This August, the Geography Department of Memorial University hosted the 2024 Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting in St. John’s, Canada. The attendees explored and shared diverse perspectives and methodologies on the theme ‘Edges’ to challenge the status quo and broaden the understanding of Geography. The Annual Meeting was an opportunity to lift voices, incentivize approaches, and build bridges across disciplines to inform on crucial topics such as labour inequalities, food security, climate crisis, coastal change, community resilience and adaptation, which all require pressing attention but are often underappreciated.
TBTI Global postdoctoral fellow Dr. Edgar E. Becerril-García and TBTI Director Dr. Ratana Chuenpagdee unveiled the findings of the initiative ‘Defining the Edges of a Blue Justice Typology for Small-scale Fisheries’ as part of the ‘Resource economies and global change’ session that took place on Thursday, August 15th. This initiative focuses on improving small-scale fisheries’ resilience by recognizing their relevance in achieving the UN’s sustainable development goals. It also enhances the relevance of identifying and reducing social stressors, such as blue injustices influencing the fishing communities’ reactions, responses and roles.
The presentation covered the initiative’s preliminary results and provided context on the different injustices faced by small-scale fisheries worldwide. These findings were based on over 60 case studies in the TBTI Information System on Small-scale Fisheries (ISSF). The presentation also provided information about the analyses of the 21 most recent case studies and the development of a Blue Justice typology. The injustices analyzed using the Blue Justice and I-ADApT frameworks included marginalization from decision-making, power unbalances, industrial pillages, and cultural violations. The study aims to learn from these experiences to identify successful and unsuccessful strategies for coping with injustices. The study’s final results will be presented at the American Fisheries Society conference (Honolulu, Hawaii) this September.
Dr. Evan J. Andrews, a senior research fellow with TBTI Global, was part of the local organizing committee of the Canadian Association of Geographers Annual Meeting. Together with Edgar, he participated in discussions during the panel and workshop session on ‘Emotions and the Climate Crisis: Choices, Behaviours, and Futures,’ where they shared perspectives on human dimensions involving resistance, resilience, and adaptation to global challenges like climate change and balance between natural and human systems.