Small-scale fisheries

Small-scale fisheries contribute to the food and nutritional security of a large share of the world’s population. They support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people and make vital contributions to the cultural, social and economic cohesion of the communities in which they are embedded. A lack of systematic data collection at the national level renders many of these contributions uncertain. The Illuminating Hidden Harvests initiative begins to fill the gaps.

A collaboration between the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), Duke University, WorldFish and the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability, the project brings together over 800 experts (researchers, practitioners, government officials, consultants and fish workers) to examine in a systematic way the contributions that small-scale fisheries make to various dimensions of sustainable development at the national, regional and global levels. In this collection, Nature and the Nature portfolio and partner journals present some of the project’s findings, together with opinion pieces on the initiative.