Speaker: Christophe Bene, Research Fellow at IDS
Today the world’s fisheries are being pointed at in many news-media for their impact on marine resources, and several renowned marine biologists have built their international notoriety on ‘catastrophist’ projections predicting the extinction of the last fish resources before the middle of this century. Although overfishing is a reality, these narratives and their underlying Malthusian rhetoric mask a much more complex situation. Like yesterday in Europe or North America, today in a large number of developing countries, small-scale fisheries still contribute actively to poverty alleviation, essentially through their ability to absorb unskilled labour. This part of the story however is often ignored or even hidden as it does not accommodate the current discourse of International Development Institutions that advocate forcefully for the privatization of marine resources.
All welcome.
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