Implicating ‘fisheries justice’ movements in food and climate politics

While much debate on climate change has emerged around food, forest and land politics, the fisheries sector has only recently become more visibly implicated in these discussions. Similarly, in comparison to food and agrarian movements, fishers’ resistance to intensified mitigation efforts and resource exclusion is still significantly understudied academically, and receives little attention in political spheres. This highlights a critical gap in both food and climate politics literature, which this paper aims to present a framework for addressing. To do so, it contextualises the emergence of overlapping processes of exclusion in global fisheries, and explores the implications global food system transformations have had in the fisheries sector, and the reactions this has spurred from South African fishers. It then traces the convergence of fishers’ movements with other resource justice movements, and how this has contributed to the rise of ‘fisheries justice’. Finally, it presents four interlinked propositions – highlighting food sovereignty, resource access and conflict, climate change and mitigation, convergences between movements, and alternatives proposed by fishers – as a framework for how incorporating fisheries and fishers’ movements can broaden our understanding of transnational social movements, and expand the depth and scope of food and climate politics.

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