As a commodity, fish often connects the Global South and North through a web of formal and informal, legal and illegal practices. Wild capture marine fisheries, worth USD 130 billion a year, are the ocean economy’s largest employer.
Despite their diversity, many of these fisheries face the same twin crises: rampant illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing; and hazardous working conditions alongside pervasive violations of labour and human rights. Regulatory responses to these crises carry the implicit assumption that greater transparency produces greater accountability. In practice, however, this is rarely quite so straightforward.
A focus on West Africa
In West Africa, once one of the world’s most productive marine ecosystems, decades of legal and illegal overfishing have caused ecological decline and annual losses of up to USD 1.95 billion. The severe overexploitation of pelagic stocks threatens the livelihoods, food, and nutrition security of millions of people in the region.
West African nationals employed on industrial fishing vessels – including those operating under flags of convenience or foreign beneficial ownership – often face precarious working conditions with few legal protections or means of redress. Addressing this requires not only corporate accountability, but stronger engagement from coastal and flag state governments, importing states, and international regulatory bodies.
While industrial fisheries tend to be formalized, local artisanal fisheries tend to be more informally organized. These fisheries sustain coastal livelihoods and communities across the region, with women holding central roles as fishmongers, processors, and traders. Despite their importance in the continuity of fishing activities, women are eclipsed from most fisheries policies, and their roles remain poorly documented and understood.
Can formalization help to solve the issues?
Formalization – bringing informal labour and fishing practices under formal rules and enforceable rights – is widely assumed to deliver more ethical and sustainable outcomes. The underlying assumption is that if states can implement, monitor, and enforce rules and standards, accountability will follow.
However, initial case study evidence suggests that (well-intentioned) regulatory interventions to formalize fish value chains can produce intricate, interconnected effects on livelihood strategies, marine food webs, and labour conditions – sometimes moderating the problems that interventions set out to address, and other times compounding them or creating new unintended consequences.
