What is social protection?
Social protection is a set of interventions whose objective is to reduce social and economic risk and vulnerability, and to alleviate extreme poverty and deprivation (FAO, 2017). Across regions, evidence shows clear positive impacts of social protection programs in terms of food security, nutrition and human capital development (FAO, 2015). Social protection initiatives have been regarded as enhancing the economic and productive capacity of even the poorest and most marginalized communities, and therefore, should be a crucial part of a wider rural development agenda. Evidence shows that social protection helps agricultural smallholders overcome market and institutional barriers to their development. When designed to respond to shocks, these programmes also support disaster risk management, climate adaptation, and other crises. Aligning social protection with natural resource management can lead to more sustainable fisheries and reduce poverty. It also helps keep children in school and reduces child labour, as highlighted in a report by ILO and UNICEF. In Brazil, the Seguro Defeso programme has increased school enrollment and improved future job prospects for children, showing how social protection can create opportunities across generations.
Social protection relies on three types of programmes to achieve the above and protect, prevent, promote and transform livelihoods, especially those of the poor and vulnerable:
1. Social Assistance: offering cash and in-kind transfers and services to support and enable the poor;
2. Social Security: contributory programmes that protect people from the potential financial losses linked to lifecycle-related events (pregnancy, old age), livelihood risks (unemployment, illness) or shocks (e.g. hurricanes, floods, economic crises);
3. Labour Market Interventions: protective measures for the working age population, which aim to enhance employment opportunities, improve skills of workers and offer livelihood support.
FAO's social protection framework
Expanding coverage and adequacy in adaptive social protection
This work has been guided by emphasizing the strengthening of institutional capacities for implementing, harmonizing, and monitoring social protection policies, strategies, and programmes at national levels.
Objectives in social protection for fisheries and aquaculture
Efforts are being developed across regions, building on ongoing work conducted in partnership with national governments to generate evidence on social protection in the fisheries and aquaculture sector. Generating evidence is key to expanding geographically the reach and adequacy of social protection programmes for fishers, fish-farmers, and fish-workers. These initiatives also help to evaluate, monitor, and design policies and programmes that could be more effective in dealing with the main barriers of access, including how to address informality issues and registries as well as the contributory capacity of the beneficiaries and efficient delivery chains. Coherence between social protection policies and fisheries management is key to addressing the diverse needs of men and women in fisheries and aquaculture to promote resource stewardship and fisheries sustainability.
Current efforts focus on countries such as Colombia, Paraguay, Tunisia, Cabo Verde, and the Dominican Republic, to build their capacities to expand social protection for fishers and fish-workers with the aim of creating a catalytic effect and lessons that could serve to scale up tangible initiatives in other countries.
Lessons are being learned and shared on how social protection helps lift fishers out of poverty now and for future generations, strengthen food security, and connect them to institutional markets. For example, public procurement programmes create stable demand by sourcing fish from small-scale fishers for school meal programmes and other public initiatives. This not only boosts incomes but also improves local nutrition. Social protection also builds resilience by linking social registries to early warning systems, enabling faster support before disasters hit. Meanwhile, unemployment benefits during fishing bans help fishers manage seasonal income gaps while supporting sustainable resource management.
A global database is being developed to assess social protection schemes in the fisheries and aquaculture sector, focusing on policies at national and sub-national levels that target fishers and fish-workers, including universal and sectoral schemes. This process has been carried out in 43 countries, including those in the Social Protection for Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOCPRO4FISH) initiative (Colombia, Paraguay, and Tunisia), some countries in the GFCM region (Albania, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, and Lebanon), and Small Island Developing States (SIDS) the Atlantic, Indian Ocean, Mediterranean, South China Sea (AIMS), Caribbean, and Pacific regions.
The overarching objective is to promote economic inclusion and strengthen the resilience and livelihood security of fishers and fish-workers to better cope with macro- and micro-level impacts and shocks. This is achieved by improving the understanding of the current context, reducing barriers to accessing social protection (both universal and sector-specific), and promoting economic opportunities and better resource management through synergies with other sectors in selected regions.
Areas of intervention
Evidence-based policy support: Policies are informed through the assessment of enabling frameworks connecting social protection with fisheries policies, programmes, and the analysis of vulnerabilities, hazards, and impacts of sample covariate shocks at national and district levels.
Technical tools development: Tools are created to enhance the capacity of fishers and aquaculture stakeholders to respond to covariate shocks caused by climate, health, socio-economic, and environmental disasters affecting livelihoods.
Strengthened informal mechanisms: Support is provided to informal social protection providers and mechanisms to improve the resilience of fishing households to covariate shocks.
Capacity development, knowledge exchange and dissemination: Lessons learned are shared through South-South and Triangular Cooperation to scale up social protection programs and enhance their responsiveness to covariate shocks in the fisheries sector.
Outcome: Institutional capacities are strengthened to implement, monitor, and expand social protection programmes, including shock-responsive and gender-sensitive social protection for fishers, fish-workers, and fish-farmers.
What is being done?
Efforts have identified specific opportunities for potential or ongoing processes on social protection in the fisheries and aquaculture sector. Through partnerships with governments, these initiatives work across regions, including Colombia, Paraguay, and Tunisia, as part of the SocPro4Fish project funded by Norway. New activities are also being developed in Colombia, thanks to SIDA, in Tunisia with support from the Monterey Bay Aquarium, and Cabo Verde and the Dominican Republic through FAO's Flexible Voluntary Contribution.
In these countries, the following activities are being implemented:
- Conduct legislative, policy, and institutional studies and assessments on gender-sensitive social protection for fishers, fish-workers, and fish-farmers.
- Conduct a vulnerability and hazard analysis of small-scale fishers, fish-workers, and fish-farmers, and an evaluation of the socio-economic impacts on small-scale fisheries, including an assessment of social protection responses and gaps, with collection of sex- and age-disaggregated data.
- Conduct feasibility analysis of fish and fish-products within public procurement processes.
- Conduct a global assessment of social protection schemes in the fisheries sector and compliance with the social protection mechanisms stipulated under International Labour Organization (ILO) Convention 188 and ILO Recommendation 202 related to social protection floors.
- Promote high-level dialogue amongst the Ministries of Fisheries, Ministries of Social Protection, Ministries of Environment, Ministries of Climate Change, and/or other relevant Ministries.
Additionally, efforts focus on:
- Developing country-level roadmaps to design and implement social protection mechanisms, in coherence with fisheries policies and programmes.
- Supporting the expansion of national social protection systems.
- Designing a scale-up strategy for revolving fund schemes in aquaculture communities.
- Building the capacity of community organizations to implement revolving fund schemes in the sector, with particular attention to women and youth.
- Sharing experiences and policies on scaling up social protection schemes.
- Disseminating lessons learned through a communication strategy.
