This year's conference ,convened from 24 to 27 June 2025 in Amsterdam, focused on the balance between tensions, trade-offs, and the potential transformations required for the future of sustainable marine resource management and governance, thriving coastal livelihoods and healthy, biodiverse oceans. The conference took place right after UNOC3 and in the middle of the Ocean decade (2020-2030). The organisers seized the opportunity to invite reflections on where we currently stand using the 'People and the Sea' lens and the tensions between climate change manifestations and the human activities which are shaping the health and functioning of the ocean and thus of our global wellbeing. Insights, resource access, impacts and capabilities are unevenly distributed resulting in tensions across social, economic, and political dimensions. What kind of transformation is most appropriate given that we can't agree on 'the ocean we want'?
The contribution by Mundus maris was crafted by Cornelia E Nauen and Stella A. Williams. It asked ‚Can small-scale success stories turn the tide?' The presentation was kindly ensured by Ruyel Miah, a PhD candidate at the University of Waterloo, Canada.

Ruyel Miah presenting the paper by Nauen and Williams of Mundus maris
The 'tyranny of small decisions', a term coined by the American economist Kahn in 1966, refers to the empirical evidence that harmless individual optimisation decisions may create even global-scale cumulative changes of state as is observable with overfishing, biodiversity loss, and climate change. Here we show a number of success stories in small-scale fisheries and citizen initiatives in Europe and West Africa. These concern, e.g. coastal area protection by fishers in the Mediterranean, collaborations between coastal fisher organisations and environmental NGOs like Environmental Justice Foundation in Ghana and elsewhere in West Africa, a successful citizen petition against the trade of shark fins in Europe, advances of the Africa-wide women's network AWFISHNET and promotion of female scientists through NiWARD. These will be spelled out in some detail to explore the hypothesis.
At heart, they are driven by the need to advance equity concerns which should be at the center of governance, implementation and monitoring, because inequity is currently the norm. Despite these encouraging efforts and local advances, at this point in time, the authors come to the conclusion that the examples provided do not yet scale sufficiently to turn the tide. As a result they argue in favour of much broader citizen movements across sectoral boundaries, e.g. involving small-scale fishers and farmers, the imperative of building stronger social organisations and seek the broadest alliances possible among currently disadvantaged socio-economic actors, scientists and civil society movements to enable structural and policy changes in favour of protecting the commons with cycles of monitoring and participatory governance. That can enable a just sharing of cost and benefits of urgently needed nature recovery in line with overdue advances in implementing the SDGs of Agenda 2030.
The slides with further reading are available here. We thank Ruyel Miah for his effective presentation. More information on the 2025 MARE Conference can be found at the conference website.
handwerklichen Fischerei Akademie
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- Mundus maris at MARE 2025
- Handwerkliche Fischerei im Mittelpunkt von Meeresbewirtschaftung und Ernährungssicherheit
- Macht den Fischfang fair in der EU, 25. März 2025
- Beziehungen zwischen Mensch und biologischer Vielfalt über alle Skalen hinweg
- Weltfischereitag, gefeiert am 21. November 2024 in Nigeria
- Mundus maris participated in the 2024 World Fisheries Day organized by Canoe and Fishing Gear Association of Ghana (CaFGOAG).
- Beitrag von Mundus maris zur öffentlichen Anhörung zu UNOC3
- Gipfeltreffen zur Kleinfischerei in Rom, 5.-7. Juli 2024
- Regionales Symposium zur europäischen Kleinfischerei, Larnaca, Zypern, 1.-3. Juli 2024
- Baltic Fisheries Emergency Meeting, Brussels, 26 June 2024
- Ambivalent role of Market and Technology in the Transitions from Vulnerability to Viability: Nexus in Senegal SSF
- Shell fisheries as stewardship for mangroves
- Afrikanische Ausgabe des 4WSFC in Kapstadt, 21. bis 23. November 2022
- World Fisheries Day, 21 November 2023
- Webinar: Herausforderungen und Chancen der Fischerei in Nigeria
- Präsentation der FishBase-App auf dem Symposium in Tervuren
- MARE Conference on Blue Fear – Mundus maris reflects
- The Transition From Vulnerability to Viability Through Illuminating Hidden Harvests, 26 May 2023
- EGU-Veranstaltungen zum Thema Geoethik und gemeinsames Lernen
- Solidarität mit den handwerklichen Fischern in Senegal und Mauretanien
- The legal instruments for the development of sustainable small-scale fisheries governance in Nigeria, 31 March 2023
- Tools for Gender Analysis: Understanding Vulnerability and Empowerment, 17 February 2023
- Community resilience: A framework for non-traditional field research, 27 January 2023
- Sustainability at scale – V2V November webinar
- Europäische Ausgabe des 4WSFC in Malta, 12. bis 14. September 2022
- Beitrag von Mundus maris zum SSF-Gipfel in Rom
- Women fish traders in Yoff and Hann, Senegal, victims or shapers of their destiny?
- Die Akademie setzt ihre Arbeit in Yoff fort
- Illuminating the Hidden Harvest – a snapshot
- Virtual launch event FAO: International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture
- The Small-Scale Fisheries Academy as a source of operational support to PA Guidelines
- Welt-Fischereikongress, Adelaide, 20.-24. September
- Mundus maris unterstützt den Kampf von Paolo, dem Fischer, in der Toskana, Italien
- Catching-up – SSF Academy Yoff, 27 Febr. 2021
- Ausbau der Fähigkeiten der Akteure für eine nachhaltige handwerkliche Fischerei
- Testen von Trainingsmethoden während der Pilotphase der Akademie der handwerklichen Fischerei im Senegal
- Eine Premiere – Einweihung der Akademie der handwerklichen Fischerei in Senegal