About this Research Topic

Background

Despite the importance that younger generations carry in maintaining their livelihoods and conserving their surrounding environments, research on the role played by youth in reenacting their livelihoods and surrounding environments is incipient and scanty, especially in terms of fisheries and other productive practices. Young people are technologically savvy, globally connected, recognize new and more flexible social structures and decision mechanisms, and have a deep concern for proposing proactive solutions for relevant environmental topics such as climate change and the abundance of microplastics in seawater.

Presently and amidst a lack of young entrants into the fishing industry; the phenomenon known as the “graying of the fleet” is accelerating. Achieving sustainable fisheries relies on management strategies that may drift away from the needs and yearns of their involved youth, who are sub-summed within rigid and strong hierarchies ruling several fishing communities. These constraints, put young people at a crossroad as they, on the one hand, have developed coastal livelihoods with strong attachments to the sea and want to improve, diversify and achieve full sustainability in the fishing sector while, on the other hand, are surrounded by complicated socio-environmental conditions that constrain their activities and threaten their livelihoods. These become far more problematic when generational change is not valued either in their communities nor among their fellow crewmembers.

The increasing demand for fish and their products is often to blame for its tremendous sustainability impacts, including resource depletion, a loss of economic and human resources, an uneven distribution of costs and benefits, and poor returns on investment. To mitigate overall effects of fish product demand, many forms of sustainable management and best practices such declaring temporary fishing-bans, forming voluntary marine protected areas, or international sustainable fisheries certification and trade standards, and human rights and decent work approaches to fisheries management have been practiced more prevalently and attracted significant attention from academia, civil society organizations, fishing communities, and government agencies.

In particular, a legitimization of fisher’s ecological knowledge and the promotion of ecosystem-based approaches to fisheries management have been gaining popularity globally in an effort to attain sustainable fisheries. Such schemes have become inevitable for both small-scale and industrial actors within the fishing sector, perhaps as a strategy to respond to market demands driven by consumer preferences for more sustainable means of exploiting marine resources. While being considered a more sustainable way of consumption, these new fisheries schemes have been criticized for being resource-centric and not placing enough attention to the development and labor sufficiency of younger fishers, causing a gap within fisheries planning and policy making. The increasing demand for sustainable fisheries is causing planners and policymakers to focus their efforts on resource-based approaches and modifications within the supply chain to provide additional value to fish products. The endurance of these achievements in sustainable fisheries over the long run is only guaranteed if they are maintained, enriched and expanded upon by future generations. Paradoxically, a successful life in fishing for young people is not guaranteed, as real opportunities and their ideals interfere with their destinies as young fishers.

The special issue aims to deepen and update the conceptual and empirical understanding of the multifaceted lives of young people within fisheries and fishing communities and welcomes papers from different research traditions and angles, including theoretical, methodological, and empirical stances.

Potential research topics include, but are not limited to:

1. Young fishers and fish product traders using communication technologies for their business.

2. Youth priorities, challenges and opportunities for marine and fisheries sustainability.

3. The provision of sustainable careers to young people from fishing communities.

4. Antecedents and outcomes of certified sustainable fisheries in the lives of young members of fishing communities.

5. Life histories of young peoples in sustainable fishing sectors.

6. Young people’s view on creating socially responsible and environmentally sustainable

fisheries.

7. Intergenerational local ecological knowledge transmission and its importance for creating

sustainable oceans and fisheries.

8. Potential impacts and challenges for young fishers when intermingling with other relevant

economic sectors (e.g., agriculture, tourism).

9. Moral dilemmas of recruiting young workforces in fisheries.

10. Envisioning youth and gender expressions: their role in fisheries.

11. The role of youth in the new governance: innovative structures, collective action, and social networking.

12. The Future today: Towards a significant participation of fishing youth in compliance with the SDGs and Guidelines

Keywords: small-scale and artisan fisheries, ageing waterfronts, youth, used goods, sustainability, fisheries and supply chain

Important note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.

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