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For the world’s 600 million fisher peoples, the climate crisis presents not just a future threat but an immediate, daily violation of their most basic human rights. Rising tides, warming and acidifying waters, and extreme weather destroy the ecosystems that fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities rely upon for food, livelihood, identity, and self-determination.
A new joint report published by the World Forum of Fisher Peoples (WFFP) and FIAN International documents how climate-induced disruptions, aggravated by industrial exploitation and state neglect, systematically violate the human rights of fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities worldwide. The report, drawing on case studies grounded on testimonials from communities in 10 countries (1) across Asia, Africa, and the Americas, reveals seven interconnected areas of climate crisis:
- Ecosystem collapse
- Food sovereignty crisis
- Territorial displacement
- Economic devastation
- Social disruption
- Cultural and knowledge loss
- Gendered impacts
This report serves to both at once highlight the high price paid by the world’s most vulnerable as well as to call for immediate global action on human rights-based climate justice, formal recognition of customary territorial rights, meaningful inclusive participation in policy-making, support for community-led governance systems, adequate compensation and reparation, and gender-responsive climate policies.
Right to Livelihood: Collapsing Incomes and Forced Displacement
Climate disruptions around the world are causing ecosystem collapse, with cascading failures leading to collapsing incomes and forced displacements of vulnerable fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities, resulting in entire ways of life threatened with erasure.
Oceanic warming results in mass die-offs of marine wildlife and the food sources they rely upon, causing in turn ecosystem collapse and long-term loss of fish stocks. These communities have reported sharply declining incomes due to less productive waters, pushing many to resort to unsustainable practices to bolster their short-term profits or to shift to other industries altogether like construction or gig work. Destruction of equipment or homes due to stronger storms, unpredictable waters, and coastal erosion aggravates the economic impact, driving families into poverty or displacing them entirely.
Where fisher peoples are displaced or otherwise relocated, they often face violations of their rights due to government negligence or policy failures. Resettlement sites often lack infrastructure, opportunities for livelihood, or recognition of cultural ties and practices. These are clear-cut violations of the right to work (UDHR Article 23) and the right to adequate housing (ICESCR Article 11).
Government interventions in the name of ecological protection are often false solutions. The imposition of marine protected areas (MPAs) without consultation with fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities often serves to exclude them from productive fishing grounds, violating their customary tenure rights and severely impacting their livelihoods. The promotion of industrial aquaculture, while boosting seafood production without increasing catch rates in our oceans, largely results in the capture of common waters by corporate interests, industrial pollution in coastal waters, and the spread of diseases from farmed stock to wild populations.
Right to Health: Poisoned Waters and Broken Systems
Water contamination poses an immediate and long-term threat to health, food security, and livelihood for fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities. In Bangladesh and Sri Lanka, salinization and industrial pollution contaminate drinking water sources and destroy freshwater and coastal ecosystems. A commensurate rise in waterborne diseases and exposure to toxic byproducts and emissions introduces heightened health risks, aggravating the problems. The mental health of fisher folk is also severely affected by higher stress and a sense of helplessness, leading to depression, alcoholism, increased rates of domestic violence, harm to oneself or others, or suicide.
Food insecurity driven by loss of food sovereignty in turn forces vulnerable communities to be more reliant upon processed foods, undermining their nutrition and severing ties to culturally significant diets. The brunt of the economic strain here is disproportionately borne by children, who face severe malnutrition and reduced academic performance – or who are forced to drop out of school altogether to work to help sustain their family. Women also face increased caregiving demands and loss of spaces for seafood processing work (which tends to be a gendered role in fisher families), deepening gender inequality and income inequality – which in turn leads to the loss of women’s decision making power and of recognition within the family.
State Failures and Corporate Complicity
With economic development as the goal, national and subnational governments tend to prioritize large-scale infrastructure – often sold as “Blue Economy” projects – and tourism over the needs of marginalized communities. Developments like Colombo Port City in Sri Lanka, the LAPSSET/Lamu Port-linked South Lokichar oil development in northern Kenya, and World Bank-funded coastal tourism in Senegal’s Saly resort area are risking the destruction of coastal ecosystems, displacing fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities, and violating the rights of the most vulnerable.
False solutions such as the proposed Java Giant Sea Wall in Indonesia and greenwashing carbon credit schemes in Sri Lanka, Belize, and Thailand risk displacement and exclusion of fisher peoples from their customary territories, unintended environmental damage, and often prioritize corporate profits or industry over the rights of local communities. These solutions and state climate adaptation planning in general are often conducted without consultation or participation from fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities. In excluding these marginalized peoples, states risk violating their obligations under ICESCR Article 11, UNDROP Articles 5 & 17, UNDRIP Articles 25 & 26, and the Paris Agreement’s Preamble & Article 7. These state and corporate interventions tend to violate the Free, Prior, Informed Consent (FPIR) of the communities in which they operate; hence States violate their own international commitments such as under the Voluntary Guidelines on Governance of Tenure, on Land, Forest and Fisheries (VGGT) as well as the Voluntary Guidelines on Securing Sustainable Fisheries (VGSSF) adopted by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Resistance and Demands for Justice
Despite these threats, fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities are far from passive victims of climate change; they are on the front lines, resisting imposed false solutions and championing their own community-led and -governed human rights-based strategies to confront the climate crisis.
Mangrove restoration efforts by fisher peoples and indigenous groups in Bangladesh, Ecuador, Thailand, Sri Lanka, and Senegal have proven effective in defending their livelihoods and traditional practices while building a vital defence against climate change. These projects reject the traditional carbon credit model in favour of community-led management and biodiversity restoration beyond box-checking monoculture. Mutual aid organizations, women-led cooperatives, collective bargaining, mass protests, and legal action against unjust government interventions and corporate land-grabbing are all ways in which these communities can push back and advance inclusive, resilient, and sustainable solutions.
Building on these solutions, States must recognize the customary rights of fisher peoples and indigenous coastal communities in national laws. States must also compensate affected communities for climate losses and invest in local adaptation instead of top-down impositions. Finally, they should ban/ stop promotions of false solutions and the greenwashing of ecologically damaging for-profit activities.
A Call for Human Rights-based Climate Action
In a rapidly warming world, the erosion of fisher peoples’ rights is a litmus test for global climate justice. The time is now to act: people around the world must support grassroots movements fighting for climate justice and human rights, pressure their governments to enforce and uphold their human rights obligations, and centre traditional knowledge in climate policies and interventions.
WFFP and FIAN International urgently call on governments and international organizations to take the following actions:
- Implement human rights-based climate justice
- Recognize and support the customary tenure rights of fishers to territories, water bodies, and their ecosystems
- Ensure meaningful participation of frontline communities in policymaking and not just ticking the boxes
- Recognize and support community-led fisheries governance systems through providing financial support and legalizing them as genuine solutions
- Provide adequate compensation and reparations to victims of the climate crisis and taking necessary precautionary, mitigation steps to secure the future of vulnerable coastal and riparian communities
- Implement gender-responsive climate policies respect the traditional, practical knowledge of fisher communities and listen to dedicated people on the ground to implement climate resilient solutions
Time and tide wait for no one. Only immediate action can mitigate and reverse the harm caused by the climate crisis on the world’s most vulnerable. In this spirit, the world fisher peoples unitedly call for Systemic Change Now, and no to Climate Change. World leaders and policy makers who will gather at Belem, Brazil for COP-30 should pay immediate attention to the voices of frontline communities who are the most vulnerable under current corporate-led development systems.
FISHER PEOPLES OF THE WORLD DEMAND AT COP 30, BELEM, BRAZIL:
SYSTEMIC CHANGE, NOT CLIMATE CHANGE!!
(1) Bangladesh, Belize, Brazil, Ecuador, Indonesia, Kenya, Senegal, South Africa, Sri Lanka, and Thailand are the 10 countries (4 from Asia, 3 from Africa and 3 from Latin America and Caribbean regions) in which WFFP member organizations engaged in research, advocacy, and communication activities during the Sea Level/ Water Level Rise study process.
Ryan Ngai Seung-yan did his youth internship with the National Fisheries Solidarity Movement, Sri Lanka
November 2, 2025
