FISHERCOAST: Coastal transformations and fisher wellbeing – synthesized perspectives from India and Europe
Principal Investigator at ZRC SAZU
Nataša Rogelja Caf, PhD-
Acronym
FISHERCOAST
Project Team
Martina Bofulin, PhD, Aleksej Kalc, PhD, Špela Kastelic, Urša Kanjir, PhD-
Duration
1 January 2019–30 June 2022 -
Lead Partner
Partners
Arctic University of Tromsø (UIT), Norveška, University of East Anglia (UEA), Združeno kraljestvo, French lnstitute of Pondicherry, Indija
FisherCoast is three-year project financially supported by The EU-India Platform for Social Sciences and Humanities (EqUIP). The project examines how government policies with regard to coastal development have transformed the physical, ecological and social character of coastal areas in India and selected European countries and how this has impacted the wellbeing of fishing communities, who are historically the main coastal inhabitants. While the modernization of fisheries that occurred in the past decades was aimed at economic progress, it also resulted in damage to marine ecosystems, to inequality and social conflict. Similarly, policies towards the end of the 20th century aimed at promoting industrial development and tourism threatened fishers by laying claim to coastal lands and polluting the seas they fish in.
The objective is to see how government laws and investment policies have reshaped the social ecology of the coast in India as well as in selected European countries, and thereby impacted fisher wellbeing. This objective is driven by our understanding that fishing communities have been the main inhabitants of the coast and depend on it for their livelihoods and are likely to be the most affected by transformations.
More on the project: https://site.uit.no/fishercoast/about/