Abstract

Environmental Impact Assessments (EIAs) along coastal regions often require stakeholder engagement with fisherfolk, who depend on coastal resources to facilitate their livelihoods. However, in the Caribbean, the availability of reliable and complete data records is often limited, requiring the conduct of robust and extensive primary data collection to begin to address research gaps. Current best practice for EIAs emphasises the growing importance of livelihood restoration and human rights in coastal development projects necessitating that fisherfolk livelihoods and, by extension, household security be incorporated into the final assessment. While participatory data collection has been used in the past for fisherfolk studies, incorporating livelihood and household security aspects has allowed for a more holistic perspective on fisherfolk. This approach has led to a better understanding of potential impacts and more appropriate mitigation methods to alleviate impacts. Through frequent fisherfolk engagement across Trinidad and Tobago and the Wider Caribbean Region, meaningful stakeholder engagement during data collection has become instrumental in producing assessments that accurately capture fisherfolk experiences and concerns while ensuring their buy-in into the respective projects. The frequent engagements have led to refined good practices to develop trust with fisherfolk at all stages of the EIA; thereby, creating an environment where fisherfolk can share honestly, without fear of judgement, drastically increasing the quality of data collected. This research outlines the importance of fisherfolk in the EIA process, the collection of up-to-date primary data on the fishing industry, the success or shortcomings of data collection, good practices developed from frequent engagement of fisherfolk and the importance of sharing and validating research to build trust with fisherfolk