COVID-19 and Small-Scale Fisheries in Southeast Asia: Impacts and Responses

Abstract

This paper describes the impacts of and responses to COVID-19 of small-scale fisheries in six selected countries in Southeast Asia, including Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Thailand, and Vietnam. The paper used a structured case study approach to analyse the impacts and responses and relied heavily on existing reports and data sources in each country. The pandemic has further revealed the vulnerability of small-scale fishing households in the region. Given the few assets of fisher households, their ability to cushion the negative impact of crises and shocks is limited. Fishers made adaptive responses such as direct fish marketing, online marketing, and home delivery services. While short-term responses of providing food and financial assistance have been helpful, long-term support to address pandemics such as COVID-19 and other stressors will require developing more resilient fishing households. The paper recommends several approaches and interventions to improve household resilience and to be better prepared for similar challenges and threats in the future. These include: i) strengthening the fishing households’ social network of friends, relatives, and neighbours to serve as both a social safety net and a bridge towards the transition to financial inclusion; ii) diversifying livelihood to reduce dependency on the fishery and provide for additional sources of income and food; iii) promoting financial inclusion through savings, credit, digital payment products, and insurance; iv) value chain upgrading through post-harvest fish handling and processing methods; and, v) providing access, especially for women, to social protection measures such as government health insurance and social security.

First Assessment of the Impacts of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Global Marine Recreational Fisheries

“…Results of the survey to recreational fishers and of the expert consultation showed that it is expected that global fish stocks could benefit from the reduction of the impacts of commercial fisheries during the COVID-19 pandemic, in line with what was found in recent studies (e.g., Kemp et al, 2020;Coll et al, 2021;Ferrer et al, 2021;White et al, 2021a). Whether reductions of recreational fishing effort will accrue similar benefits is less clear for recreational fishers, especially in the case of older and more educated fishers.…”

Nudging fisheries and aquaculture research towards food systems

“…The effects of COVID-19 on food systems, and the producers and consumers of aquatic foods (Béné, 2020;Belton et al, 2020;FAO et al, 2020;Ferrer et al, 2021), are a particularly stark example of the importance of increasing understanding of, and planning for, external shocks on food systems, including efforts to understand and build resilience of food systems in ways that reduce future vulnerabilities.…”

Impacts of COVID-19 on the Aquatic Environment and Implications on Aquatic Food Production

“…Fishery activities have been affected by COVID-19 in terms of fishing efforts, landings, and marketing, thus directly affecting the livelihood of fishers. The inability to fish and reduced demand are major factors affecting the fishery industry, especially the smallscale fisheries in Southeast Asia [69]. The decrease of activities along the production and marketing chains such as suppliers (fishers), traders, processors, transporters, consumers, and financiers resulted in the collapse of the fishery industry.…”

“…The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly reduced fishing pressure, providing opportunities for threatened species to recover. Many researchers from United Kingdom [71], Mediterranean [12], Indonesia [69,72], India [34], Africa [73,74], North America [75], and Bangladesh [76] reported that reduced fishing pressure resulted in an increase of wild stocks in inland and marine waters. Even reef fish densities increased substantially due to the COVID-19 lockdown [34].…”

“…Reduced fishing pressure-increase of fast-growing species [12] Fish production and sea food value chain Decrease Decreased consumer demand, decrease in sales of fish/fish products, decrease in tourism [12,78,79] Fish supply through the value chain Indonesia-70% decrease of fish supply to commercial sector 40% decrease in domestic consumption [66,69] Decline in exports Decline by 43% in USA [75] Demand for fish Malaysia, demand by hotels and restaurant-reduced by 30%, 70% Although the aquatic systems and their resources showed improvements during the lockdown period, the livelihoods of fishers and the fishery supply chain were negatively impacted by COVID19-pandemic [82]. Coll et al [25] reported a reduction in fishing pressure (34%), which resulted in a reduction in fish landings (40%) and revenues (39%).…”