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Fisheries Governance and Food Security in the Eastern Caribbean

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Food Security in Small Island States

Abstract

Fisheries resources are of particular importance to the small island developing states of the Eastern Caribbean. There is an increasing demand for seafood to address food security and nutrition, to support coastal livelihoods and to contribute to sustainable development. The Caribbean Community developed a Regional Food and Nutrition Security Policy and a Common Fisheries Policy. These instruments, however, only make passing mention of fisheries and food security, respectively. There is little evidence of food security being integrated into fisheries governance. Yet, recent research has shown that resilience perspectives on fisheries governance in the Eastern Caribbean can be useful for obtaining ecosystem services, such as those that relate to food security, from social–ecological systems. This resilience takes into account global and regional environmental change, multiple levels of governance and degrees of adaptive capacity, matching the scales of social and ecological processes and managing social networks in the institutional arrangements for resource use and conservation. Building food security and resilience into fisheries governance requires the development of adaptive capacity, especially through social networks, with an emphasis on policies that enable fisherfolk self-organization.

An earlier version of this chapter appeared as ‘Building food security and resilience into fisheries governance in the Eastern Caribbean’ in Regional Environmental Change (2015), 15(7), 1355–1365. Used with permission from Springer Nature Customer Service Centre GmbH’.

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Acknowledgements

The research project on Marine Resource Governance in the Eastern Caribbean (MarGov project) was carried out with the aid of a grant from the International Development Research Centre (IDRC), Ottawa, Canada, to the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES). The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent IDRC.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES), The University of the West Indies, Cave Hill Campus, Bridgetown, Barbados

    Patrick McConney & Shelly-Ann Cox

  2. Environmental Planning Agency (EPA), Georgetown, Guyana

    Kemraj Parsram

Authors
  1. Patrick McConney
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  2. Shelly-Ann Cox
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  3. Kemraj Parsram
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Correspondence to Patrick McConney .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia

    John Connell

  2. Brandon University, Brandon, MB, Canada

    Kristen Lowitt

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McConney, P., Cox, SA., Parsram, K. (2020). Fisheries Governance and Food Security in the Eastern Caribbean. In: Connell, J., Lowitt, K. (eds) Food Security in Small Island States. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8256-7_11

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-8256-7_11

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