When you think of a marketplace, what comes to mind? A stall? Farmers with their produce? A seller shouting prices to potential buyers? I imagine you think of a place with lots of people — the hustle and bustle of the market. And when we think of a digital marketplace? Maybe we imagine Amazon or eBay? The same sellers, less hustle and bustle…
Global e-commerce is now worth over $25 trillion dollars per year and is growing rapidly. Internet-enable sales allow buyers to purchase from anywhere, and sellers to reach any market. But, the human element is missing. Just as the move from office work to remote work has led companies to be concerned about the lack of social interactions between workers reducing innovation, the same can be said for the virtual marketplace. When you visit the market, you do not just buy some tomatoes, fish, and cheese, you talk, you see your neighbour, you gossip, you learn.
Innovación Azul uses technology to connect fishers, provides them with tools to manage their fishing organizations and encourage collective action to address the biggest challenges in fishing. The PescaData mobile App includes a marketplace where users can offer or search for goods and services. Do you need a spare part for your boat? Replacement fishing gear? Are you a certified outboard motor mechanic and want to offer your services? Do you sell empanadas in your village? The list is endless. Users can search and offer goods and services in the community, in a specified radius, or across countries.
And in PescaData, you can also share your ideas. One of the most powerful tools for innovating in small-scale fisheries is the fisher-to-fisher exchange. These exchanges, either organized by a third-party or organic, are moments in which fishers discuss common problems, share ideas, create synergies, and learn from a trusted source — another fisher. By integrating digital tools into PescaData for fishers to share ideas and solutions directly with other fishers, PescaData´s marketplace can play host to digital fisher exchanges, with direct peer-to-peer relations, rather than these events being brokered by a third-party. Are you a fisher who needs to reduce bycatch in your fishery? Talk to other fishers who have already done it. Do you have a great example of how your community implemented a community marine reserve? Share it with your friends.
In the PescaData marketplace you can comment on and discuss every post. You can search by themes (hashtags) or directly in the forums. Join us in the marketplace and let us begin discussing how to create resilient, sustainable coastal communities!
