| Grantee | Advanced Conservation Strategies ↗ |
| Type | IUU Fishing |
| Grant Amount | $473,849 |
| Duration | Two Years |
While >50 million people depend directly on small-scale fisheries (SFF), efforts to reduce IUU fishing in the sector have received less attention and resources compared to the industrial sector. Tools and frameworks from the industrial sector have not translated well to the SFF sector; rather, new approaches are needed. We will develop a standardized set of tools for estimating, understanding, and monitoring IUU activity affecting the SSF systems. Working closely with the government, we will co-design and deploy the toolkit in Chile. An important fishing nation and a leader in science-driven fisheries policies, Chile suffers from chronic IUU fishing which jeopardizes the SSF sector. The toolkit will provide a cost-effective monitoring framework to guide public policy, support improvements in enforcement protocols, prioritize enforcement actions, and allow for performance monitoring of interventions. Using established and cutting-edge methodologies and focused on providing evidence for improved decision-making, the toolkit consists of a data acquisition platform, complementary analytical tools, and an output visualization platform. It has two primary objectives: 1) improve the government’s enforcement ability and 2) guide public policy to reduce IUU fishing. The toolkit will achieve the first objective by empowering the fishing enforcement agency to improve its strategies based on an annual evidence-based synthesis. For the second objective, we will engage in an explicit assessment process that will integrate the information and insights from the IUU toolkit across the entire policy cycle for the new fisheries law that is being created in Chile. The toolkit and its policy integration will be designed with the transferability to other Latin American countries as a priority.
