Abstract:
This article emanated from a research that dealt with a crosscountry research project on Gender, migration and fisheries in
Asia - Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka. The project aimed at
providing a critical understanding of changes taken place among
the fishing communities in these countries within the context of
depleting natural resources, social conflicts, climate change,
technological changes and policy changes. The main aim of this
article is to review and discuss current policy initiatives in fisheries
in Cambodia, India and Sri Lanka to examine their transformative
potential in addressing the issues of poverty and well-being among
fishing communities. Using content analysis method, this paper
focuses on the 2010-2019 and 2015-2024 Strategic Planning
Frameworks in Fisheries of Cambodia, 2017-fishery policy in India
and 2018-fishery policy in Sri Lanka to understand their
transformative potentials. The analysis finds that the selected
policies show tremendous transformative potentials in the areas
of reducing poverty and improving the well-being of SSFs. Yet their
capacity to make such transformation remains unclear. It calls for
a comprehensive policy approach to address the issues of smallscale fishers who are the backbone of the fisheries livelihoods.
