Beacons of Hope: Stories from the Land-Water Nexus
In Australia’s Northern Territory, after decades of exclusion from customary rights, Aboriginal fishers are rebuilding coastal economies with commercial licences, mentoring, cultural authority, and a pathway to city buyers. On Canada’s west coast, Indigenous-led action to dismantle destructive commercial fish farms is helping to restore revered wild salmon stocks and support the return of orcas. In Uganda, fisherwomen are at the forefront of resisting military violence, state-imposed hunger, and abuse from foreign investors as they organize to reclaim the right to fish and farm. And in South Africa, decades of anti-apartheid struggle have set the stage for traditional fishing communities to mobilize and advocate for legal recognition of fishers’ rights.
These stories from around the world reveal the powerful connections between fisher movements fighting for food sovereignty and livelihoods, resisting oil and gas exploration and extraction, exposing the impact of pesticides and agrochemicals on land and water, and protecting cultural fishing rights as essential to biodiversity.