Fisheries

The biggest constraint, facing the SSF remains the general lack of data, insight, and knowledge on which to build good and fair governance. Fishery scientists have ignored SSFs because of the difficulty in assessing their resources with modern fishery science methods and the reluctance in dealing with the multidisciplinary approaches required, with strong gendered economic and social components. Instead of remedying the current knowledge shortage by reallocating part of the financial and research resources in this direction, they perpetuate the narrative of resource stocks depleted from unregulated open access situations. The lack of data also applies to the human dimension. The variety of SSFs and their societal contributions has only scarcely been documented, as have their own systems of law and governance (Kweka et al. 2019). The contribution of women in SSFs is often overlooked in fisheries research and therefore women remain weakly represented in SSFs decision making and governance. All these deficits call for major, long-term research and education efforts, which the present project aims to contribute to.