Social Protection for Fisheries and Aquaculture (SocPro4Fish)

The SocPro4Fish project has generated evidence on fishers' socio-economic conditions and their access to social protection in Colombia, Paraguay and Tunisia, and has developed a global database with over 46 country profiles on the status of social protection in the fisheries sector. It has increased institutional capacities on extending adequate social protection coverage to key stakeholders in fisheries and social development institutions in the Latin America and Caribbean, Near East and Africa regions.  

In Colombia, the project created an interinstitutional working group on social protection for the fisheries and aquaculture sector that is now generating technical reports and tools to regulate and implement a new national law, extending a closed season benefit to fishers. Additionally, the fisheries and aquaculture sector has been included in the National Commission on Occupational Safety and Health of the Ministry of Labor, the recognition of female fishworkers (specifically traditional fish-sellers called “platoneras”) has improved, and over 100 female fishworkers have received training on accessing public pension schemes and related social protection.

Across regions, evidence shows clear positive impacts of social protection programs in terms of food security, nutrition and human capital development. It helps agricultural smallholders to overcome the market and institutional failures hindering their development, and when shock-responsive, contributes to disaster risk reduction and management as well as to climate change adaptation and mitigation initiatives and other covariate shocks. Coherence between natural resource management and social protection programmes, can also result in sustainable fisheries management and poverty reduction.  Globally, there is a significant gap in terms of access to social protection for fishers and fishworkers.  

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WORKING TOWARDS SDGS: