Thread by @IPESfood

In the #LongFoodMovement report, we're reminded that the world’s 30 million artisanal #fishers and workers provide nearly half of the #fish we eat (@IPBES, 2019).

But with #climatechange & island/ocean grabbing, small-scale fishers & their communities are in peril.

🧵Thread 👇🏾

https://twitter.com/IPBES/status/1376856935673307138

Island/#ocean grabbing is likely to intensify as countries seek to solidify their influence, their #food supply chains, & their global sourcing and distribution networks. For example, in the #RedSea region, conflicts over fish & other marine resources threaten rich #biodiversity.

Meanwhile, in the South China Sea, said to
have some of the highest marine #biodiversity on earth, #China has been building airstrips, ports & other facilities on disputed islands & reefs, w/ the apparent aim of establishing military bases (cf. Ives,
2016).

Conflicts over marine resources are already occurring in South and Northeast Asia, Central and South America, and off the Horn of Africa (cf. Bergenas, 2016), and could intensify in the Pacific – home to some of the world’s richest #tuna stocks (@WorldBank, 2016).

As climate change takes a toll on coral reefs and #fish stocks, these conflicts are likely to increase, further reducing the ability of small-scale fishers to feed themselves & their communities. In essence, the threats of the 'agribusiness-as-usual' scenario aren't going away.

#DYK? Fisheries subsidies alone account for an estimated USD 35.4 billion (Sumaila & al., 2019), of which some USD 18-20 billion have been classified as ‘harmful’ by the UN Secretary General's Special Envoy for the #Oceans – not least #trawler fuel subsidies (@ThomsonFiji, 2019).

... So that's nother reason why over the next quarter century, civil society sets its sights on shifting as much of this money as possible from input-intensive #commodity agriculture and #industrialfishing to sustainable food production.

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Under a #LongFoodMovement, over time, advocacy
groups would deepen their collaboration with farmers’, fishers’ & food workers' organizations, as well as consumer associations, forming a common front in favour of subsidy reform, fair pricing and living wages.

This would allow civil society to paint big commodity subsidies as a threat to the average #farmer or #fisher (via the dumping of cheap subsidized produce onto global markets) and a boon to multinational agribusinesses.

With labour abuses on plantations, #fishing vessels and factory farms more visible, such efforts could bear fruit by the end of the 2020s - starting w/ the removal of #trawler fuel subsidies, a move demanded by NGOs, small-scale #fishers & aquaculturalists (& @GeorgeMonbiot!)

So there really is even more at stake than the (truly shocking) #Seaspiracy story. Because abuses in the oceans could - along with #climatechange & harmful commodity subsidies -put up to 30 million fishers & their communities in peril.

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