From Legal Frameworks to Practice – Challenges for Implementing the SSF Guidelines in Argentina

Abstract

Argentina’s fish and shellfish resources support several high-volume, export-oriented industrial fisheries with annual landings close to 800,000 tons. Compared to the industrial sector, which expanded greatly over the last 40 years, artisanal marine fisheries have remained insignificant in terms of catch volume and value, receiving little attention from governments despite their local importance. Argentina is a federal country with five coastal provinces, which have jurisdiction over the marine resources within 12 nautical miles from the shore and within gulfs. Since each province manages artisanal fisheries within its territorial waters, the importance assigned to them, the legal frameworks available, and their degree of application vary greatly among provinces. In a few cases, municipal governments have also been involved in generating policies for the sector, adding to the complex multilevel governance context of small-scale fisheries. This chapter reviews the main national and provincial laws and policies relevant to marine artisanal fisheries, as well as a number of cases that were litigated in court, to evaluate the extent of adherence to the principles of the SSF Guidelines in the law and in practice. We complement this review with an analysis of fishers’ knowledge about the legal instruments in use, and the perceptions of key actors involved in judicialized cases from Buenos Aires and Chubut – two provinces with a long history of artisanal fisheries. These cases illustrate the main limitations and challenges faced by the artisanal sector, revealing how far the country is from implementing the SSF Guidelines.