Medidas de Gestao das Pescarias Marinhas e Aquicultura 2019 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 | Page 154

PART 3 HIGHLIGHTS OF ONGOING STUDIES
BOX 17
(CONTINUED)
Vulnerability assessments are a key to sound
understanding of climate impacts and provide a
pathway to the development of robust adaptation
actions. Given the multitude of available approaches
and methodologies for assessing vulnerability (Brugère
and De Young, 2015), the initial phase of each project
includes participatory and detailed vulnerability
assessments at the regional, national, local and/or
community levels to identify the areas and communities that are most at risk, with due consideration for gender
and age groups. The next step is to identify suitable
adaptation measures and provide a sound technical
basis for informing policy changes. Project activities
foreseen, specifically targeted to different stakeholder
groups, include capacity strengthening to enable all
stakeholders to assess the risks posed by climate
change to their livelihoods and security and to ensure
adaptation to address those risks.
SMALL-SCALE FISHERIES
AND AQUACULTURE the SSF Guidelines hence include social
development, the post-har vest sector, gender,
disaster risks and climate change in addition to
responsible fishing and management.
Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable
Small-Scale Fisheries – towards delivering
results on the ground
This complexit y can appear challenging and
could potentially hinder real progress on
implementation. FAO is therefore providing
g uidance to support the uptake of the SSF
Guidelines in the hope of motivating change on
the ground. For example, two expert workshops
organized by FAO in 2016 were dedicated to
exploring the human rights–based approach in
implementing and monitoring the SSF Guidelines
(Yeshanew, Franz and Westlund, 2017) and in
gender-equitable small-scale fisheries (Correa,
2017), respectively. The latter was the
culmination of a participator y process to develop
a handbook on gender-equitable small-scale
fisheries in support of the implementation of the
SSF Guidelines (Biswas, 2017). A legal g uide in
support of implementation of the g uidelines is
currently under development. Through the Too
Big To Ignore research network, in which FAO is
a partner, over 90 researchers, practitioners and
civil societ y representatives contributed to the
book The Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines: global
implementation ( Jentoft et al., 2017), which
contains case studies identif ying entr y points on
how the SSF Guidelines can contribute to
securing sustainable small-scale fisheries.
Four years after COFI endorsed the Voluntar y
Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale
Fisheries in the Context of Food Securit y and
Povert y Eradication (FAO, 2015a), governments,
partners and stakeholders are showing keen
interest in small-scale fisheries (Box 18).
Several countries and regional organizations have
incorporated reference to the SSF Guidelines in
relevant policies and strategies, and new initiatives
by NGOs and development partners are
increasingly addressing small-scale fisheries issues
in new ways and more explicitly. CSOs also
continue to create awareness among their member
fishers and fish workers of this unique international
instrument which is entirely dedicated to small-
scale fisheries. But is real change happening on the
ground, in the lives and livelihoods of coastal,
riverside and lakeshore communities?
The SSF Guidelines follow a human rights–based
approach and see small-scale fisheries through a
broader lens, looking beyond the fisheries and
aquaculture sector. They promote a holistic
approach to small-scale fisheries governance and
management that takes fisher y-based livelihoods
into consideration. The thematic areas covered by
While advice is being developed, concrete actions
are already taking place on the ground, although
not yet on a large scale. Costa Rica, for example,
has developed a draft law on small-scale fisheries
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