The Case for Community Supported Fisheries (Mads Barbesgaard in Conversation with Thibault Josse)

New generations of technologically advanced, hyper efficient industrial vessels, have gotten too good at fishing. This limited number of vessels has a massive impact on the ocean. Fish stocks have largely declined since the 1980s, but not all fishers contribute to the problem to the same extent, nor are all fishing livelihoods impacted to the same degree. The crisis of overfishing, fuelled in large part by a small number of industrial vessels, is threatening the livelihoods of coastal communities and small-scale fisheries around the world who depend on the ocean as a source of food and income.

Small-scale fishers around the world rely on traditional methods and practices, working in harmony with the environment to feed themselves and their communities. Around the world they are rallying around the idea of food sovereignty and the vision of a global food system with food producers and human rights at its center.

At the State of power podcast, we are concerned with the ways in which power functions, on land and on the sea. With the United Nations Oceans Conference coming up between 27 June and 1 July, we thought this would be as good a time as any to take a closer look at  the oceans that make up more than 70% of our planet’s surface. 

How are coastal communities dealing with the capitalist advance into the oceans, the so-called Blue economy? What are the challenges faced by small-scale fishers today? Who are the small-scale fishers today — from France to Indonesia? What social divisions exist within this category of "small-scale fisheries" , what roles do  class, gender, and even race play -- and in this light, to what extent do "small-scale fishers" constitute a "political subject" that can fight for change?  

Thibault Josse  works at Association Pleine Mer, a collective of fisher people and fish eaters working together for local, equitable and sustainable fisheries, through the development and strengthening of Community Supported Fisheries. A fisheries engineer, he works with coastal communities in France and in the Global South for social and environmental justice.

Here he is in conversation with Mads Barbesgaard,  who is a researcher with TNI working on struggles around the use and control of land and ocean resources in the midst of the energy transition. Mads is also an associate senior lecturer at the Department of Human Geography, at Lund University in Sweden.

Image source: Pleine Mer

This podcast has been developed in the course of the Deck-to-dish: Community-supported-fisheries advanced training project co-funded by the Erasmus+ Programme of the European Union; the European Commission cannot be held responsible for the information presented.