About Us

One of the main tensions in developing a shared initiative around small scale fisheries is addressing the question of underlying values. As a natural resource management system, fishery managers across the world are tasked with mediating between protecting biodiversity and natural resources, safeguarding food security, and protecting jobs and livelihoods. At its best, small scale fisheries governance systems are able to balance all three of these (and other) values. However, in this imperfect world, these values can be perceived as conflicting with each other, and interventions can work to prioritize one or two of these values, but perhaps not all three simultaneously. The SSF Funders Network is not solely dedicated to any single value but rather designed to integrate and align interventions around strategic priorities in a way that can balance a range of interests. The framework created through the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines for Security Sustainable Small Scale Fisheries (the SSF guidelines) offers a model for orienting around shared values and goals.  

Among the Small Scale Fisheries Funders Network’s philanthropic funders, focal areas span a variety of topics including, but not limited to: ocean health, conservation, food systems, human rights, data and technology, community investment, market access, place-based work, gender equity, and policy solutions. An initiative of the network is to grow to encompass additional points of entry into the small scale fisheries nexus including plastics and pollution, climate change, and others.