In­ter­na­tional: Slow Food Cam­paign - Un­der­stand­ing the Oceans

What state are our seas in? What fish spe­cies are on the verge of ex­tinc­tion? Can we in­flu­ence the mar­ket? Should we stop eat­ing fish? Is there a fu­ture for small-scale fish­ers?Slow Food has been work­ing in the field of sus­tain­able fish for many years, rais­ing aware­ness among sea­food-lov­ers through the bi­en­nial Slow Fish fair in Genoa and de­vel­op­ing pro­jects to sup­port re­spons­ible ar­tis­anal fish­ing com­munit­ies.

With fish­ing, just as with ag­ri­cul­ture, Slow Food strongly be­lieves that every in­di­vidual can con­trib­ute in his or her own small way to chan­ging the mech­an­isms of a glob­al­ized food sys­tem based on the in­tens­ive ex­ploit­a­tion of re­sources.

"We are re­dis­cov­er­ing dif­fer­ent, for­got­ten fla­vors, which the glob­al­ized mar­ket tends to ob­lit­er­ate, and new or up­dated re­cipes. We are seek­ing to re­cover the tra­di­tional wis­dom of fish­ing com­munit­ies, who of­ten have not moved far afrom an­cient fish­ing prac­tices, the di­ets of past gen­er­a­tions, and the known and un­known re­sources guarded by rivers, lakes and seas. All these things are part of our story and our iden­tity."

In this spirit, the in­ter­na­tional Slow Fish cam­paign is launch­ing ini­ti­at­ives that pro­mote ar­tis­anal fish­ing and neg­lected fish spe­cies and in­spire re­flec­tion on the state and man­age­ment of the sea’s re­sources. To have any chance of suc­cess, this re­flec­tion must start at a local level.

Slow Fish 2019 launches the re­cipe for the fu­ture of our seas:

We must fish less, and fish bet­ter; cul­tiv­ate more shell­fish and al­gae! Slow Fish 2019, or­gan­ized by Slow Food and the Lig­uria Re­gion in Genoa (Italy) this May, brought to­gether more than 100 del­eg­ates from over 20 coun­tries who told their stor­ies, and above all shared their good prac­tices.

More information

Within Slow Fish North Amer­ica, Slow Fish Canada has launched in the be­gin­ning of Decem­ber a cam­paign in or­der to help raise aware­ness of how the Ca­na­dian gov­ern­ment is man­aging its fish­ing grounds by us­ing policies that res­ult in the privat­iz­a­tion of ac­cess to fish re­sources, as well as a pe­ti­tion for policy re­form of the Fish­er­ies Act.

www.saveourbcfisheries.info

A be­hind the scenes look at our world­wide Slow Fish net­work dis­cuss­ing the way for­ward for sus­tain­able fish­ing in Genoa, Italy. Video pro­duced by Trip in Your Shoes

Slow Fish’s main task was to con­sol­id­ate and work with the net­works on spe­cific ex­changes and pro­jects re­lated to poverty al­le­vi­ation, eco­lo­gical re­spons­ib­il­ity, pro­mo­tion of local pro­duc­tion and ca­pa­city build­ing for com­munity or­gan­iz­a­tion.
Our activ­it­ies de­veloped along 5 them­atic axes:

• Knowledge sharing as a tool for increasing resilience of rural and coastal communities in southern countries, with a focus on knowledge that can help improve local capacity to organize, increase responsibility towards natural resources, add value to products, and livelihood alternatives development
• Creative use of invasive species, or how to transform a threat into an opportunity
• Interconnected waterways, since fisheries are located all along waterways, and the impact of inland fisheries on the ocean.
• Aquaculture and Aquaponics as a viable and responsible alternative
• Increasing synergies between indigenous peoples and fishery issues and network.

This video shows the com­plex­ity of fish­ing in an im­me­di­ate and simple format to bet­ter un­der­stand fish­er­ies- and coastal cul­ture. To pre­serve both, we must fol­low the prin­ciples of the Small Scale Fish­er­ies Guideline and hu­man rights in the heart of our ac­tions.

The in­ter­na­tional Slow Fish cam­paign is launch­ing ini­ti­at­ives that pro­mote ar­tis­anal fish­ing and neg­lected fish spe­cies and in­spire re­flec­tion on the state and man­age­ment of the sea’s re­sources.

The Slow Fish event, held every two years in Genoa, is the most com­plete ex­pres­sion of our ap­proach, with a large space ded­ic­ated to in­form­a­tion for con­sumers, aware­ness-rais­ing for chil­dren and en­coun­ters between people in­volved in sus­tain­able fish­ing. And of course, there are plenty of op­por­tun­it­ies for tast­ing all the de­li­cious sea­food that vis­it­ors have been learn­ing about.

The mul­ti­lin­gual web­site, to paint a com­plete and nu­anced pic­ture of the com­plex situ­ation that lies be­hind a plate of fish. Slow Food provides a teach­ing tool that il­lus­trates the ba­sic con­cepts of fish sus­tain­ab­il­ity, such as sea­son­al­ity, sizes and re­pro­duct­ive age, to help every class re­search their own local fish spe­cies.

TheSlow Food Foundation for Biodiversity is play­ing a key role. In re­cent years it has launched 23 Presidia pro­jects with Terra Madre fish­ing com­munit­ies. The Slow Fish in Action sec­tion gives vis­ib­il­ity to these pro­jects, along with all the activ­it­ies un­der­taken every day by the mem­bers of our net­work to pro­mote good, clean and fair fish.

Project archive Slow Fish