Envisioning desirable futures in small-scale fisheries: a transdisciplinary arts-based co-creation process

Abstract

Despite the critical importance of small-scale fisheries for food security and well-being and the role of fishers as stewards of aquatic ecosystems, their future is uncertain. Tackling narratives that portray small-scale fisheries as obsolete, disparate, and inefficient requires collectively imagining and articulating new, creative, and inspiring narratives that reflect their real contributions and enable transformative futures. Drawing on a transdisciplinary country-level case study, we analyze the process and outcomes of co-creating desirable, plural, and meaningful visions of the future for small-scale fisheries in Uruguay. Using an arts-based approach and leveraging the agency of emerging innovative initiatives throughout the country, different food system actors (fish workers, chefs, entrepreneurs) and knowledge systems (local, experience-based, and scientific) were engaged in a creative visioning process. The results of this artsbased co-creation process include (1) a series of desirable visions and narratives, synthesized into an artistic boundary object; and (2) the stepping stones to a transformative space for collective reflection, learning, and action. Although the artistic boundary object has proven instrumental among multiple and diverse participants, the transformative space encouraged academic and non-academic participants to plan collective actions and to feel more confident, motivated, and optimistic about the future of small-scale fisheries in Uruguay. With this paper we provide a tool, a platform, and a roadmap to counter the dominant bleak narrative, while also communicating the elements that constitute desirable futures for small-scale fisheries in Uruguay. On a broader scale, our contribution reinforces the emerging narrative of the key role that small-scale fisheries have, and will play, in local and global food systems.

The Decolonisation of Climate Change and Environmental Education in Africa

“…Studies that focused on issues around community engagement and participation, provide insights into how formal education could be decolonised (e.g., [102,104,107,[109][110][111]. For example, de Sousa et al [112] used a Participatory Action Research (PAR) approach for a climate change project that brought community members and Grade 7 teachers together to learn about a local community-based climate change problem and particularly facilitated teachers to mobilise students as citizen scientists in the study process.…”