Government officials from Belize, Madagascar and Thailand’s fisheries departments, along with small-scale fishers from Belize and West Africa and fisheries experts will highlight how closing inshore areas to industrial fishing and giving artisanal fishers preferential access protects people and the planet. 

This high profile panel will explore how creating preferential access areas that prioritise artisanal fishers’ rights, and inshore exclusion zones that prohibit the most destructive forms of industrial fishing such as bottom trawling, can protect small-scale fisheries and biodiversity, strengthen marine management and conservation, and increase food security and sovereignty.