Innovating fish-based livelihoods in the community economies of Timor-Leste and Solomon Islands

Extreme poverty affects approximately one quarter of all Solomon Islanders and is projected to rise anywhere from 2-12% due to the most recent external shock of COVID-19. Timor-Leste is the second most malnourished country in the world by the 2020 Global Hunger Index and has made limited progress to address poverty and food and nutrition security (OECD 2020). However, it has been identified that that improving the livelihoods of people who catch, process or trade fish, is a critical pathway out of poverty and towards food and nutrition security. As such, small-scale fisheries are vitally important. But development programs have offered them limited support and have often failed to consider the contributions made by women.

This project is supporting women and men in rural Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste to develop and share innovative solutions for sustainable fish-based livelihoods, and to increase the capacity of national agencies to support them in doing so. The project is focussing on building knowledge by empowering local community members to engage in peer-to-peer learning and, as a result, develop a sustainable approach to growing the fish-based economies of these regions.

Taking a participatory and asset-based approach, this project is building the knowledge base necessary for fisheries development agencies to more effectively support fish-based livelihoods. The project is testing community-led pathways for sustainable and widespread fisheries development in order to improve rural livelihoods. This is being achieved by enabling community members to lead the scale-out using peer-to-peer learning.

The project is also continuing to work closely with long-established local women’s groups who have achieved women-led innovations in rural fish-based economies. As such, this project offers an important correction to the common gender-blindness of fisheries development efforts and is generating evidence to support greater involvement of women in fisheries. Taking an approach that involves working in partnership with both women and men, this project also has the potential to build more equitable outcomes across the wider community.

At the end of four years, this project will have:

• co-created new knowledge about fish-based livelihoods and identified opportunities for community-led innovation.
• increased the capacity of community members to pursue place-based innovations that will lead to sustainable livelihood improvement.
• supported community members through upskilling in fish-handling to ensure fish-based products are safe for consumers and the nutritional benefits of aquatic foods is widely available.
• supported partner organisations and national governments to design programs that meet national development goals building on community strengths and leadership.

• ‘Enhancing fish-based livelihoods and safe aquatic food distribution in island food systems’. Fisheries Newsletter. No.165 (May-August 2021).