Responding to Global Change

Abstract

This chapter focuses on the wider processes of political-economic change that drive key characteristics of fishing livelihoods. Globalisation has dramatically expanded the scale and accelerated the pace of fisheries capture and trade, generating new opportunities and challenges for livelihoods and marine environments. Here we document some of the major characteristics of the history of fishing across the Asia-Pacific, before focusing on case studies of the Philippines and PNG. We highlight three related features of globalisation that have influenced fishing livelihoods and that continue to shape them today: migration, engagement with markets and new technologies, and interactions with other forms of economic activity, including those outside the fisheries sector.