In the spotlight 1
Resisting industrial aquaculture!
Global aquaculture production has tripled since the start of this century and people are now consuming more seafood from farms than from fisheries. But within the impressive numbers are two distinct types of aquaculture, with very different outcomes for food security.
One is small-scale, typically involving either the inland farming of freshwater carps or the semi-wild farming of molluscs along the coasts. These hardy species require little, if any, feed or other inputs, and are often integrated with other crops and animals. The rapid growth of this type of aquaculture has been hugely important for global food security, with few negative impacts.
The other type is industrial aquaculture. It focuses on breeds of shrimp, salmon and other “high-value” species that require large volumes of commercial feeds and vast amounts of antibiotics, pesticides and other chemicals to stop disease outbreaks. It produces for export and supermarkets, not local markets, and relies on highly exploited labour. It is also controlled by powerful local elites and corporations with farms across different geographies and their own feed mills and processing factories.
These corporations destroy more food than they produce. Every year, 15% of the entire wild catch of fish is ground up and fed to fish and shrimp in industrial farms. Industrial aquaculture farms use up to 6 kilograms of wild fish to produce a kilogram of salmon and 1.5 kilograms of wild fish to produce a kilogram of shrimp. The wild fish are mostly taken from traditional fishing areas in the global South, where they would otherwise provide local people with cheap and nutritious food, while farmed salmon and shrimp go to mostly wealthy consumers in the North. Worse still, corporations build their fish farms in areas traditionally used by local fishers and farmers, taking away the waters and lands they use for fishing and farming and then rapidly destroying them with pollution and disease.
Industrial aquaculture farms are multiplying and getting bigger, but so too are movements to stop them. Fishers and fish workers are leading actions around the world to stop companies from destroying their fishing grounds. This past year a number of communities came together in Poros, Greece, to launch an international #FishFarmsOut campaign, while, a few months later, the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) launched a global campaign against industrial aquaculture at their 8th general assembly, declaring: “Industrial aquaculture is NOT fishing; it is privatizing, fencing and destroying our territories; dispossessing fisher peoples from the lands and waters; polluting water and coastal ecosystems with dangerous chemicals; driving ocean grabbing and climate change; and contributing to the criminalisation of and violence against fisher peoples.”
The struggle to end industrial aquaculture and build back local fisheries and small-scale aquaculture is critical to the larger movement for food sovereignty, dignified working conditions and climate justice.
For more info: GRAIN’s report – The pushback against Aquaculture Inc
In the spotlight 2
Ocean, Water and Fisher People’s Tribunals
People’s Tribunals emerged after World War II, with the Vietnam War crimes tribunals serving as a landmark case. Since then, these tribunals have become important tools for civil society to expose injustices and build moral pressure outside official legal systems. They are typically initiated when formal courts fail to protect human rights or refuse to act.
When Society for Nutrition, Education & Health Action (SNEHA) and Delhi Forum decided to plan a series of Peoples’ Tribunals for fisher peoples in India in 2018, they did not envision other countries would pursue the same paths. Recognizing the inadequacy of traditional methods, they planned a series of Ocean, Water, and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals with the first being rolled out in India, Sri Lanka, Thailand, Indonesia, and Bangladesh in 2020. Since then, Movimento de Pescadores e Pescadoras Artesanais do Brasil (MPP) in Brazil (2022) and Masifundise in South Africa (2024) have held tribunals in their countries, and other organisations are planning for similar processes.
As non-governmental judicial courts, the Ocean, Water, and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals address critical issues like human rights violations, environmental crimes, and social injustices. They amplify the voices of oppressed communities and recognize their knowledge and experiences. While the verdicts are not legally binding, they serve as powerful forums of justice and solidarity building and allow affected groups to speak truth to power where judicial systems fail.
The importance of the tribunals was recognised by Michael Fakhri, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Food. He writes:
There are two different ways to imagine our oceans, rivers and lakes. There are those that treat bodies of water as economic opportunities, as a ‘blue economy’, something that can be exploited yet somehow balanced with sustainability policies. They envision governing bodies of water through markets and financial instruments. Thinking in these market-driven terms will ensure a world rife with inequality and violence.
Whereas, there are those whose lives are intertwined with bodies of water. Ocean, water and fisher peoples are essential to aquatic ecosystems and life. They understand oceans, rivers, and lakes as central to who they are and their way of life. The full realisation of ocean, water and fisher peoples’ human rights is the most powerful way to ensure the world’s bodies of water thrive.
The process and verdict of the Ocean, Water and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals provide one of the most important expressions of international solidarity in relation to aquatic life. They provide a crucial understanding of what is at stake and what is to be done to ensure our bodies of water continue to be the source of life.
While the tribunals have produced profound empirical evidence of state failures to protect the human rights of fisher peoples and have weaved nets of solidarity, fishing communities are still waiting for material improvements to their lives. The jury verdicts hold potential to bring governments to the table at a time when other political strategies on their own appear insufficient.
For more info: TNI’s report – Ocean, Water and Fisher Peoples’ Tribunals Cutting the nets of capital and weaving nets of solidarity and the Website about Blue Economy Tribunals in Asia