Digital Object Identifierhttps://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.30
https://orcid.org/0009-0009-8103-4918Abandoned, lost, or discarded fishing gear (ALDFG) presents an ecological problem inseparable from the materials, labour, and institutions that sustain fishing livelihoods. This article examines fishing nets as material objects whose functions and meanings change as they are manufactured, used, repaired, lost, recovered, reused, and discarded. Drawing on Blue Humanities scholarship, material ecocriticism, new materialism, and the sustainable livelihoods approach, it proposes Material Livelihood Ecology as an interpretive framework with three dimensions: material trajectory, ecological relation, and livelihood relation. The method combines a critical review of selected studies on fishing gear and marine litter in Kerala, Tamil Nadu, and the Gulf of Guinea with a close reading of Aathira Vasudevan’s UNDP India article, “Protecting Marine Life: How Tamil Nadu’s Coastal Communities Are Clearing Abandoned Fishing Nets.” The article is read both as documentation of collective environmental work and as an institutional narrative that foregrounds particular achievements, actors, and transformations while leaving other questions unresolved. The paper argues that recovering and upcycling nets may contribute to coastal sustainability when supported by accessible collection systems, safe and fairly paid labour, producer responsibility, and reliable evaluation of environmental outcomes.
S., Saranika, and Brinda P. “From Fishing Nets to Sustainable Futures: Material Ecologies and Coastal Livelihoods.” The Criterion: An International Journal in English, vol. 17, no. 5, Oct. 2026, pp. 538-56, https://doi.org/10.66376/criterion.v17.n5.30.
© 2026 The Author(s). Published by the Research Centre for English Language and Literature (RCELL) under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) licence.
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