A/HRC/55/49 7. The pandemic, climate change, pollution and overfishing are brutally harming small-scale fishers, fish workers and their communities. Nevertheless, small-scale fishers, fish workers and Indigenous Peoples remain stewards of the world’s waters; they have demonstrated a capacity to adapt to climate change and play an important role in restoring, conserving, protecting and jointly managing local aquatic and coastal ecosystems.6 They are integral to most countries’ recovery from the pandemic and food system transformation, considering that small-scale fisheries employ more people than all other ocean economic sectors combined.7 Including subsistence and secondary sector workers and their dependents, it is estimated that about 600 million livelihoods depend at least partially on fisheries and aquaculture,8 95 per cent of those workers are in the global South. Based on recent annual averages, small-scale fishing accounts for 90 per cent of the world’s capture-fishing employment. Of the 92 million tons of fish captured annually, 40 per cent are captured by small-scale fishers.9 8. Yet small-scale fishers and fish workers are still often marginalized or ignored by governments, international organizations and businesses when environmental and commercial plans are devised and implemented. Their human rights are often violated – whether through exploitation or dispossession from territorial waters – as a result of industrial fishing fleets and large-scale aquaculture servicing global seafood buyers, the establishment of no-fishing reserves for conservation (“marine protected areas”), coastal development and industrialization of seascapes, the construction of dams, and offshore oil and gas operations. 9. In the present report, the Special Rapporteur uses the term “fisheries” to encompass the capturing (or hunting), farming, harvesting and processing of fish and shellfish. He does not address the hunting of marine mammals, since this a different economic sector and is governed by its own set of legal regimes and institutions, although the ways of life of some coastal communities and Indigenous Peoples are organized around the hunting of fish and marine mammals. B. Small-scale fishers and fish workers 10. It is important to understand the difference between small-scale fishers and fish workers, since each constituency has something different at stake and its own set of legal instruments. Nevertheless, these interests and instruments overlap and many of the rights available to small-scale fishers are available to fish workers. Also, an individual holds a plural, dynamic set of identities. For example, many small-scale fishers work as fisheries workers for wealthier fishers or large-scale, commercial fishers, either seasonally or for a certain period to pay off debts. Workers in the fisheries sector may actually fish, and/or engage in activities such as cleaning and processing fish, selling fish, cleaning boats and gear or working in storehouses. They may capture fish during some seasons and seek employment at different times of year or in different years. Moreover, as described more fully below, determining which activities are within the gamut of “fisher” versus “worker” is often distinguished in gendered ways. What makes someone a worker is not the type of work, but the conditions of their work, which is primarily defined by the fact that an employer pays them an income. 6 7 8 9 GE.23-26071 briefs/WCMS_842605/lang--en/index.htm; https://focusweb.org/impacts-of-covid-19-on-small-scaleand-traditional-fishers-and-fishworkers-in-india/; and https://focusweb.org/covid-19-outbreak-socioeconomic-impact-on-small-scale-fisher-and-aquaculture-in-indonesia/. FAO, Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication, para. 5.5; Xochitl Édua Elías Ilosvay, Jorge García Molinos and Elena Ojea, “Stronger adaptive response among small-scale fishers experiencing greater climate change hazard exposure”, Communications Earth & Environment, vol. 3 (2022); and https://www.righttofoodandnutrition.org/stewards-our-waters-and-seas-time-recognize-and-supportsmall-scale-fishers. Phillipa J. Cohen and others, “Securing a just space for small-scale fisheries in the blue economy”, Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 6 (April 2019), p. 2. FAO, The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2022, p. xvi. FAO, Duke University and WorldFish, Illuminating Hidden Harvests: The Contributions of Small-Scale Fisheries to Sustainable Development (Rome, 2023), p. xxxv. 3