Silver tourism is predicted to reach 2 billion people in size by 2050. Together with digital nomads, senior tourists constitute a market segment that the Republic of Mauritius wants to tap into for its COVID-19 recovery. In the first blog of the ‘Designing the Future of Tourism’ series, the Mauritius and Seychelles Accelerator Lab explored the intersection of local health infrastructures and silver tourism. While good quality and accessible healthcare is a priority for senior tourists, trends also identify nature and culture as main drivers when choosing a travel destination. This brought the Lab to test whether the artisanal fishing community, at the intersection of nature, culture - and food security-, can be an asset to attract such tourist segments.

The local tourism industry relies on the artisanal catch to satisfy the demand for fresh fish, while artisanal fishers rely on tourist arrivals to sell their produce and to showcase their traditional culture of artisanal fishing. A source of protein to thousands of households in coastal regions, and a provider of fresh fish to the local market, artisanal fishing is also a national legacy embracing traditional know-how such as marine carpentry, ancestral fishing techniques, and hand-made devices such as basket traps and large nets among others. Connecting the cultural and nature-driven silver economy and the artisanal fishing community could be an interesting experiment for Mauritius and Rodrigues.

Connecting senior tourists and artisanal fishers

If relationships between fishers and tourists already exist, these interactions have until now been ad hoc and not been integrated into a proper policy or strategy, and their impact is difficult to measure. Besides, to successfully integrate artisanal fishers in future community-based tourism models, other major issues also have to be solved beforehand. One of them is that artisanal fishing in Mauritius and Rodrigues is declining due to the overexploitation of the lagoons and an aging fisher population. However, the hope to revive the practice of traditional fishing still exists through initiatives such as the EU-funded ECOFISH (Mauritius) Project, implemented by the UNDP. The project proposes a mix of innovations and good practices to support the economic empowerment of the artisanal fishers, while preserving their heritage and culture.

During a two-day dialogue on how to integrate artisanal fishers in the local tourism value chain, the Accelerator Lab partnered with the UNDP-ECOFISH team to test the following hypothesis: artisanal fishers are ready and able to play an integrated role to provide community-based services to the silver-haired tourism market. The exchange between the fisher community and other stakeholders highlighted several opportunities:

Integration of artisanal fishing into sustainable and adaptive marine resources strategies is key.

During the session, one of the themes discussed was the ability of the artisanal fishers to adapt to new strategies to sustainably preserve marine resources. Representatives from the Ministry of Environment, emphasised the impacts of coastal restoration projects on the activities of artisanal fishing, highlighting that the local fisher communities have been consulted in the design and construction process of all coastal-related protection works, with a view to mitigating potential negative consequences. Representatives from the Ministry of Blue Economy, Marine Resources, Fisheries, and Shipping added that the fishers and coastal communities from the South-East and South-West coasts are also involved in a Coral Culture Training Programme that provides capacity building and training in coral culture and small-scale reef rehabilitation techniques.

Combining empirical knowledge with new scientific data will create opportunities

The experience of fishing and the knowledge of the natural ecosystems of the fishers were also discussed by the participants. For some of them, combining the empirical knowledge of the fishers with more recent information on coastal and marine resources protection could create many opportunities. However, it was noted that the fisher community is aging and that their knowledge is at risk of being lost with fewer younger people entering the profession.

The discussions also allowed to conclude that diversifying artisanal fishing and introducing community-based tourism models involving fishers could potentially be successful. Yet, a legislative framework still needs to be set to facilitate the integration of fishers in the tourism industry. In Rodrigues, fishers are legally allowed to carry tourists at sea to showcase their trade and heritage, but not in Mauritius. As such, one emerging solution is to work with hotels, non-hotel accommodation services, and the Mauritian Tourism Promotion Authority (MTPA) to create narratives, in the form of short videos, that can be marketed to incoming tourists. These will display the trade and history of artisanal fishing, creating an immersive experience benefiting both tourists and local artisanal fishers.

Globally, tourist destinations are being increasingly assessed on their ecological footprint. As more and more fishers are trained on the sustainable use of marine ecosystems, who better to turn to when disseminating local know-how on Mauritius’ vast seas and fishing heritage?

Swimming against the tide

Despite an optimistic outlook for artisanal fishing, participants also raised concerns. While the ECOFISH project aims to diversify and increase fishers’ livelihoods by helping the community to fish outside of lagoons and carving the space for regeneration, other players such as boat tour operators are equally looking to the lagoons for their economic activities. While both fishers and boat tour operators can make concerted efforts to reduce negative impacts on our marine ecosystem, these two distinct groups do not often collaborate. The session brought to attention an existing government mechanism that helps to coordinate sea-based activities through deliberate consultation called the ‘Sea-based Coordination Committee’. Such existing solutions are welcomed as they illustrate an appetite for enhancing collaboration between players that depend on Mauritian seas for their livelihoods.

As the session ended, it became clear that despite challenges for both tourism and artisanal fishing, there are local solutions that can be implemented.  A key opportunity area for the Republic of Mauritius is to invest in community-based tourism, relying on traditional knowledge present in the fisher community, while ensuring that environmental education is an integral part of any tourism-related product or service.

Stay tuned for the next blog where we will share insights on our third hypothesis during this two-day dialogue on sustainable (future) tourism models.

If you’re interested to partner with the Accelerator Lab, please reach out to us at acclab.mu.sey@undp.org.