WTO Agreements and Fisher Livelihoods: Tradeoffs and Strategies

Rural communities often rely exclusively on natural resource utilization for both subsistence and income generation. It is their deep connection to the resources in their region that forms the base of livelihood that sustains both family security and offers potential to increase economic opportunities that improve standards of living, increase educational levels of their children and help raise people out of poverty. Natural resource use has many faces and functional aspects in these communities. For a large portion of the world, agriculture provides the bulk of livelihood activities, a practice that depends on continued fecundity of the land and adequate water resources to sustain harvestable yields. For other communities, forests provide the economic base for their existence, utilized not just for timber, but also for non-timber products like herbs and fruits, wild game, raw materials for craft production, and small wood for firewood and charcoal production. In riverine, lake and estuarine communities the water resource provides access to important protein sources and economic currency in the form of fisheries and marine life. Combined, these packages of ecological goods and services form the asset base of many impoverished communities throughout the world