FISHERCOAST Team Workshop and Project Meeting

Fishercoast’s second team workshop took place at the French Institute (IFP), Pondicherry, India, between the 11^th to 14th February, 2020. The workshop was jointly organized by IFP and Madras Institute of Development Studies (MIDS). The project team, comprising members from five countries, visited Cuddalore district (one of the two Indian case study districts) on the first day.

Cuddalore Old Town (Harbour). Photo: Surabi

The team went to Cuddalore Old Town (OT) harbour and the industrial sites of NOCL (Nagarjuna Oil Corporation Limited) and ITPCL (Infrastructure Leasing and Financing Services Tamil Nadu Power Corporation Limited).

On the 12^th and 13^th of February, the team members of the various work packages (WPs) presented their progress and tentative findings. There were multiple presentations for each of the WPs (WP1: Socio-ecological coastal transformation in changing institutional context, WP2: Trawl fisheries, WP3: Industrialization, WP4: Migration and labour mobility, WP5: Heritage and imaginaries of the coast). Presentations were followed by discussions and plans for follow-up research over the next year.

Keynote presentation by John Kurien. Photo: Surabi

There were two keynote speakers. The first keynote speaker, John Kurien (Professor, Azim Premji University, Bangalore) spoke about ‘The Coast, Nature and the People’ where he elucidated nine key features of the ocean (nature) and nine key features about fishers and explained how fishers lived with the sea and should be instrumental in the governance of it.

The second keynote speaker, Nireka Weeratunge (Research Fellow, International Centre for Ethnic Studies (ICES), Colombo) gave a presentation about relational wellbeing and fishing communities. She talked about both qualitative and quantitative methods that could be used to understand wellbeing and how wellbeing could be both an outcome and a process.

Much of the last day was spent in small groups discussing how to move forward with the research, ensure synchronization across country studies and meet the deliverables promised.