Illuminating the multidimensional contributions of small-scale fisheries
Basurto, Xavier, Gutierrez, Nicolas L., Franz, Nicole, Mancha-Cisneros, Maria del Mar, Gorelli, Giulia, Aguión, Alba, Funge-Smith, Simon, Harper, Sarah, Mills, Dave J., Nico, Gianluigi, Tilley, Alex, Vannuccini, Stefania, Virdin, John, Westlund, Lena, Allison, Edward H., Anderson, Christopher M., Baio, Andrew, Cinner, Joshua, Fabinyi, Michael, Hicks, Christina C., Kolding, Jeppe, Melnychuk, Michael C., Ovando, Daniel, Parma, Ana M., Robinson, James P.W., and H. Thilsted, Shakuntala (2025) Illuminating the multidimensional contributions of small-scale fisheries. Nature, 637 (8047). pp. 875-884.
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Abstract
Sustainable development aspires to “leave no one behind”<sup>1</sup>. Even so, limited attention has been paid to small-scale fisheries (SSF) and their importance in eradicating poverty, hunger and malnutrition. Through a collaborative and multidimensional data-driven approach, we have estimated that SSF provide at least 40% (37.3 million tonnes) of global fisheries catches and 2.3 billion people with, on average, 20% of their dietary intake across six key micronutrients essential for human health. Globally, the livelihood of 1 in every 12 people, nearly half of them women, depends at least partly on small-scale fishing, in total generating 44% (US$77.2 billion) of the economic value of all fisheries landed. Regionally, Asian SSF provide fish, support livelihoods and supply nutrition to the largest number of people. Relative to the total capture of the fisheries sector (comprising large-scale and small-scale fisheries), across all regions, African SSF supply the most catch and nutrition, and SSF in Oceania improve the most livelihoods. Maintaining and increasing these multidimensional SSF contributions to sustainable development requires targeted and effective actions, especially increasing the engagement of fisherfolk in shared management and governance. Without management and governance focused on the multidimensional contributions of SSF, the marginalization of millions of fishers and fishworkers will worsen.
| Item ID: | 88377 |
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| Item Type: | Article (Research - C1) |
| ISSN: | 1476-4687 |
| Copyright Information: | © 2025 The authors. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License, which permits any non-commercial use, sharing, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if you modified the licensed material. You do not have permission under this licence to share adapted material derived from this article or parts of it. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. |
| Date Deposited: | 15 Apr 2026 05:42 |
| FoR Codes: | 30 AGRICULTURAL, VETERINARY AND FOOD SCIENCES > 3005 Fisheries sciences > 300505 Fisheries management @ 50% 31 BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES > 3103 Ecology > 310305 Marine and estuarine ecology (incl. marine ichthyology) @ 50% |
| SEO Codes: | 10 ANIMAL PRODUCTION AND ANIMAL PRIMARY PRODUCTS > 1003 Fisheries - wild caught > 100305 Wild caught fin fish (excl. tuna) @ 100% |
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