Legal and Policy Frameworks in Brazil: Valuing Tenure Rights, Decent Work, and Gender Equality in Small-Scale Fisheries

The small-scale fisheries sector characterizes a range of complex and diverse fishing practices, with significant social and economic dependency and constrained institutional capacity. In Brazil, an imbroglio around fishing policies has marked fisheries management discussions, affecting institutional, legal, and policy frameworks. Consequently, the Brazilian small-scale fisheries sector has suffered from environmental, social, and economic preconceptions arising from poor management and regulation, which has jeopardized fisheries resources’ sustainable use and threatened food security. From the 1990s onwards, an institutional breakdown followed public awareness of ecosystem conservation and the importance of managing fisheries resources for local communities’ sustainability. More recently, while reforms in the structure and mandate of public fisheries agencies represent some progress, legal and policy implementation and local engagement remain a challenge. Against this backdrop and the SSF Guidelines’ recommendations, this chapter explores fisheries policy stewardship by analyzing tenure rights, decent work, and gender equality in Brazil. The authors collected and examined legal and policy instruments relevant to small-scale fisheries, clarifying definitions of terms relevant to small-scale fisheries, institutional arrangements, key principles, provisions and considerations for small-scale fishers, and stakeholders’ interactions and participation. The authors submit that a new regulation is needed to clearly detail the rights and obligations of small-scale fishers. Moreover, public policies should support the implementation of existing relevant policies and laws in the small-scale fisheries sector and the use of participatory methodologies that include and value small-scale fisheries empirical and traditional knowledge.