A PLATFORM TO UNIFY STRUGGLES FOR ALL HUMAN RIGHTS

In the pursuit of Blue Growth, a wide range of actors – from Environmental NGOs to big finance – have become increasingly engaged in how to manage the ocean’s resources. Within fisheries this has led to a flurry of policy reforms aimed at introducing ‘rights-based fisheries’ in order to ensure ‘secure tenure’ over fish resources. According to fisher peoples’ movements, despite the seemingly benign language and intent of the reforms, this amounts to a massive push for privatization that is symptomatic of broader processes of ‘ocean grabbing’. This article engages with one of the most recent of such policy proposals and contrasts this with the content in the recently endorsed small-scale fisheries guidelines. This article presents an analysis of the corporate capture of global fisheries. It shows that so-called 'rights-based' approaches try to occupy center stage once again in ongoing efforts to reform fisheries policies at the national and global levels. Unfortunately, property rights and not human rights are the driving force behind such initiatives, which seek to preserve the oceans' resources through the privatization of access, and the commodification of rights.