Plenary meeting 2022-01-25

Video recording of the Zoom meeting

Background

This was a plenary meeting for all members of the Dried Fish Matters network, with the goal of discussing plans for stage 2 research (2022-2025).

We presented the current state of our project at the Plenary meeting of December 9. At the end of that meeting we introduced a series of questions to be addressed at the next meeting. We invited all project teams and working groups to share their thoughts on the following questions.

1. Research:
   1. How best to interweave continued and new research in DFM as we move to Phase 2? What practical supports are needed to facilitate continued research?
   2. How can we balance integrative vs. place-specific outputs? How to address the challenges of developing cross-cutting knowledge?
2. Interventions:
   1. What pilot development interventions should we prioritize?
   2. What other kinds of interventions are we interested to pursue? (e.g. knowledge mobilization; policy-related)

Minutes

Research in the second phase of the project

PRATEEP: First, we need to finish up the research. Second, we should focus on knowledge mobilization, by doing integration and synthesis, and making our findings relevant at larger scale.

ERIC: We did not commit to specific outputs in the Midterm Report. We do, however, have a quantitative list of expected outcomes.

• 25 presentations
• 5 interviews
• 15 peer reviewed articles
• 2 books
• 10 book chapters
• 5 popular articles
• 20 reports
• 5 theses
• 4 videos
• 1 online exhibit
• 5 policy briefs
• 12 workshops

TARA: Maybe we need to converse a bit more across the teams about what is going on throughout the project. I would like to discuss with others about the practicalities of research, emerging knowledge and observations, and so on. The Working Groups could be helpful in organizing these discussions. We lack an immediate forum in which to converse about our research.

DEREK: The most obvious way of doing this would be through the proposed mid-term meeting, which would allow for informal hallway conversations and would let us talk through the idea of integrative analysis.

NIREKA: In a small department, you can just knock on people's doors. But in a larger organization we can do something more structured, like a kind of virtual brown-bag lunch series. People who have findings can initiate a meeting. We might have to do a Doodle or something like that to see when the most people are available.

DEREK: Or we could do a drop-in session on a regular basis. We could organize meetings on thematic topics.

BEN: I like the idea of a regular session, maybe once a month, where people can share emerging bits of research informally, perhaps on a given theme. This would be a way to keep people connected and continue learning. A couple of projects I'm on have started using Slack, where people can share questions and documents. I'm not 100% convinced that it is a massive step forward, but it seems useful as a dedicated space for discussion and sharing. It's like WhatsApp but easier to use, since it's integrated into your desktop.

DEREK: Slack seems less clunky than email. Compared to WhatsApp, it is perhaps easier to see and search the record of conversation.

PRATEEP: We need also to think about how organic relationships emerge, not just the platforms. Tara's comment suggests a need for informal discussions. We can look at multiple means: in some countries, for example, we can have local in-person meetings if travel is allowed.

DEREK: We can support travel if needed, for example to allow researchers from Thailand and Sri Lanka to meet up and discuss anchovy trade across the two countries.

RATANA: The TD platform we have with TBTI allows us to archive materials and have online discussion. We can set up a course just for the DFM members, where we can have online discussion (not live). Some things the DFM HQ can initiate due to having fuller knowledge of what is going on across the project. We can organize for countries to meet two at a time, so they can do pair comparisons, if you can see what points their research has in common. Based on the the experience of the e-book and IMBeR, we can see that every time we have a clear list of deliverables, that can motivate collaborative effort. There may be some intermediary deliverables before we get to the final, synthesis outputs. There will be a WSSFC in Japan, whether it is in person or virtual; that will give us a chance to come together and get things done.

DEREK: Balancing central oversight and nudging with organic developments is the challenge for us. We want people to keep in mind the longer-term outputs, with some structured oversight, while also allowing things to flow. We need to be conscious about the ways of turning the conference into writings -- we listed two books as deliverables committed to SSHRC, though in fact we could do much more.

AMAL: The size of this project can be intimidating. We are 30+ people here today, but closer to 60 or 70 overall, and we don't all necessarily know everyone. We had the MARE Conference, IMBeR, the e-book -- in each case, we had goals to work toward, and we came together to deliver. Academic or popular outputs are more interesting ways to organize discussion than just thinking about the platform or process. We might use WhatsApp to share immediate thoughts, but something like the e-book or IMBeR conference, where we had to create and respond to a questionnaire, encourage us to get together. At the last meeting we saw that the Karnataka team was in the "red" in terms of deliverables, but we have been producing a lot of work outside of the research plan. We also need to focus on additional work, beyond what we initially agreed, as "bonus" outcomes. PhD scholars and postdocs have more scope to initiate work on this. We may find smaller teams or fragments of teams coming together.

DEREK: I like the idea of creating smaller, more intimate groupings. For example, to have ongoing discussions on outputs related to a theme like gender. It is really a responsibility of DFM Central to think about how all of this fits together, as well as to report back to everyone on how our big-picture ideas are changing.

ERIC: To Amal's point, we have many outputs listed in our formal contracts between the University of Manitoba and partner organizations, which have funding attached to them, but the more collaborative/synthesis outputs have been largely introduced on top of those commitments. We should ensure that these collaborative outputs are better captured in future contracts, and that commitments are clear with each partner.

Pilot interventions

DEREK: To switch gears, shifting to the question on Interventions, I would like to invite Jenia to comment on the CLOC initiative.

JENIA: CLOC is a program of the Swiss Embassy. IITK is the main partner with the K2A component, Knowledge to Action. We had a series of valuable meetings during our fieldwork, including focus group discussions with women at landing sites in Sundarbans. We compiled those reflections and wrote a proposal focusing on multi-stakeholder engagement and co-production of knowledge. It's a small, 6-month project. We have been using participatory systems mapping alongside other qualitative methods. This type of multi-stakeholder engagement workshop can be very useful. We are also able to bring students into the process: at IITK we train engineering students, who may be interested in projects such as assisting with small solar cookers.

RAKTIMA: The goal of the workshop was to get to know each other, forge connections, build relationships, and lead to a shared understanding of what the training module and what gaps it should fill. The participatory workshop can build trust through informal exchanges, and co-produce knowledge. It involves community and academic team members, NGOs and GROs, Department of Fisheries, and Panchayat representatives, who come together to contribute multi-stakeholder proposals to the Government of India. I met the Director of Fisheries regarding the workshop, and am pleased to have found the fisheries administration very supportive.

DEREK: This is a good model for interventions. It illustrates involvement of different stakeholders, including value chain actors and policymakers, with possible technical outcomes such as solar driers and cookers.

AMAL: Going around the coast of Karnataka, we have seen a lot of trash fish going in bulk, at low prices, to buyers for the fishmeal/feed industry. But much of this can be edible food if it is sorted out. Involving Dakshin Foundation and Snehakunja Trust, we might look at an intervention to buy the fish in bulk with a women's group, and sort out the edible fish. There has also been the Anganwadi fish feeding program in Odisha where dried fish is provided as food. The procurement process is unclear. We observe there is a tacit competition among the bureaucrats. The goal may not be to target politicians, since fish is a sensitive issue in India, but rather the bureaucrats.

DEREK: These examples suggest opportunities for collaborations across the project, for example scaling up projects from some of the sites in India. Maybe we could do some workshops where we come up with templates for policy.

DEREK: There has also been a lot of applied work in Bangladesh that would be relevant here.

PRATEEP: One idea triggered in my mind is that there could be a CLOC process within DFM, led by IIT -- coming back to Tara's point about the need for informal communications within the project. We also need to think about DFM not as a standalone project with its own deliverables, but also as part of larger initiatives in which we are also involved. Sisir and I were involved in the IPBS Global Assessment on Sustainable Use of Wild Species, for example. We contributed 5 pages that were reduced to a box in the final report, but it mentions dried fish. Sometime we can talk about the trickiness of doing this kind of work on a global scale. WorldFish and ICDS interventions look like useful projects, but as Sisir could tell you, they bring out the dynamics in the whole system -- they show who is taking control of value chains, and who is getting excluded. Building successful small-scale interventions involves understanding the dynamics of interventions.

JENIA: We need to look at the intersection of different issues. For example, in the Sundarbans there are cyclones each year, that cause the ponds to become filled with salt water, and make fishing impossible.

MOSTAFA: In Bangladesh we know that everyone uses pesticides and chemicals. Policymakers have tried to introduce solar driers, less harmful pesticides and so on, but these interventions have not been successful. We would like to know what the experience in Thailand or other places has been. Second, women do much more work than men in this sector but are paid less than men. And now more than half of the labour is done by cheap, exploitable Rohingya refugees who are not legally allowed to work -- they are supposed to stay in their refugee camps. Third, we have supply issues. Bombay Duck, ribbonfish, and anchovies make up more than half the dried fish; the fish stock is decreasing, but the fish supply changes are not noticed at the processor level. Fourth, we would like to understand credit flow in the dried fish sector. People are secretive about their informal, oral agreements. People lose money but do not disclose that they are being exploited. With all of these issues, we need to know more about what is going on in the other partner countries.

Special Issue

AMRITA: We have been in communication with Maarten Bavinck about a special issue of Maritime Studies, which has been accepted. As part of this, we want to look at the political ecology, risk, small technologies, impacts of "blue economy" and Blue Justice, and transdisciplinary knowledge production for small-scale fishing. We will send out a list of contributors and will send out a formal email announcing the themes.

DEREK: This gives us another target for us to work toward in the project. We will send out some more detailed notes that give our perspective on how to use the points raised in today's meeting to launch further discussion. We may propose some specific activities to build this process further.