Capitalism and the sea

Throughout the year, TNI worked closely with fisher people’s movements to develop analyses, and make targeted and effective interventions with policymakers to resist corporate capture and ensure respect for fisher people’s rights. The 2022 UN Oceans Conference in Lisbon was an important moment for building counterpower. Despite language of inclusivity, the conference had a strong focus on corporate-centred multistakeholder initiatives and the blue economy, and very limited space for small-scale fishers and other social movements. TNI’s interventions, based on strategies developed in collaboration with fisher movements, aimed to make wider audiences aware of the dangerous shift away from multilateral agreements and decisions. In parallel to the conference, TNI co-organised a four-day seminar that brought together some 40 participants from social movements, funders, academia and civil society to build collective analysis and identify priorities for action. The seminar linked up with the Conference of the Ocean People (C-OP), a powerful counter-summit organised by TNI partner World Forum of Fisher Peoples, and facilitated by India’s National Fishworkers Forum. In advance of the UN conference and the counter-summit, we raised awareness about capital’s role in the maritime space in a podcast featuring two prominent experts and in Ruling the Waves, an article describing how the global ocean economy is being consolidated in the hands of fewer and ever-larger transnational corporations and financial institutions.

Community-supported fisheries

The 35th session of the UN Committee on Fisheries Meeting (COFI), which drew an audience of some 400 national policymakers and 50 FAO officials and featured a full agenda of issues profoundly affecting fisher peoples, was also a crucial space this year. TNI supported 40 small-scale fishers representatives to attend and make their voices heard. Among other things, the fishers presented their demands for improved implementation of the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines (SSFGs), which are intended to protect fisher peoples’ rights and livelihoods. They stressed the importance of maintaining the primacy of the FAO as a decision-making space for fisheries issues, and highlighted the threats posed to ecosystems and human rights by the growing support for industrial aquaculture on the one-hand, and exclusionary ocean conservation on the other.

In advance of the meeting, TNI collaborated in a four-day online strategy session to prepare the delegation. We also co-led participatory action research and a survey of SSF organisations and Indigenous Peoples from 21 countries. This resulted in a report, written on behalf of the International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty (IPC), on the status of implementation of the SSFGs – the first assessment of its kind. We presented the report at a workshop in Rome attended by IPC members, fisher organisations, and FAO officials, including the FAO Director of Fisheries.

Meanwhile, in Europe, we collaborated with Pleine Mer, a French collective of fisher people and consumers, in a collective effort to promote community-supported fisheries. Some 150 students and local people attended a talk given by Pleine Mer during the counter mobilisation to Europe’s One Ocean Summit, held in Brest, France. This drew on TNI analysis about the dangers of industrial fishing and the blue economy, and resulted in widespread coverage in French media. Later in the year, TNI and Pleine Mer followed up with a podcast devoted to the issue. We also co-authored a new report, Gender Dynamics in French Fisheries, based on interviews with French women fishers, which documented the critical roles women play in sustaining small-scale fishing and community-supported fisheries, as well as the challenges they face.

Food producers, climate and environmental justice

Throughout the year, TNI engaged with diverse food producer movements, activist-scholars and others to strengthen knowledge about the threats and impacts of false solutions to the climate and environmental crisis. We shared our analyses in diverse spaces, including a regional convening of fisher people’s movements on the climate crisis, organised by Coastal Action Network and National Fishworkers Forum (India), and a meeting of 65 small-scale fisher leaders and allies. At the latter, we delved into the risks of debt swaps and the broader context of financialisation of ocean conservation, and prepared fisher leaders to engage in UN processes on climate and biodiversity. At the UN climate talks, the World Forum of Fisher Peoples, with TNI’s support, organised a side event on climate-friendly small-scale aquatic food systems and released a statement of opposition to carbon trading and geoengineering.

In a context in which veganism is being posited as a solution to the climate crisis, we elevated the perspective of small-scale pastoralists. A new primer, Livestock, climate and the politics of resources, made the case for better, more inclusive understandings of pastoralism and pastoralists, and a more nuanced interpretation of climate science. The key message was that not all meat and milk are created equally: traditional communities around the world are raising animals in ways that contribute to biodiversity, sequester carbon, and improve landscapes. TNI teamed up with the World Association of Mobile Indigenous Peoples to launch the primer in a webinar that brought together environmental organisations and pastoralists. The response to the primer – published in English, French and Spanish – has been extremely positive, with organisations requesting additional translations in Chinese, Burmese and Arabic.

We were also pleased to facilitate important dialogues and interactions between scholars and activist communities in 2022. Highlights include the online conference, Climate Change and Agrarian Justice which attracted some 2,200 people from 105 countries. With more than 60 academic papers and talks, the conference, which we co-convened, linked young activist-scholars to issues concerning social movements, and facilitated their engagement with food sovereignty and climate justice movements. In the closing plenary, TNI contributed to discussion of emancipatory futures and anti-capitalist responses to the climate crisis. We also co-moderated and co-organised a webinar with activist-scholar networks on authoritarianism and agrarian struggles. Some 250 people attended and more than 500 have since viewed it. Another webinar focused on the spectacular victories of the Indian Farmers’ Movement despite limited democratic space, threats, intimidation and relentless propaganda. More than 500 people registered and many more have viewed it since.

Agroecology

In 2022, TNI continued to promote agroecology as a key element in the construction of food sovereignty and to defend it from co-optation. We supported communications and the planning process toward a major global gathering, the second Nyéléni Global Forum, set for 2025. TNI has also been instrumental in advancing food sovereignty and agroecology in the Netherlands. We helped found the new network, Nyéléni Nederland, and have built bridges with international food sovereignty movements through participation in events like the Food Autonomy Festival and the Voedsel Anders conference, which attracted more than 400 activists, academics and policymakers in more than 50 workshops.