Tides of Resistance: Fisherwomen, the Ocean and the Fight for Territorial Rights

When the women of the sea rise, the tide of justice shifts. On November 5, communities across the world will mark the first International Fisher Women’s Day (IFWD) – not as a token celebration, but as a global affirmation of women’s central role in sustaining aquatic life, community economies and ecological knowledge systems. The day, declared at the India Fisher Women Assembly in 2024 and endorsed by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) at its General Assembly in Brazil, has since evolved into a five-week campaign (November 5 to December 10). This campaign connects three pivotal moments – International Fisher Women’s Day (Nov 5), World Fisher Peoples’ Day (Nov 21), and International Human Rights Day (Dec 10) – into a single continuum of resistance and reclamation.

Beyond recognition: the politics of the sea

India’s fisheries employ about 16 million people, with nearly three million women engaged directly or indirectly in the sector. Women comprise more than half of the post-harvest workforce, leading activities such as sorting, drying, vending, and marketing. Yet, in the official imagination, they remain ‘helpers’ rather than fishers. Less than 10% of fisherwomen have formal recognition through cooperatives or welfare boards, leaving them excluded from institutional credit, disaster relief and social protection schemes.

This invisibility mirrors a deeper structural neglect. Under the Pradhan Mantri Matsya Sampada Yojana (PMMSY) – a Rs 20,000 crore flagship scheme launched in 2020 – the lion’s share of investment flows into capital-intensive aquaculture, export infrastructure and private harbours. Barely 4% of PMMSY allocations reach women beneficiaries, and almost none support the small-scale or traditional fisheries that underpin local food security.

The government’s rhetoric of ‘Blue Revolution 2.0’ and ‘Blue Economy’ repeats the developmental logic of extraction – now extended to the oceans. Where the 20th-century Green Revolution re-engineered agriculture at great ecological cost, this new ‘Blue Transformation’ threatens to commodify aquatic ecosystems and alienate the very communities that have sustainably governed them for generations.

The false promise of Blue Transformation

The Food and Agriculture Organisation’s Blue Transformation agenda, along with allied global frameworks such as the 30x30 marine conservation target and Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) regimes, claim to reconcile growth with sustainability. In practice, these initiatives have accelerated ocean grabbing – enclosing customary fishing zones for private investments, tourism, carbon-credit projects and militarised conservation zones.

The 30x30 target, adopted under the UN Convention on Biological Diversity, seeks to designate 30% of the planet’s land and seas as protected areas by 2030. Yet, many of these ‘marine protected areas’ exclude the very communities that depend on them, criminalising artisanal fishers in the name of conservation. Similarly, MSP frameworks – promoted as rational zoning mechanisms – have become tools for allocating marine space to energy corporations, aquaculture parks and shipping industries, often without the free, prior and informed consent of traditional fishers.

In India, such policies intersect with coastal regulation relaxations, port-led industrialisation and the National Blue Economy Policy draft – together constituting a corporate seascape that undermines community-based governance.

Fisherwomen at the frontlines of justice

Against this tide of dispossession, fisherwomen across Asia, Africa, and Latin America are reclaiming the ocean as a living commons. They argue that gender equality cannot be divorced from ecological justice. As Rosa Luxemburg once said, "Those who do not move, do not notice their chains." For fisherwomen, that movement – of bodies, boats, and collective consciousness – is now global.

The International Fisher Women’s Day is a landmark in this long struggle. It emerged from decades of organising by women fishworkers – from India’s coastlines and river deltas to the mangroves of Senegal and the islands of Indonesia. It recognises that women are not beneficiaries of fisheries policy but co-creators of knowledge, labour, and community resilience.

The 2024 Kerala Assembly that proposed the IFWD declared that women are not secondary actors in fisheries, but rightful claimants to aqua territories – zones of life and livelihood shaped by generations of collective use and stewardship. Their call, now taken up globally by WFFP’s 70 member organisations in over 50 countries, asserts that the ocean is not a frontier for investment but a territory of relationship, history, and justice.

The five-week campaign: from November 5 to December 10

The WFFP’s five-week campaign, inaugurated with IFWD, gives this movement a coherent rhythm and political architecture. It includes:

• Week 1 (Nov 5–11): Gender Rights and Freedom from Violence — Celebrating fisherwomen’s leadership and exposing gendered exploitation in fisheries.
  • Week 2 (Nov 12–18): Asserting Fisher Identity — Reclaiming the dignity of artisanal, indigenous, and small-scale fishers.
  • Week 3 (Nov 19–25): Community and Customary Rights — Marking World Fisher Peoples’ Day (Nov 21) with global mobilisation for territorial rights.
  • Week 4 (Nov 26–Dec 2): Protect Waters, Protect Life — Linking fisher struggles with climate justice and biodiversity protection.
  • Week 5 (Dec 3–10): Fisher Rights as Human Rights — Culminating on Human Rights Day, asserting that the right to fish, live, and govern the sea is a human right.

These five weeks are more than a calendar of events — they are a political counter-map. They articulate an alternative to top-down governance and climate technocracy, foregrounding community sovereignty over aquatic territories.

The global dimension: toward Aqua Territorial Rights

The emerging concept of Aqua Territorial Rights, shaped through WFFP dialogues, proposes a new ecological grammar for the 21st century – one that centres traditional, sustainable fishing communities as custodians of marine, riverine and inland ecosystems. It redefines ‘territory’ not as fenced space but as a web of ecologically routed relations between people, waters and species.

This perspective challenges the notion that climate adaptation must come through industrial transitions or market solutions like carbon trading. Instead, it calls for collective governance rooted in customary rights, cultural continuity, and care ethics.

Fisherwomen, particularly, embody this worldview. Their livelihood practices — from shared fish vending networks to mangrove restoration and cyclone recovery — demonstrate resilience far more equitable and sustainable than any carbon-offset project.

A global call from the waters

As WFFP General Secretary Herman Kumara said at the Brazil Assembly, “Between November 5 and December 10, let the world listen to those who live with the waters.” His call was not just symbolic — it was strategic. In an era when climate policy is increasingly captured by corporate narratives, fisherwomen’s movements remind us that true transformation must begin from below, in communities whose survival depends on the health of the sea.

The IFWD and the five-week campaign are thus not parallel to the climate agenda or food sovereignty vision — they are its conscience. They insist that justice cannot be achieved by market logic, and sustainability cannot be outsourced to investors.

As fisherwomen from Tamil Nadu to Tanzania assert: Our freedom is the ocean’s freedom.

Aashima Subberwal is a researcher and feminist organiser working on food and ecological justice, associated with Friends of the Earth India.

Vijayan M.J. is Director, Participatory Action Research Coalition India and an advisor of the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP).

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