In Australia’s Northern Territory, after decades of exclusion from customary rights, Aboriginal fishers are rebuilding coastal economies with commercial licences, mentoring, cultural authority, and a pathway to city buyers. On Canada’s west coast, Indigenous-led action to dismantle destructive commercial fish farms is helping to restore revered wild salmon stocks and support the return of orcas. In Uganda, fisherwomen are at the forefront of resisting military violence, state-imposed hunger, and abuse from foreign investors as they organize to reclaim the right to fish and farm. And in South Africa, decades of anti-apartheid struggle have set the stage for traditional fishing communities to mobilize and advocate for legal recognition of fishers’ rights.
These stories from around the world reveal the powerful connections between fisher movements fighting for food sovereignty and livelihoods, resisting oil and gas exploration and extraction, exposing the impact of pesticides and agrochemicals on land and water, and protecting cultural fishing rights as essential to biodiversity.
Since 2019, the Global Alliance for the Future of Food has been documenting Beacons of Hope—stories that highlight food systems transformation, with insights from frontline communities. From this work, we have learned that the people who live closest to the problems have the clearest understanding of the solutions.
This Beacons of Hope series—six stories released in pairs in 2025 and 2026—underscores the interconnectedness of aquatic and terrestrial food systems. Some of the issues raised include: How can we build a just interface between land and water with fishers’ and farmers’ human rights at the centre? What are the ground-truthed mechanisms for redistributing power and access to resources? Understanding how fisher peoples, fish workers, and fishers experience the outcomes of industrial agriculture, commercial fishing, aquaculture, and so-called ocean economy developments is essential for food justice.
In the course of this work, we spoke with fishers who are also farmers, academics, donors, and movement leaders. From our global search for inspiring examples, we focused on six stories—from a long list of 50 initiatives—from South Africa, Uganda, Australia, Canada, India, and Colombia. Individually and together, they shine a light on what fisher peoples and communities living at the nexus between aquatic and terrestrial food systems are up against, as well as their successes and strategies for survival. Drawing on their lived experiences, these stories highlight the local consequences of harmful global narratives and policies from powerful actors such as the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization, World Bank, governments, wealthy elites, and corporations—bringing to the fore important insights and lessons for donors and investors aiming to strengthen human rights, livelihoods, fishers’ rights, and the right to food and nutrition.
The stories and key takeaways highlight opportunities to build solidarity, listen to communities and organizations at the frontlines of the aquatic–terrestrial food systems nexus, and directly fund initiatives that strengthen food sovereignty on land and water.
Sea Farmer Theodore Kormin-Kormin Dooling preparing crab pots. Credit: Michael Major, Cultivate Communications.
Sea Farmer Theodore Kormin-Kormin Dooling preparing crab pots. Credit: Michael Major, Cultivate Communications.
Fishers sort and prepare their catch in a small processing hut. Photo: Barry Christianson.
Fishers sort and prepare their catch in a small processing hut. Photo: Barry Christianson.
William “Dory” Johnson prepares to serve barbecued salmon cooked the traditional way over a fire for a community lunch in the Gwa’yas’dums Big House on Gilford Island in British Columbia’s Broughton Archipelago. Credit: Jesse Winter.
William “Dory” Johnson prepares to serve barbecued salmon cooked the traditional way over a fire for a community lunch in the Gwa’yas’dums Big House on Gilford Island in British Columbia’s Broughton Archipelago. Credit: Jesse Winter.
Fishermen cast their net seeking silverfish.
Fishermen cast their net seeking silverfish.
By featuring these six Beacons of Hope, which demonstrate the power of community organizing and the unparalleled expertise of fishers, we invite funders and allies to reflect on what solidarity requires and to seek ways to invest more directly in strategies that can drive the changes and transformations sought by the global food movement.
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