Implicating ‘fisheries justice’ movements in food and climate politics

Abstract

While much debate on climate change has emerged around food, forest and land politics, the fisheries sector has only recently become more visibly implicated in these discussions. Similarly, in comparison to food and agrarian movements, fishers’ resistance to intensified mitigation efforts and resource exclusion is still significantly understudied academically, and receives little attention in political spheres. This highlights a critical gap in both food and climate politics literature, which this paper aims to present a framework for addressing. To do so, it contextualises the emergence of overlapping processes of exclusion in global fisheries, and explores the implications global food system transformations have had in the fisheries sector, and the reactions this has spurred from South African fishers. It then traces the convergence of fishers’ movements with other resource justice movements, and how this has contributed to the rise of ‘fisheries justice’. Finally, it presents four interlinked propositions – highlighting food sovereignty, resource access and conflict, climate change and mitigation, convergences between movements, and alternatives proposed by fishers – as a framework for how incorporating fisheries and fishers’ movements can broaden our understanding of transnational social movements, and expand the depth and scope of food and climate politics.

Keywords:

• Fisheries
• climate change
• food politics
• transnational social movements
• convergence
• South Africa

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank the editors of this Special Issue for all of their hard work in developing this exciting collection and for including my article in the issue. I would also like to thank the anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful comments, which have been so helpful in sharpening and clarifying the arguments in this paper.

Notes

1. Bavinck, Pellegrini, and Mostert, Conflicts over Natural Resources in the Global South; and Cochrane et al., Climate Change Implications for Fisheries and Aquaculture.

2. Hunsberger et al., "Climate Change Mitigation, Land Grabbing and Conflict”; Beymer-Farris and Bassett, “The REDD Menace”; Borras and Franco, “Global Land Grabbing and Trajectories of Agrarian Change”; Clapp and Cohen, Global Food Crisis; and Barnett and Adger, “Climate Change, Human Security and Violent Conflict.”

3. Bennet et al., “Appeal for a Code of Conduct for Marine Conservation.”

4. Barbesgaard, Pedersen, and Feodoroff, “Marine Protected Areas in South Africa”; and Campling, Havice, and McCall Howard, “Political Economy and Ecology of Capture Fisheries.”

5. Campling and Havice, “Problem of Property in Industrial Fisheries.”

6. Bavinck, Pellegrini, and Mostert, Conflicts over Natural Resources in the Global South; and Tapela, “Conflicts over Land and Water in Africa.”

7. Castree, “Neoliberalising Nature: Processes, Effects and Evaluations”; and “Commodifying what Nature?”

8. Arsel and Büscher, “Nature™ Inc.: Changes and Continuities.”

9. Notable exceptions include Longo, Clausen, and Clark, Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture; Pedersen et al., Global Ocean Grab: A Primer; Bennett, Govan, and Satterfield, “Ocean Grabbing”; Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?.”

10. Claeys and Delgado Pugley, “Peasant and Indigenous Transnational Social Movements”; Tramel, “Road Through Paris”; and Brent, Schiavoni, and Alonso-Fradejas, “Contextualising Food Sovereignty.”

11. Tarrow, The New Transnational Activism; and Smith and Guarnizo, Transnationalism from Below.

12. In this paper, food sovereignty refers to ‘an evolving process, framework or “joint banner of struggle” with definitions that change over time as alliances are expanded and new actors are brought into the [various dialogues] inside the food sovereignty movement’; Rosset and Martinez-Torres, “Food Sovereignty and Agreoecology,” 153–4. It also draws on McMichael’s discussion of food sovereignty as the antithesis of the corporate food regime and its hollow promises for food security; McMichael, “Historicizing Food Sovereignty.”

13. In this paper, agroecology is used in the context of both its ecological and sociopolitical forms, as discussed by Levidow and colleagues. Thus, it is defined as agroecological methods that depend on and enhance biodiversity, in order to facilitate integrated agroecosystems both within and around agricultural areas. It also promotes economic relations centred on alternative distribution systems and diverse social institutions that support small-scale producers (eg farmers’ markets and cooperatives); Levidow, Pimbert, and Valoquerern, “Agroecological Research: Conforming – or Transforming,” 1130.

14. Edelman and Borras, Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements.

15. Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism.”

16. Longo, Clausen, and Clark, Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture.

17. While there are certainly many other issues threatening fishers’ livelihoods, in the context of this paper, the two highlighted here are key for framing the intersection between existing forms of exclusion and conflict within climate politics debates.

18. Longo, Clausen, and Clark, Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries and Aquaculture.

19. Ibid.

20. FAO, State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016.

21. FAO, State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2012; and State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016.

22. Figure from 2013.

23. Campling and Havice, “Problem of Property in Industrial Fisheries”; and WFFP and WFF, “Call for Governments to Stop Supporting.”

24. De Schutter, “‘Ocean Grabbing’ as Serious a Threat.”

25. Ibid.

26. Mkumbo and Marshall, “Nile Perch Fishery of Lake Victoria”; and Chen et al., “Development of China’s Yangtze River.”

27. FAO, State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2016.

28. Schweber, “No-Guilt, Delicious Salmon of the Future.”

29. Panorama Acuícola, “Downside of Shrimp Farming and Trade.”

30. Ertör and Ortega-Cerdà, ‘Unpacking the Objectives and Assumptions.”

31. Daw et al., “Climate Change and Capture Fisheries.”

32. See Allison et al., “Vulnerability of National Economies”; Cochrane et al., Climate Change Implications for Fisheries and Aquaculture; Adger et al., “Social-Ecological Resilience to Coastal Disasters”; and Drinkwater, “Response of Atlantic Cod.”

33. Notable exceptions include Barbesgaard,“Blue Growth: Savior or Ocean Grabbing?”; and Tramel, “Road Through Paris.”

34. Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?”; FAO, Dams, Fish and Fisheries.

35. Sneddon and Fox, “Inland Capture Fisheries”; Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?”; and FAO, Dams, Fish and Fisheries.

36. Campling, Havice, and McCall Howard, “Political Economy and Ecology of Capture Fisheries.”

37. Barbesgaard, “Blue Growth: Savior or Ocean Grabbing?”

38. Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism”; Tramel, “Road Through Paris.”

39. Beymer-Farris and Bassett, “The REDD Menace”; Hunsberger et al., “Climate Change Mitigation, Land Grabbing and Conflict”; and Tramel, “Road Through Paris.”

40. Allison et al., “Vulnerability of National Economies.”

41. O’Brien et al., “Mapping Vulnerability to Multiple Stressors.”

42. Campling, Havice, and McCall Howard, “Political Economy and Ecology of Capture Fisheries.”

43. Ibid.

44. Masifundise, “Rights and Wrongs: The South African Case.”

45. Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism.”

46. Flex crops and commodities are those with ‘multiple uses (food, feed, fuel, fibre, industrial material, etc.) that can be flexibly interchanged while some consequent supply gaps can be filled by other flex crops. Flexibility arises from multiple relationships among various crops, components and uses’.

47. Borras et al., “Rise of Flex Crops and Commodities,” 2.

48. Ronquest-Ross, Vink, and Sigge, “Food Consumption Changes in South Africa.”

49. Rastyannikova, “Fisheries and Aquaculture of the BRICS in the World Economy.”

50. Seafish, Report on the Seafish industry in South Africa.

51. FAO, National Fishery Sector Overview.

52. DAFF, Small-Scale Fisheries; and South African Government, Fisheries.

53. DAFF, Policy for Small-Scale Fisheries Sector in South Africa, iv-v.

54. Pedersen et al., Global Ocean Grab: A Primer.

55. Masifundise, Too Big to Ignore, and PLAAS, Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) Policy; and DAFF, Policy for the Small-Scale Fisheries Sector.

56. DAFF, Small-Scale Fisheries.

57. Masifundise, Too Big to Ignore, and PLAAS, Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF) Policy.

58. Masifundise, “DAFF Reports on Small-Scale Fisheries.”

59. Masifundise, “Rights and Wrongs: The South African Case”; and Isaacs, “Individual Transferable Quotas.”

60. FAO, Voluntary Guidelines.

61. Author’s own elaboration.

62. Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism”; Tramel, “Road Through Paris.”

63. Nyéléni, “Nyeleni Newsletter #27, September 2016.”

64. Transnational Institute, “Cooling the Planet.”

65. Tramel, “Road Through Paris”; and Claeys and Delgado Pugley, “Peasant and Indigenous Transnational Social Movements.”

66. Claeys and Delgado Pugley, “Peasant and Indigenous Transnational Social Movements”; and Rosset and Martinez-Torres, “Food Sovereignty and Agroecology.”

67. For numerous examples, see Edelman and Borras, Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements.

68. Sinha, “Transnationality and the Indian Fishworkers’ Movement, 1960s–2000.”

69. WFF, World Forum of Fish Harvesters and Fish Workers official website; and WFFP, World Forum of Fisher Peoples official website.

70. FAO, International Guidelines.

71. See Tramel, “Road Through Paris”; and Coalition Climat 21, “People’s Climate Summit.”

72. For more on the commodification of nature, see Castree, “Commodifying what Nature?”; and in the context of fisheries, see Campling, “The Tuna ‘Commodity Frontier’”; and Longo and Clark, “Commodification of Bluefin Tuna.”

73. WFFP, “Blue Carbon: Ocean Grabbing in Disguise?”; and Damanik, “Fisherfolks are Pushing the Solution.”

74. Water Grabbing, “Paris COP21 and the Global Convergence.”

75. Rosset and Martinez-Torres, “Food Sovereignty and Agroecology,” 138.

76. Rosset and Martinez-Torres, “Food Sovereignty and Agroecology”; and Nyéléni, Nyéléni Declaration.

77. Rivera-Ferre, Constance, and Renars, “Convergence and Divergence in Alternative Agrifood Movements.”

78. Franco, Mehta, and Veldwisch, “Global Politics of Water Grabbing”; and Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?”

79. McMichael, “Food Sovereignty: A Critical Dialogue”; Schiavoni, “The Contested Terrain of Food Sovereignty Construction”; and Wittman, Desmarais, and Wiebe, “Origins and Potential of Food Sovereignty.”

80. See Jansen, “Debate on Food Sovereignty Theory.”

81. Franco, Mehta, and Veldwisch, “Global Politics of Water Grabbing.”

82. Hunsberger et al., “Climate Change Mitigation, Land Grabbing and Conflict”.

83. Cochrane et al., Climate Change Implications for Fisheries and Aquaculture.

84. Hunsberger et al., “Climate Change Mitigation, Land Grabbing and Conflict”; Beymer-Farris and Bassett, “The REDD Menace.”

85. Ribot, “Cause and Response: Vulnerability and Climate in the Anthropocene.”

86. Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?”; and D. Hall, “Primitive Accumulation, Accumulation by Dispossession.”

87. Franco et al., “Global Politics of Water Grabbing”; and Mehta, Veldwisch, and Franco, “Introduction to the Special Issue: Water Grabbing?”

88. Schlosberg and Collins, “From Environmental to Climate Justice.”

89. Martinez-Alier et al., “Is There a Global Environmental Justice Movement?”

90. Edelman and Borras, Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements.

91. Edelman and Borras, Political Dynamics of Transnational Agrarian Movements; and Borras, “Land Politics, Agrarian Movements and Scholar-Activism.”

92. R. Hall et al., “Resistance, Acquiescence or Incorporation?”