Introduction: A Sector Under Pressure

Across the Caribbean, fisheries and aquaculture provide food, employment, income, and cultural identity for thousands of people. Yet the sector faces growing pressures from rising fuel costs, climate change, aging infrastructure, and increasing demands for efficiency and sustainability.

Energy sits at the centre of many of these challenges. From harvesting and processing to storage and transportation, fisheries value chains rely heavily on fossil fuels. As fuel prices fluctuate and climate-related disruptions become more frequent, operating costs increase, and profitability becomes more uncertain, particularly for small-scale operators.

At the same time, advances in renewable energy technologies are creating new opportunities to improve efficiency, reduce costs, strengthen resilience, and lower greenhouse gas emissions. The question is no longer whether renewable energy has a role to play in fisheries, but how the sector can successfully make the transition.

Understanding the Energy Challenge

For many fisheries operations, energy represents one of the highest operational costs.

Fishing vessels depend on fuel for harvesting activities. Landing sites and processing facilities require energy for ice production, refrigeration, freezing, lighting, and equipment operation. Transportation and distribution systems depend on reliable energy to maintain product quality and market access.

This dependence on fossil fuels creates several challenges:

• Exposure to fuel price volatility
• High operating costs
• Reduced profitability
• Supply chain vulnerability
• Increased carbon emissions
• Reduced resilience to external shocks

For small-scale fisheries and aquaculture enterprises, these challenges can directly affect livelihoods and food security.

Renewable Energy Opportunities Across the Value Chain

The fisheries sector offers multiple opportunities for renewable energy integration. Potential applications include solar-powered ice production, cold storage facilities, fish processing operations, refrigeration systems, aquaculture facilities, lighting systems, and other energy-intensive infrastructure.

In many cases, renewable energy technologies can help reduce operational costs while improving reliability and reducing dependence on imported fossil fuels. The potential benefits extend beyond individual enterprises. More efficient energy systems can strengthen entire value chains by reducing post-harvest losses, improving product quality, extending storage capacity, and increasing competitiveness.

Building Resilience Through Energy Transition

The case for renewable energy is not solely about reducing emissions.

For Caribbean fisheries, energy transition is fundamentally about resilience.

Climate change is increasing the frequency and intensity of extreme weather events across the region. Fisheries infrastructure is often located in vulnerable coastal areas where disruptions to energy systems can have immediate impacts on livelihoods and food security.

Renewable energy technologies, when appropriately designed and deployed, can improve operational continuity and reduce vulnerability to external shocks.

They can also support broader national goals related to energy security, climate adaptation, and sustainable development.

The Importance of a Just Transition

Technology alone will not determine the success of the energy transition.

The benefits of renewable energy must be accessible to those who depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods. This requires attention to financing, training, governance, access to technology, and the different ways in which women, men, and youth participate throughout fisheries value chains.

A just transition seeks to ensure that no one is left behind as the sector evolves. It recognizes that social inclusion, economic opportunity, and environmental sustainability are interconnected and must advance together. By placing people at the centre of the transition, fisheries modernization can contribute to stronger communities as well as stronger businesses.

Creating the Conditions for Investment

Despite the promise of renewable energy, significant barriers remain.

Many fisheries operators face challenges accessing financing, understanding available technologies, or assessing the economic viability of investments. Financial institutions may also have limited experience evaluating renewable energy opportunities within fisheries and aquaculture.

Addressing these barriers requires better information, stronger partnerships, supportive policies, and practical demonstration of what works. Creating the conditions for investment is therefore just as important as the technologies themselves.

How STAR-Fish is Supporting the Transition

The STAR-Fish Project was established to help address these challenges.

Through technical assessments, stakeholder engagement, capacity development, financing dialogue, renewable energy awareness initiatives, and low-carbon fisheries activities, the project is helping to create the enabling environment needed to support energy transition across Caribbean fisheries and aquaculture.

Rather than promoting a single technology or solution, STAR-Fish seeks to identify practical pathways that reflect the realities of fisheries operations in participating countries.

The goal is to generate evidence, strengthen partnerships, and support investments that contribute to a more resilient, competitive, and sustainable sector.

Looking Ahead

The transition to renewable energy within fisheries and aquaculture will not happen overnight.

It requires planning, investment, collaboration, and learning. However, the opportunities are significant. Cleaner energy systems have the potential to reduce costs, strengthen resilience, improve competitiveness, and support sustainable livelihoods throughout the Caribbean.

As countries continue to pursue climate and development goals, renewable energy will increasingly become an important component of the future of fisheries and aquaculture. The challenge now is turning opportunity into action.

Why does gender equality matter for the transition to sustainable and low-carbon fisheries?

Introduction: An Energy Transition Must Work for Everyone

Across the Caribbean, fisheries and aquaculture support thousands of livelihoods and contribute significantly to food security, employment, and rural development. Yet participation in the sector is not experienced equally.

Women play critical roles throughout fisheries value chains, particularly in processing, marketing, administration, and household-level fisheries enterprises. Despite these contributions, they often face barriers to accessing finance, productive assets, training opportunities, decision-making processes, and leadership positions. Young people similarly face challenges entering and remaining within the sector.

As Caribbean countries pursue renewable energy adoption and low-carbon fisheries development, there is growing recognition that technological solutions alone are not enough. The transition must also be fair and inclusive. This principle is often described as a just transition- an approach that seeks to ensure that the benefits and opportunities arising from economic and environmental change are shared equitably, while minimizing the risk that vulnerable groups are left behind.

In the context of fisheries and aquaculture, a just transition means ensuring that women, men, and youth have equitable access to the knowledge, skills, financing, technologies, and decision-making processes needed to participate in and benefit from the shift towards cleaner and more resilient production systems. It also means recognizing the different roles people play within fisheries value chains and addressing the barriers that may prevent them from benefiting equally from new investments and opportunities.

For this reason, gender equality and social inclusion have been embedded as central pillars of the STAR-Fish Project from its inception. By integrating these considerations into project planning and implementation, STAR-Fish seeks to support a transition that is not only environmentally sustainable, but also economically inclusive and socially equitable.

Understanding the Gender Landscape

One of the project's earliest priorities was to improve understanding of how gender dynamics shape participation in fisheries and aquaculture across the Caribbean.

The project's regional Gender Equality Strategy highlighted a number of common challenges affecting women throughout the region, including lower labour force participation, limited access to financing, underrepresentation in leadership and decision-making roles, and persistent gender-based inequalities that influence economic opportunities and livelihood outcomes.

While these challenges vary among countries, they share a common theme: women continue to contribute significantly to fisheries and aquaculture while often receiving fewer opportunities to influence decisions and access resources.

The strategy also identified the need for better data, stronger institutional capacity, and more intentional efforts to ensure that gender considerations are integrated into fisheries policies, programmes, and investments.

Listening to Communities

Recognizing that meaningful solutions must be grounded in local realities, STAR-Fish supported a series of gender and livelihoods assessments in participating countries.

These assessments examined how women and men participate across fisheries value chains, the challenges they face, and the opportunities that may emerge through renewable energy adoption and climate-resilient development.

The process created space for fisherfolk, processors, community leaders, government agencies, and other stakeholders to share perspectives on how energy transition initiatives can be designed to support more inclusive outcomes.

The findings reinforced an important lesson: while renewable energy technologies can create new opportunities, deliberate action is required to ensure those opportunities are accessible to everyone.

From Assessment to Action

Information alone does not create change.

Building on the assessments, STAR-Fish supported the development of Gender Action Plans designed to translate analysis into practical actions.

These plans identify opportunities to strengthen participation, improve access to information and training, support leadership development, and address barriers that limit equitable participation within fisheries and aquaculture sectors.

Rather than treating gender equality as a standalone activity, the project seeks to integrate these considerations throughout implementation, from stakeholder engagement and capacity development to technical assessments and future investments.

This approach helps ensure that gender equality becomes part of how decisions are made, rather than an additional activity undertaken after decisions have already been taken. 

Knowledge Product Spotlight 

Powering Change: Fueling a Gender-Responsive Energy Transition in Fisheries

Developed under STAR-Fish, this training programme provides practical guidance for integrating gender equality and social inclusion into fisheries and renewable energy initiatives across the Caribbean.

Equipping Stakeholders for a Just Transition

Understanding gender dynamics is only the first step. Achieving a just transition requires that stakeholders have the knowledge, skills, and tools needed to apply gender-responsive approaches in practice.

To support this objective, STAR-Fish developed a regional training programme focused on gender equality and social inclusion in the context of fisheries and renewable energy transition. The programme was designed to help fisheries practitioners, government officers, community leaders, and other stakeholders better understand how gender influences participation, access to resources, decision-making, and the distribution of benefits within fisheries value chains.

The training package goes beyond awareness-raising by providing practical tools and approaches that can be applied during project planning, stakeholder engagement, policy development, and implementation. Topics include gender analysis, inclusive participation, barriers to equitable access, and strategies for promoting meaningful engagement of women and youth in fisheries development initiatives.

The programme formed the basis for a series of regional and national capacity-building activities that brought together stakeholders from across participating countries. These engagements created opportunities for dialogue, peer learning, and reflection on how renewable energy investments and broader fisheries development initiatives can be designed to support more inclusive outcomes.

By strengthening institutional and individual capacity, STAR-Fish is helping to ensure that gender equality becomes an integral part of decision-making and implementation processes rather than a standalone consideration.

Building Capacity for Inclusive Change

Creating more inclusive fisheries systems requires both awareness and skills.

Through a series of regional and national activities, STAR-Fish has supported dialogue and learning around gender-responsive fisheries development, renewable energy transition, and social inclusion.

These activities have brought together fisheries practitioners, government representatives, community stakeholders, and development partners to explore practical approaches for strengthening participation and reducing barriers faced by women and youth.

Importantly, these discussions have also helped broaden understanding that gender equality benefits entire communities by improving economic opportunities, strengthening resilience, and supporting more effective resource management.

Why Gender Equality Matters for Renewable Energy Transition

The shift towards renewable energy has the potential to reshape fisheries value chains.

New technologies can reduce operating costs, improve product quality, strengthen cold-chain systems, and create new economic opportunities. However, if access to these technologies is limited to those who already possess resources, financing, or decision-making authority, existing inequalities may deepen.

A gender-responsive approach helps ensure that the benefits of innovation are distributed more equitably. It encourages consideration of who has access to equipment, financing, information, training, and leadership opportunities. It also helps identify unintended barriers that may prevent certain groups from benefiting from project investments.

In this way, gender equality is not separate from energy transition; it is fundamental to ensuring that the transition is inclusive, effective, and sustainable.

Looking Ahead

As STAR-Fish moves into implementation, gender equality will remain a cross-cutting priority across all project activities.

Future renewable energy interventions, low-carbon fisheries initiatives, stakeholder engagement activities, and capacity-building programmes will continue to apply lessons emerging from the project's gender assessments and action plans.

By placing people at the centre of the transition, STAR-Fish aims to support a future in which cleaner energy systems contribute not only to environmental sustainability, but also to greater opportunity, resilience, and inclusion across Caribbean fisheries and aquaculture communities.

Introduction: Why Change is Needed

Across the Caribbean, fisheries and aquaculture play a vital role in food security, employment, and coastal livelihoods. Yet the sector remains highly dependent on fossil fuels, exposing fishers, processors, and aquaculture operators to volatile energy prices, supply disruptions, and increasing climate-related risks.

Recognizing these challenges, the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Mechanism (CRFM), with support from the Government of Canada through Global Affairs Canada, launched the Sustainable Technologies for Adaptation and Resilience in Fisheries (STAR-Fish) Project. The initiative seeks to support a transition towards cleaner, more resilient, and more inclusive fisheries systems across eight Caribbean countries.

While much attention is often placed on physical investments and technology deployment, successful transformation begins long before equipment is installed. It requires strong institutions, evidence-based planning, stakeholder engagement, and a clear understanding of the social, environmental, and economic realities facing the sector.

The first phase of STAR-Fish has therefore focused on creating the foundations necessary to support meaningful and sustainable change.

Building the Enabling Environment for Change

Transforming energy use within fisheries and aquaculture requires more than identifying suitable technologies. It requires governance systems capable of supporting implementation, accountability mechanisms that ensure transparency, and processes that enable participation by those most affected by the transition.

During its initial years, STAR-Fish established the management, oversight, monitoring, and safeguards systems needed to guide implementation across eight participating countries. These systems now provide a framework for consistently and transparently planning, implementing, monitoring, and evaluating future investments.

Emphasis has been placed on environmental and social safeguards, ensuring that proposed interventions are environmentally responsible, socially inclusive, and responsive to stakeholder concerns. The project has also introduced mechanisms to support stakeholder participation and grievance management, helping to strengthen accountability throughout implementation.

Taken together, these efforts provide a strong institutional platform for future renewable energy and low-carbon fisheries interventions.

Putting People at the Centre of the Energy Transition

The transition to cleaner energy systems is not only a technical challenge; it is also a social one.

Across the Caribbean, women and men often participate differently within fisheries and aquaculture value chains. Women are frequently concentrated in post-harvest processing, marketing, and supporting roles, while remaining underrepresented in decision-making and access to productive assets.

Recognizing this reality, STAR-Fish has embedded gender equality and the facilitation of a just transition as a core element of project implementation rather than treating it as a standalone activity.

Through regional and national assessments, stakeholder consultations, and targeted capacity-building initiatives, the project has worked to better understand how energy transition opportunities and challenges may affect different groups. This process has informed the development of Gender Action Plans and practical recommendations aimed at ensuring that women, men, and youth can participate equitably in the benefits generated through renewable energy investments.

By placing social inclusion at the centre of project planning, STAR-Fish is helping to ensure that the transition to cleaner energy strengthens livelihoods while reducing existing inequalities.

Generating the Evidence for Investment

A key challenge facing the fisheries sector is the limited availability of information needed to guide investment decisions.

Questions such as where renewable energy technologies can provide the greatest benefit, which fisheries offer the strongest opportunities for low-carbon development, and what financing mechanisms are most appropriate for small-scale operators require careful analysis.

STAR-Fish has therefore invested heavily in generating the evidence base required to support future action. Ongoing assessments are examining fisheries and aquaculture value chains, evaluating renewable energy opportunities, identifying barriers to adoption, and exploring pathways for low-carbon fisheries certification.

These studies will provide governments, financial institutions, development partners, and fisheries stakeholders with practical information to support future investments and policy development.

Building Partnerships Across the Region

Regional transformation cannot be achieved by any single institution.

The STAR-Fish approach recognizes that lasting change requires collaboration among governments, fisheries authorities, fisherfolk organizations, development partners, academic institutions, financial institutions, and private sector actors.

Over the past two years, the project has established and strengthened relationships with stakeholders across participating countries, creating opportunities for dialogue, knowledge sharing, and collective problem-solving.

These partnerships will become increasingly important as the project moves from assessment and planning toward implementation and demonstration activities.

Looking Ahead

With the foundations now in place, STAR-Fish is entering an important new phase.

Over the coming years, the project will support the identification and implementation of renewable energy solutions, advance low-carbon fisheries initiatives, strengthen awareness and technical capacity, and work with stakeholders to unlock investment opportunities that support a resilient and sustainable future for Caribbean fisheries and aquaculture.

The lessons emerging from this work will not only benefit participating countries but will also contribute to broader regional efforts to address climate change, improve energy security, and strengthen sustainable blue economy development.

	WHAT IS STAR-FISH AND WHY IT MATTERS
	Fisheries across the Caribbean are highly dependent on fossil fuels, making them vulnerable to rising energy costs and climate risks. STAR-Fish seeks to demonstrate that:
	Renewable energy reduces operational costs Energy-efficient technologies improve productivity Inclusive approaches strengthen long-term resilience

CONTENT AND RESOURCES