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The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2014
Box 4 Women’s role in cooperatives The TRY Oyster Women’s Association, operating in 15 villages in the Greater Banjul area of the Gambia, and the Isabela Women’s Association Blue Fish, in Ecuador, illustrate women’s role in cooperatives. Both cooperatives aim to promote responsible fisheries. The pathway to achieving this is to empower fisherwomen by facilitating access to microfinance and appropriate equipment and technologies. At the same time, in order to improve their bargaining position, the associations are also setting higher standards for the processing, packaging and marketing of value-added products. They provide employment opportunities for unemployed women, and identify sustainable economic alternatives for fishers to alleviate pressure on the fisheries resources. The members of the associations also engage in reforesting local mangroves, the development of environmental awareness and the promoting of the use of destructive invasive tree species for smoking fish. The associations are recognized as valid partners in the transition to responsible fisheries management, and they provide policy guidance to government officials.
Source: FAO & IFAD. 2012. Cooperatives in small-scale fisheries: enabling successes through community empowerment [online]. International Year of Cooperatives. Issue Brief Series. [Cited 21 October 2013]. www.fao.org/docrep/016/ap408e/ap408e.pdf
build alliances, disseminate information, establish dialogues and support informed community mobilization. The critical mass of organizations’ membership is an important element with regard to marketing. Organizations involved in marketing and trade need to be able to negotiate prices, to strategically diversify markets, to manage product stocks, to establish collective marketing agreements that discourage the sale of fish outside the organization, and to work effectively with intermediaries. Well-organized fishers or women, who are generally the ones more involved in marketing, can even aim at obtaining an ecolabel, as shown by several successful fisheries improvement projects. Access to and availability of financial recourses, as well as the capacity to manage them efficiently, are key factors of success for fishers and fishworkers organizations. They require adequate services and good financial management skills, including proper bookkeeping. An enabling environment also needs supportive institutions, such as decentralized fisheries governance systems that empower communities to become stewards of their resources (Box 5). The right degree of public intervention is important, as excessive interference can harm organizational development as much as too little public support. Recent actions There is a need for supporting mechanisms such as special policies and strategies that strengthen fishers and fishworkers organizations. FAO has facilitated the development of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines). These promote a humanrights-based approach to development, bringing together social development and responsible fisheries. They thus complement important international instruments, in