On April 22nd, 2016 the Harris Centre of Regional Policy and Development and the Too Big To Ignore project hosted a synergy session ‘Implementing the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines: What’s in it for Newfoundland and Labrador?’. The session, held at Memorial University, St. John’s campus, offered an opportunity to discuss the Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication (SSF Guidelines) and how the province of Newfoundland and Labrador could benefit from their implementation. Thirty-two participants attended the synergy session in St. John’s, and 23 joined via live webcast. Rob Greenwood and Taylor Stocks from the Harris Centre moderated the session.
In the first part of the synergy session, Ratana Chuenpagdee of the Too Big To Ignore project, introduced the SSF Guidelines. Meike Brauer and Sarah Potter, two visiting undergraduate students from Van Hall Larenstein University of Applied Sciences, The Netherlands, presented the preliminary results of their study related to public awareness about the SSF Guidelines and potential for implementation. In the second part, participants were divided into small groups and each group was asked to rank nine topics related to the SSF Guidelines in terms of their relevance and ease of implementation.