fishing communities as being the ones
make decisions on how the world consumes
seafood we see a radically different
world to the one being added today we
see a world that produced food to work
with nature a world where food was
produced by local people for local
markets a world where food with
nourishing diverse and culturally
appropriate we live in a world that
value is food providers a world that
safeguarded is rivers its lakes and its
portions a world that opposed the
corporatization of food for profit and
embraced the idea of food as a universal
human right I’d like us to keep this
vision this image of food producers
being an center of our food systems I’d
there’s no denying the fact that the
oceans are in trouble this is study of
the trends over the last 40 years
oils towards one of youth line every
successive food and agricultural
organization report shows that there are
more fish now in the over fish category
in the fully fish category where today
as for the latest report one in three
fish comes from an over exploited source
during the same time during the same
time of decline leave your graphically
move to fishing operations away from the
coastline where if the Reds in this
image display how we were fishing in the
1950s and by 2015 in the use technology
and fossil fuels to power fishing
fish from the South Pole the North Pole
and across all the oceans now we add the
effects of climate change with ocean
warming ocean acidification sea level
riders and the cascading effects at this
on weather and marine my life then it
does seem that everything related to the
oceans is gloom and doom and we haven’t
yet spoken about the massive problem of
plastic position now seafood plays a
very important role in global trade so
along with that importance and the
narratives of food security sustainable
development poverty alleviation and
ocean health a range of actors have
begun to come together now the declining
trends that your graphical scope of
fishing and the international trades
means that there’s a mismanagement in
the ocean and a recent water line report
plays the economic losses from this
mismanagement at eighty three billion
dollars a year now these actors ranging
from Spain dolphins to philanthropists
to investment bankers conservation
organizations educational institutions
all look at solutions as being able to
transact business with the ocean better
this eighty three billion dollar loss if
we can make that up then it is believed
that we’ll be able to solve the problems
of you and therefore using technology to
trace the journey of the fish from the
oceans to the plate is coming to the
forefront now looking at the problem and
therefore the solutions from this lens
relies on one basic belief and that is
that population and therefore humanity
is responsible for destroying the oceans
this leads to the term
overfishing or too many
is in too few fish and if results in
what is possibly the most cited example
of theory known as the global tragedy of
the gods and therefore monitoring the
contact between humanity and the oceans
becomes paramount and in extreme
situations in in severing that contact
completely so today technology
increasingly uses surveillance
enforcement satellite mapping
sustainable seafood labels risk
management tools to supply chain
management blockchain technology and the
list goes on simple traceability that’s
the buzzword today now in our past life
as a conservationist valiant used like
to call myself
this was my existence taking these
problems amplifying the crisis I used to
believe that if I just shouted out
louder the crises of the oceans we’d be
able to wake everyone else up and get
towards moving towards these solutions
but then something changed on the sixth
of April 2015 I was on a campaign but
the illegal fishing vessel in question
was scuttled it sank to the bottom of
the ocean and while it was sinking I had
a chance to rescue the fishermen who
were on that boat I spent about seven
hours with them and during that time
something became very apparent these men
were the very antithesis of the evil
humanity which was destroying the oceans
intrigued I joined some researchers and
I went and met these men and I sat in in
interviews every day listening to the
same stories stories of unpaid wages of
inhuman working conditions of indenture
of abandonment of trafficking
it began to prick my functions that for
all these years had blamed them for the
destruction of the oceans without ever
having a chance to speak to them now
overfishing is a problem
there’s no denying the color fishing is
a problem but focusing all our attention
on overfishing takes the focus away from
the consumers from the political systems
from the economic model the drives all
fishing and places it squarely on the
people who are in contact with the
oceans every single day who is
overfishing why are they below the ship
where are they efficient when I took
some of these questions and went back to
my work the different kind of trend
began to emerge in 2015 the Stockholm
resilience Center which is a very
influential scientific organization
institution came up with a report that
said that is 13 companies control the
trade of 40% of the world’s seafood
products in the words of the author’s
these companies with that capacity of
catching more fish than some of the
nations of the world dominate all
segments of the seafood industry operate
through a global network of subsidiaries
and are profoundly involved in fisheries
and their importance was considered such
that the report elevated them to the
position of a keystone actor crucial to
the functioning of the entire global
seafood fail and yet there were many
bring that closer to home as per the
latest census
India has a fisherfolk population of a
little more than 40 lakh fishers you
should fall or small-scale officials as
they are known are fishes for whom
fishing is an occupation through
ancestry it forms not just an occupation
it is a cultural identity and
sustainance of a community globally
small-scale fishers account for
two-thirds of the fish that is directly
consumed for food they employ 90% the
workforce fish and fish workers almost
half of which are women and in addition
to their local food systems and the
entire value chain officially is
assisting the livelihoods of millions so
it’s a matter that small-scale Fisher’s
at the majority of the world’s fish and
I was ways of catching that fish a
system in which women’s labor is valued
and it sustains local local economies
and yet they have not been elevated to
the position of eastern actors instead
under the dominant narrative of
overfishing of too many fishers chasing
too few fish they have been relegated to
shouldering the blame of Indians who is
overfishing why are they opposition
where are the old issue these questions
never get asked in our urgency to
resolve the crisis we stopped and just
accepting overfishing but not
I started this talk by asking us to
imagine food producers as being at the
center of the food students on this
planet but if the apples imagine and
make that reality then we have to ask
ourselves some difficult questions why
is it that we elevate corporations but
put down the ministries why do we refer
to them as worlds is teaching them
helping them educate in this uplifting
death how do we value traditional and
indigenous knowledge why do we look at
people as being in need of modernization
just so they can transact business and
therefore the political act of inverting
top-down technocratic solutions through
bottom-up democratic solutions doesn’t
rest with conservationists it doesn’t
rest with scientists and it definitely
doesn’t rest with big businesses it
rests with all of us because what drives
overfishing is the political and the
power inequalities in society and
therefore we must locate ourselves in
these poverty qualities of patriarchy of
race religion of class of caste of
sexuality of gender of disability and we
must break these power structures down
we must unlearn biases that these power
structures are given to us if we want
fishing communities and food producers
to be at the center of decision-making
then they have to actively vacate that
same you have to remove ourselves from
top-down
making positions and then better when we
position ourselves we have to feel
discomfort saving the oceans cannot be
another business option it cannot be a
well-paying comfortable job because that
itself is a path across to this team is
transcendence transcendence comes from
the Latin word strands getting beyond
and standard meaning to climb but if we
are to truly resolve the problems of the
oceans then we have to go beyond comfort
while actively climbing down from
positions of power because only then
will be me actually dealing with the
power inequalities that drive
overfishing and drive the destruction of
the oceans and once we start doing that
we’ll begin to get a sense of how follow
to degree technical limits to climate
change some how corporations and the
conversations blur the lines between
profit and people our sense of crisis is
manipulated and matched so let’s once
and for all
challenge ourselves challenge our power
structures and once and for all put in
in capitalism which keeps big businesses
and a historically dominant in positions of power