Our struggle against Ocean Grabbing and for Food Sovereignty: We will not
compromise! WFFP’s position on the UN Ocean Conference.
WFFP statement on the third UN Ocean Conference in Nice, France, 2025.
Date 18 March, 2025
28 years ago, we founded the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP), a mass-based
fisher people’s organisation. We formed WFFP to fight for the customary and human
rights of the more than 10 million fisher peoples, encompassing diverse groups of
traditional fishermen and fisherwomen, women and men seafood collectors and gatherers
from 52 countries.
The so-called development projects rolled out by corporations, financiers and
governments all over the world, are increasingly expropriating our fisher peoples from our
territories and denying our customary rights. The rise of authoritarianism and fascism is
resulting in the militarisation, criminalisation and violence against our peoples. When
protesting against the so-called development projects in many countries we are arrested
and beaten up. Our Human Rights and environmental defenders are at increasing risk of
being criminalised, arrested, threatened and murdered.
The 30by30 agenda – fortress conservation – is pushed through from the top with big
Environmental Organizations and Transnational Corporations as powerful agents. These
players are successfully developing plans and policies together with our governments.
This is backed by philanthropic foundations operating at massive budgets which often
exceeds the national budgets for the fisheries departments in our countries. This form of
state capture is a reality across the world. Governments are passing reforms that
criminalize and target our traditional fishing ways of life, framing them as responsible for
environmental destruction, while ignoring that fisher communities are part of a legacy of
fishing traditions that are inseparable from the oceans, waters and coasts. This is being
pushed while completely disregarding the real drivers of environmental destruction, the
climate catastrophe, and expropriation of fisher peoples from their territories and
resources.
In Belize, for example, The Nature Conservancy played a key role in brokering the Debt
for-Nature-Swap. This restructuring of Sovereign Debt was negotiated behind closed
doors without any public debate and it was only later we learned the government of Belize
committed to developing a Marine Spatial Plan and implement plans to meet the 30by30
target. This not only contradicts all the promises of participation in decision making and
the principles of the UN Guidelines on Sustainable Small-scale Fisheries (SSF
Guidelines). It facilitates a dangerous destabilization of our democracies!
We reiterate – as so many times before – our commitment to taking forward the
implementation of the SSF-guidelines, and to fight for food sovereignty as the solution to
healthy food based on our customary rights, cultures, knowledge and traditions.
We pledge our support to the United Nations that is firmly rooted in the values that
form the basis of the UN Charter: peace, justice, respect, human rights, tolerance and
solidarity. To uphold these values, each country should draw more consistently from
parliaments, sub-national governments, civil society as well as the executive branch of
government in democratic country-led governance on which the UN is founded.
We remain committed towards working with the UN Committee on World Food Security
(CFS), the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) and the Committee on Fisheries
(COFI) in order to advance the key principles of the SSF guidelines and our food
sovereignty agenda. We will also continue to work with the UN institutions and
organisations on Human Rights, including the Human Rights Council and the Human
Rights Treaty Bodies. These UN institutions resemble democratically structured UN
bodies where we are recognised as human rights holders and have a real opportunity to
participate in decision making processes.
WFFP will not participate in the third UN Ocean Conference!
No organisation will represent WFFP at the UN Ocean Conference. Instead WFFP will
organise a counter conference to raise our voice and advance our own solutions.
The UN Ocean Conference is not a permanent institution. It is a periodic high-level event
decided upon by the UN General Assembly. This is fundamentally different from the FAO,
for example, which is a specialised UN agency with a permanent institutional structure,
dedicated staff, budget, and mandate to implement decisions. The UN Ocean Conference
is led by two co-hosting countries and supported by the UN Department of Economic and
Social Affairs (DESA), the UN Secretary-General’s Special Envoy for the Ocean and
others. The agenda is shaped by these players with inputs from UN member states, civil
society and private sector actors. The preparatory process involves a series of stakeholder
meetings which are dominated by resource powerful actors and to which we – in practical
terms – are denied access to.
The UN Ocean Conference does not lead to any binding agreement by our governments.
Instead, it delivers a negotiated declaration. The declarations of the previous UN Ocean
Conferences counters several of our political positions (www.wffp-web.org/declaration
wffp-8th-general-assembly-20-november-2024-brasilia-brazil-2/). More worrying is the
culture it builds in relation to the voluntary commitments made by governments,
corporations, and civil society at the UN Ocean Conferences. The shift in focus towards
voluntary commitments, dilutes the agency and democratic practices upheld by the UN
bodies (e.g. FAO, CFS).
The UN Ocean Conference is advancing false solutions such as ‘blue foods’ or ‘aquatic
foods’, to promote policy reforms, deregulation and investments in aquaculture, which is
no other than the industrial factory farming of aquatic food. Our experiences with
aquaculture, in particular shrimp farming, are disastrous with increasing pollution (even
from certified producers), destruction of our livelihoods, ecologies and erosion of our
customary rights. In some countries our people are arrested, beaten up and murdered when
resisting destructive practices.
Similarly, the 30by30 agenda is expropriating our people from our territories. While we
are promised jobs and growth, our experiences are more criminalization, loss of territories,
erosion of our local food systems, and violating fundamental rights to life and livelihoods.
In expanding fortress conservation regimes, the 30by30 agenda is subjecting our fisher
peoples to armed violence, harassment and violence from law enforcement agencies,
increasing the militarization of our lands and waters. The loss of lives and livelihoods,
unevenly affects our women, youth, Indigenous peoples, racialized, lower caste people.
Conservation should not be at the expense of the lives of our fisher peoples. Conservation
should not dispossess and displace our peoples from our traditional territories, ecologies
and resources. There is no conservation at the expense of the lives of our fisher peoples!
Instead of adding legitimacy to undemocratic processes and false solutions promoted by
the UN Ocean Conference, we will organise an Ocean Water and Fisher Peoples
Conference.
We assert our sovereignty and customary rights, reimagining our future within the oceans,
waters and coasts. Together we mobilise for the protection of our territories and rights as
fisher peoples!
We set the agenda; we show the solutions!
The WFFP Coordinating Committee
