Boxes

17 March 2025
 |  Newsletter no 59 - Waves of resistance: Fisher peoples defending food sovereignty

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Mobilize at the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture

April marks a crucial moment for the Working Group on Fisheries of the International Planning committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC FWG) as we mobilize in Antalya, Turkey, to participate as observers in the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture , a subsidiary body of the FAO’s Committee on Fisheries (COFI). This political arena serves as a platform for shaping aquaculture policies and development strategies. With its Bureau led by Turkey and including representatives from Indonesia, Mexico, Senegal, and the United States, this space demands our attention and advocacy to counter the push for aquaculture expansion aligned with FAO’s Blue Transformation roadmap—a menace to small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples’ food sovereignty.

Industrial aquaculture fuels land and resource grabbing, displaces fishing communities, and strips them of their customary rights and livelihoods, all while accelerating environmental destruction. This corporate-led model benefits the few at the expense of the many, deepening inequalities and undermining our survival.

The IPC FWG demands a shift toward a human-rights-based approach that uplifts small-scale fishers as essential stewards of food security and biodiversity. We call on governments to implement the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Guidelines) and reject market-driven agendas. The fight for food sovereignty and the centrality of small-scale fishers and Indigenous Peoples must be the priority in these global discussions.

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In memory of Budi Laksana

Budi Laksana, Secretary General of Serikat Nelayan Indonesia (SNI) and a leading member of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), passed away on 28 November 2024 in Brasilia. He had traveled to Brazil to join comrades at WFFP’s 8th General Assembly, where he embodied the next generation’s fight for food sovereignty before succumbing to a sudden thrombosis attack.

Budi Laksana played a leading role in formulating the UN Small-scale Fisheries Guidelines, endorsed by the FAO in 2014, and worked tirelessly for their implementation in Indonesia and beyond. Under his leadership, SNI fought to protect traditional fishers’ territories and way of life from oligarchic interests. He was always at the forefront of marches and protest campaigns, denouncing the oligarchic policies of the Indonesian government from the speakers truck in front of the masses.

Coming from a traditional crab fishing family, he strongly opposed corporate aquaculture and industrial fishing, which he saw destroying not just livelihoods but entire food cultures and local economies. His vision for fisher peoples was grounded in principles of sovereign rights over food systems, inter-generational knowledge, and environmental stewardship. In his final days at the WFFP assembly in Brasilia, his positive spirit, comradery and passionate speeches on food sovereignty infused energy and solidarity amongst the over one hundred fisher delegates from fifty countries.

Budi Laksana championed women’s leadership, helping initiate the woman-led Nyimas Kumambang Fisherwomen’s Cooperative. As a stalwart supporter of food sovereignty, he placed women and their role in the entire value chain of fisheries at the forefront. As a woman fisher leader who accompanied him in his final days noted, he was “fighting and refusing to submit to a system that is greedy and impoverishing fisherwomen.”

Budi Laksana was a family man, leaving behind his beloved wife and three sons of five, ten and twelve  years of age behind.

Our thoughts go to his family and close comrades. Budi Laksana’s spirit will forever bring inspiration and power to fisher peoples’ struggle for food sovereignty.

Comrade Budi Laksana, rest in power.

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