The International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022) and the UN Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF): an opportunity for small-scale fisheries and aquaculture producers to amplify their voices

The UN Decade of Family Farming (UNDFF) provides an extraordinary opportunity for all to support achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) in an inclusive, collaborative, and coherent way. The UNDFF supports the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA 2022) in its quest to give small-scale producers the attention they need and to push for more participatory decision-making processes.  

Family Farming (including all family-based agricultural activities) can be defined as a means of organizing agricultural, forestry, fisheries, pastoral and aquaculture production that is managed and operated by a family and is predominantly reliant on the family labor of both women and men. The family and the farm are linked, co-evolve and combine economic, environmental, social and cultural functions.

Family farming is the predominant form of food and agricultural production in both developed and developing countries, producing over 80 percent of the world’s food in value terms (FAO, 2014). Given the multidimensional nature of family farming, the farm and family, food production and life at home, farm ownership and work, traditional knowledge and innovative farming solutions, the past, present and future are all deeply intertwined.

Putting family farming and all family-based production models at the focus of interventions will support the transformation of agrifood systems and help us move towards a world free of hunger and poverty, where natural resources are managed sustainably, and where no one is left behind–in line with the top commitments of the 2030 Agenda.

Family farmers hold unique potential to become key agents of development strategies, which is why Pillar 4 of IYAFA’s Global Action Plan aims to ensure the effective participation of small-scale producers in decision-making processes and policy environments. Multi-actor platforms, including around 50 National Committees on Family Farming (NCFF), have been created for policy dialogue, stimulating strong political commitment in favor of family farming (high-level political declarations and civil society mobilizations at national and regional levels).

UNDFF serves as a framework for countries to develop public policies and investments to support family farming, and in so doing to contribute to the achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. It addresses family farming from a holistic perspective for rural poverty eradication in all its forms and dimensions, while giving the SDGs a central role in the transition towards more sustainable food systems and societies. To guarantee the success of the UNDFF, action must be supported by coherent, cross-sectoral policies, concurrently addressing the environmental, economic, and social dimensions of agricultural and rural development. To oversee its implementation, the UNDFF International Steering Committee was established, composed of representatives of Governments Members and family farmer organizations, and supported by the FAO and IFAD joint secretariat.

The United Nations Decade on Family Farming (UNDFF), launched in May 2019, is the main international process in support of small-scale food producers around the world. With an approach based on seven thematic pillars and a timeframe of ten years, the UNDFF offers the possibility to develop effective long-term structural changes that can enhance the socioeconomic conditions of family farmers through the development of national policies and the implementation of existing international law instruments. As IYAFA 2022 falls within the UN Decade of Family Farming, the two celebrations will reinforce one another in providing greater visibility to small-scale producers.

The UNDFF Global Action Plan (GAP) defines family farming as a term embracing the multidimensionality of small-scale food producers. Due to its specific – yet broad – nature, the UNDFF GAP is easily complemented by other international instruments and processes, as the report on the implementation of the United Nations Decade of Family Farming (2019–2028) United Nations General Assembly A/76/233 reads

13. The Decade has been very successful with regard to engagement with a wide range of stakeholders to identify specific policies and measures in support of family farming. Its success makes it a suitable mechanism to support the effective contextualization of international tools and guidelines in support of family farmers, such as the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Peasants and Other People Working in Rural Areas, and many global policy instruments, including those of the Committee on World Food Security.5

5. An example of the Decade’s effectiveness as a mechanism for the contextualization of international tools and guidelines can be seen in the mutually reinforcing activities related to the implementation of the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (FAO, Rome, 2015), which serve to strengthen the capacity development of small-scale fisheries organizations and their participation in national policy dialogue spaces, and the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests in the Context of National Food Security (FAO, Rome, 2012). These promising linkages could be reinforced in 2022 as part of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture.

 UNDFF, IYAFA and the SSF Guidelines

In the case of small-scale fisheries (SSF), the main instrument available to the international community are the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) (FAO, 2015), approved by the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), during its Thirty-second Session in 2014. Both the SSF Guidelines and the UNDFF GAP aims to incentive forward-looking national policies and their subsequent implementation on the ground. In particular, the UNDFF GAP proposes the creation of inclusive spaces for dialogue at the national level and a series of actions designed to generate policy change that is favorable to small-scale food producers. The nature of the GAP therefore creates a space in which various tools in support of small-scale food producers can be embedded into concrete actions, to be developed at various political levels. So, the SSF Guidelines policy recommendations can be practically implemented through the indicative actions presented in the UNDFF GAP, as well as the thematic points at which one instrument can complement the other. The document could therefore support the work of Food Producers at various levels of advocacy, by facilitating their integration in the activities and partnerships developed under the UNDFF framework, strengthening their demands, and helping them to access funding and capacity development.

Therefore, the integration of the SSF Guidelines and the UNDFF GAP has, as a first objective, the strengthening of Family Farming capacity as an actor with agency and the capacity to promote policy change. Despite this broad scope, the seven pillars of the UNDFF GAP perfectly resonate with the content of the SSF Guidelines, and several of its indicative actions propose concrete solutions to empower SSF communities and ensure the respect of their fundamental rights.

The UNDFF GAP offers many other innovative proposals in terms of capacity development, participation in policymaking, governance and awareness raising on communities’ rights that perfectly match the active role intended for SSF organizations in the SSF Guidelines. The SSF Guidelines place great emphasis on the need for states to recognize current local governance structures (Paragraphs 6.10 and 10.7), while the GAP calls for the establishment of governance and multisectoral and multiactor coordination mechanisms from the local to the global level (Action 1.3.4).

For what concerns access to natural resources, both instruments provide a robust set of recommendations recognizing the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forestry in the Context of National Food Security (Tenure Guidelines) (CFS, 2012) as a major tool to be used in synergy with them. One of the most important elements of the Tenure Guidelines is the recognition of and the role given to customary tenure rights, which, according to the SSF Guidelines, are essential with respect to the coexistence of many small-scale fishing communities and their environment (Paragraphs 5.4, 6.18 and 10.2). The UNDFF GAP, on the other hand, includes the Tenure Guidelines’ rights among the main instruments to accompany the UNDFF, and highlights the importance of customary tenure rights in the preface to Pillar 5, recalling the need to address it the light of the principle of gender equality.

In conclusion, the two instruments are closely linked and complementary to one another: the UNDFF is an extremely important signal to small-scale food producers, recognizing their crucial importance in ensuring the provision of nutritious, accessible, and sustainable food, and providing an important opportunity to coordinate the implementation of the provisions of various international instruments.

As bodies of water and their ecosystems are among the first to be affected by climate change and industrial mismanagement, it is crucial that the SSF Guidelines and the UNDFF GAP are jointly implemented by all stakeholders and that small-scale producers are given their rightful place in the UNDFF and associated national action plans.