Achieving food security is a challenge, especially for landlocked Bolivia, one of South American’s poorest countries. The Amazon Fish for Food project[1], focused on scaling-up innovative solutions to improve food security... [ view full abstract ]
Achieving food security is a challenge, especially for landlocked Bolivia, one of South American’s poorest countries. The Amazon Fish for Food project[1], focused on scaling-up innovative solutions to improve food security through fish in two amazon regions. Six institutions partnered to address this objective, including Bolivian and Canadian non-profits, a consulting firm, and financial institution, and a Canadian university.
An integrated multi-faceted approach to scaling-up was taken for the emerging fisheries and aquaculture sectors. Complementary and interacting pathways aimed at policy, production/market, and knowledge scaling were pursued, including both bottom-up and top-down approaches that utilized participative processes, collaboration, and resolved beneficiary-identified bottlenecks.
Small-scale, family-based aquaculture of “pacu” fish with strong women leadership was buttressed by expertise from Brazil through South-South learning opportunities. More efficient production, followed by increased availability and access to good quality fish – a high quality protein and dietary component- created improvements in income (40%), as well as food security and sovereignty.
In the northern amazon fishing sector, diversified value chains of fish leather were created with the invasive species “paiche”, providing added income (23-40%) to indigenous and urban fishers and processors, and incentive for better fish handling and reduced environmental waste. “Cooking for social change” and financial literacy mechanisms formed part of a strong capacity-building process to ensure sustainability in production and organizational/community development. Market development pathways including gastronomic events, resulted in a growth in “paiche” consumption (20.8%) and “pacú” consumption (37.9%) nationally from 2015 to 2017.
Both sectors were supported by the new National Law for Sustainable Fisheries and Aquaculture (No.938/2017) and innovative credit instruments which helped clients improve their fish-related businesses.
[1] This work was carried out through the Canadian International Food Security Research Program (CIFSRF) with the aid of a grant from Canada’s International Development Research Centre (IDRC), www.idrc.ca, and with financial support from the Government of Canada, provided through Global Affairs Canada (GAC), www.international.gc.ca.
Resources: Fish , Big Issues: Gender issues , Solutions: Empowerment , Solutions: Governance/Management
