The first, possibly ground-breaking, steps in a future hand-in-hand walk between NGOs and small-scale fishermen were taken at a meeting in Spain in late April.
The meeting in the Galician port of La Coruña, set off with a joint declaration urging EU decision-makers to set small-scale coastal fisheries “at the heart” of the upcoming reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), involved some 60 representatives for a long line of artisanal, or small-scale, fishermen’s organisations representing several nations and regions, as well as NGOs, many under the umbrella of the OCEAN2012 coalition.
The declaration was echoed in the opening remarks in a session panelled by Domitilla Senni of the PEW Environment Group – an OCEAN2012 founder member – Domingo Jimenéz Beltrán, a former European Environment Agency (EEA) executive director, and Brian O’Riordan of ICSF, The International Collective in Support of Fishworkers.
