Article by Stuart Fulton: “In this research project, we examine how digital platforms – specifically PescaData – can be leveraged to connect small-scale fishing cooperatives with impact investors and donors, creating new pathways for sustainable blue economy financing, while simultaneously ensuring fair data practices that respect data sovereignty and traditional ecological knowledge.
PescaData emerged as a pioneering digital platform that enables fishing communities to collect more accurate data to ensure sustainable fisheries. Since then, PescaData has evolved to provide software as a service to fishing cooperatives and to allow fishers to document their solutions to environmental and economic challenges. Since 2022, small-scale fishers have used it to document nearly 300 initiatives that contribute to multiple Sustainable Development Goals.
Respecting Data Sovereignty in the Digital Age
One critical aspect of our research acknowledges the unique challenges of implementing digital tools in traditional cooperative settings. Unlike conventional tech implementations that often extract value from communities, PescaData´s approach centers on data sovereignty – the principle that fishing communities should maintain ownership and control over their data. As the PescaData case study demonstrates, a humanity-centric rather than merely user-centric approach is essential. This means designing with compassion and establishing clear governance around data from the very beginning. The data generated by fishing cooperatives represents not just information, but traditional knowledge accumulated over generations of resource management.
The fishers themselves have articulated clear principles for data governance in a cooperative model:
- Ownership: Fishers, as data producers, decide who has access and under what conditions.
- Transparency: Clear agreements on data use.
- Knowledge assessment: Highlighting fishers’ contributions and placing them in decision-making positions.
- Co-design: Ensuring the platform meets their specific needs.
- Security: Protecting collected data…(More)”.