Autonomous projects in the face of the global fishing market: women fish processors in Senegal in a context of climate emergency

This article aims to analyse the difficult relationship between the needs of the Senegalese state to obtain economic compensation for the over-exploitation of natural resources, the right to food sovereignty of the local population, and the survival of the environment. It focuses on the fisheries agreements signed by Senegal with the European Union (EU) and how these have an impact on the conditions of people who make a living from the sector, analysing the situation and the self-organising of women involved in fish processing, an activity that sustains their autonomy and their ongoing reproduction as a collective. Declared goals of sustainable fishing in the latest protocol implementing the EU–Senegal Fisheries Agreement (2019–2024) are at odds with the actual over-exploitation of the marine environment. The commitment expressed in Article 2 of the agreement to ‘promote sustainable fishing and protect marine biodiversity’ contrasts with the lived experiences of women fish processors, expressed in denunciations of campaigns such as Greenpeace Afrique’s AnaSamaJën (where is my fish?). Based on the assumption that overfishing is a form of extractivism that undermines food sovereignty and the sustainability of local societies, this article first analyses the agreements signed between Senegal and the EU, including their clear anthropocentric ontology (Escobar 2017) and discusses how the state takes up the financial, environmental and food challenges posed by climate change. The second part, based on fieldwork and interviews with women fish processors and other actors in the sector, shows how these international agreements affect their economic and social conditions as well as their resistance, where social struggles and environmental thinking are linked.