WHY?

For young people in small-scale fishing villages, there is a lack of quality educational opportunities adapted to rural reality and focused on practical issues within students' marine and built environments leading to low retention rates, out-migration, and less adaptive capacity to address fisheries scarcity, ocean degradation, coastal development, climate change, and other anthropologic stressors threatening their sustainable futures. 

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One in 10 people rely on fish for their economic and nutritional security. Most live in the Tropical Majority of countries located in the Global South. Small-scale and artisanal fisheries act as buffers against basic human insecurities such as hunger and extreme poverty. Fish-dependent families are on the frontlines — the coastlines — of ocean conservation and rural community development. Yet, they are often sidelined from critical dialogues between international environmental and economic actors who frame the strategies for the ocean's future. The problem is that current agendas undervalue human security objectives and, in doing so, erode cultural heritage, gender relations, social capital, ecosystem services, human rights, and the essential requisite of providing both livelihoods and affordable, nutrient-packed food for those who count on it the most.