
- Abstract: Abstract Western and Central Pacific (WCP) tuna fisheries form part of a broad and complex social and ecological system (SES). This consists of interconnected elements including people (social, cultural, economic) and the biophysical environment in which they live. One area that has received little attention by policy makers is gender. Gender is important because it deepens understandings of behaviours, roles, power relations, policies, programs, and services that may differentially impact on social, ecological, economic, cultural, and political realities of people. This paper contributes a “first step” to examining gender issues in WCP tuna SES. Women’s roles in WCP tuna SES in Fiji are explored and an evaluation of the impact fisheries development policy has on gender equality over the past two decades is revealed. Three key findings emerged from interviews, focus group discussions, and observations: 1) traditional gendered roles remain where women are marginalised in either invisible or low-paid and unskilled roles, and violence is sanctioned; 2) gender mainstreaming of policy and practice remain simplistic and narrow, but are transitioning towards more equitable outcomes for women; and 3) failure to consider gender within the context of WCP tuna SES leads to unintended outcomes that undermine potential benefits of the fishery to broader society, especially to women. A multifaceted approach is recommended to integrate substantive gender equality into SES-based approaches. This research argues educating and getting women opportunities to work on boats falls short of redressing inequality and injustice that is embedded in the social, political, and economic status quo.
  PubDate: 2022-08-31