STATEMENT:
From September 24thto 1st October 2016 the delegates
from Thailand, Uganda, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Belize and Indonesia of the World
Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) met in Sri Lanka as working group to resist
Ocean Grabbing. The group focused on sharing historical and current global instances
of ocean grabbing and resistance, with special focus on the phenomenon as they
are currently playing out in Sri Lanka.
Based on our engagement with many different communities
resisting ocean and land grabs here in Sri Lanka, we would firstly like to
extend our full support and sincere solidarity to Sri Lankan peoples’
struggle.
What was clear from our visits with local community movements
as well as our discussions of ocean grabbing across the world, Ocean Grabbing
is not only about the ‘ocean’. It is unfolding in an array of contexts
including marine and coastal seawaters, inland waters, rivers and lakes, deltas
and wetlands, mangroves and coral reefs worldwide, where fisher communities are
being dispossessed.
The means by which fishing communities are dispossessed of
the resources upon which they have traditionally depended is likewise taking
many shapes and forms. It occurs through mechanisms as diverse as
(inter)national fisheries governance, trade and investment policies, designated
terrestrial, coastal and marine ‘no-take’ conservation areas, (eco)tourism and
energy policies, financial speculation, and the expanding operations of the
global food and fish industry, including large-scale aquaculture, among others.
We realize that Ocean grabbing is occurring in varied ways
across a diversity of politico-legal settings. However, one common denominator
is the exclusion of small-scale fishers from questions of control of and access
to fisheries and other natural resources and access to markets. Throughout the
world, legal frameworks are emerging that undermine the position of small-scale
fisheries producers and systems, while strengthening or reinforcing the
position of corporate actors and other powerful players. Such ‘perfectly legal’
re-allocation processes may or may not involve coercion and violence, but are
far from being considered as socially legitimate.
We assert that Ocean Grabs are expropriation of the commons,
arising from gross inequality in economic and political power, both within
countries and across countries. Such expropriation is condemnable for the
several ways in which fisher communities find their rights becoming diminished
if not wholly lost. Illness and even early death are among the afflictions
thrust upon fishers. Among the most dreadful dimensions is when fishers are
physically displaced from residence without consent and forced into living
elsewhere. Charity cannot supplant rights devoured for profit.
Our Working Group condemned all these instances of ocean
grabbing as they are based upon the obscene objective of redistributing natural
resources for further enrichment of global elites. While implementation is
outsourced to nation states, this happens in close collusion with international
financial institutions, multinational corporations and Environmental NGOs. We
also recognize that ocean grabbing is endemic to capitalism’s war against
nature generally and land and water specifically. This war simultaneously
causes devastation for the fisher peoples that rely on nature for their lives
and livelihoods.
Hence our campaigns for the human rights of and social
justice for fishers must include resistance against the projects and agendas
pushed by all of these actors. Under the rubric of Blue Growth and the Blue
Economy these actors have in the past years pushed ocean grabbing into a new
phase through their search for new means to secure profit accumulation. WFFP’s
working group against ocean grabbing agreed that in response we will launch a
global campaign against ocean grabbing – only through struggle and broad-based
mobilisations will secure our visions for another world based on food
sovereignty and putting people and the planet before profits.
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