Coastal fisheries are an important source of food, nutrition and livelihoods for Pacific Islanders. Community-based fisheries management (CBFM) has been recognised in the Pacific as the most viable strategy to achieve widespread self-decisive management by communities as opposed to localised, site-based interventions driven at national level. In the context of the Pacific, CBFM means that fisheries management approaches are community-driven and encompass an ecosystem approach that will sustain livelihoods and ensure resilient island communities (SPC 2021). An enduring challenge for governments of Pacific Island countries and territories (PICTs) is to support widespread management action across hundreds if not thousands of communities. In 2021, Pacific Fisheries Ministers endorsed a regional directive for scaling up CBFM. A people-centred approach is at the core of the Pacific Framework for Action on Scaling CBFM (SPC 2021). A people-centred approach applied to CBFM aims to assist CBFM practitioners achieve the most desirable outcomes for all in community fisheries management. The approach promotes equity through social inclusion to understand the different needs of various community groups, especially marginalised groups including women, youths, and persons with disabilities. In November 2023, representatives of the Third Community-Based Fisheries Dialogue (CBFD-3) noted that although progress for women and other marginalised groups to fully participate in CBFM had been made, it was still limited in the region (SPC 2023). Although progress has been acknowledged, much of the work around the people-centred approach in CBFM has mainly focused on women as opposed to other marginalised groups such as persons with disabilities.
The UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development emphasised the need for strengthening inclusive development, “leaving no one behind”, and the importance of inclusion and equity for persons with disabilities across all aspects of society (United Nations 2016). Despite progress, there is increasing inequality between persons with disabilities and those without globally (Niewohner et al. 2020). Though the Small-Scale Fisheries voluntary guidelines (FAO 2015), and other instruments, advocate for inclusive fisheries management, there has been little focus on inclusion of persons with disabilities in coastal fisheries. In the Pacific, focus on this issue is more apparent in sectors such as disaster risk reduction, water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) programmes, climate change, education, and health (PDF 2024).
This literature review examines participation of persons with disabilities in fisheries and other production sectors as a contribution towards ensuring inclusive coastal fisheries management in the Pacific. This review forms a precursor to understanding how to apply disability-inclusive development in CBFM work. The review comes in response to an emerging demand from discussions between teams working on a CBFM project in Kiribati, Solomon Islands and Vanuatu where members reflected on the need to consider how they could extend the progress made in including women into CBFM to other marginalised groups. Ongoing discussion with national organisations of persons with disabilities have begun to apply the principle of “nothing about us without us”. This review acknowledges a growing recognition that the integration of equity and disability inclusive lenses has become an important cross-cutting consideration across all sectors, and that Pacific small scale fisheries are at an early stage of integrating such considerations. This review may, therefore, serve as a useful departure point for stakeholders seeking to engage in this space. To do so, we provide an overview of disability and inclusive development in the Pacific, explore how lessons and issues from other sectors may apply to coastal fisheries, and suggest some considerations on how coastal fisheries practitioners can improve accessibility, inclusion and participation to promote community cohesiveness and derive equitable benefits from coastal fisheries.
Resources and work of the Pacific Disability Forum (PDF), the region’s foremost platform on disability inclusion work, forms the foundation of this review. The PDF is a “partnership of Pacific Organisations of and for Persons with Disabilities”, with members across 22 countries and territories, working “towards an inclusive and resilient Pacific for all persons with disabilities” through achieving the preconditions for inclusion and promoting leadership, partnerships, regional cooperation, and resource mobilisation (PDF n.d.).
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