The International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD) is pushing for more innovative financing to help small-scale fishers and coastal communities protect the world’s oceans while making a decent living. IFAD leaders are making this case at the UN Ocean Conference running from June 9-13 in Nice, France. They say governments, multilateral organizations, and private sector players need to scale up finance for fishing communities now.
Oceans need US$175 billion in annual investment to stay healthy and productive, but only US$10 billion was invested between 2015 and 2019. Meanwhile, 492 million people worldwide depend at least partly on small-scale fisheries, with nearly half being women. These communities produce 90% of global fisheries and aquaculture output.
“Our oceans are deteriorating quickly. We cannot afford to wait longer to invest at scale in small-fishing and coastal communities who have the highest incentives to conserve the ecosystems that are central to their way of life,” said Pieternel Boogaard, IFAD’s Managing Director for Technical Delivery.
She’s advocating for more blended finance where public, private, and philanthropic money can be pooled to share risks. IFAD also sees potential in carbon trading from projects that plant mangroves or cultivate seaweed as carbon sinks.
The fund has real experience to draw from. Over the past 15 years, IFAD has backed around 130 projects touching fisheries, aquaculture, and coastal livelihoods, investing US$1.4 billion directly to reach about 80 million people. These projects include solar-powered fish dryers and cold storage that help small-scale fishers avoid losing up to a third of their catch to spoilage.
IFAD is also calling for an end to harmful fishing subsidies and wants that money redirected toward sustainable conservation practices instead. The organization serves as a technical partner to the World Trade Organization (WTO) Fisheries Funding mechanism, which supports new rules to protect global fish stocks while recognizing the needs of fishers in developing countries.
