Strategic Integration of Women in the Mitigation of Illegal Fishing: A Socio-Economic and Ecological Analysis of Golestan Province Coastal Communities

This paper examines the strategic integration of women as a transformative mechanism for mitigating illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing in the coastal communities of Golestan Province along the Caspian Sea. Amid the severe decline of sturgeon stocks-particularly the critically endangered Persian sturgeon-the study adopts a socio-economic and ecological framework to analyze how poverty, unemployment, weak enforcement, and institutional gaps drive illegal fishing in areas such as Bandar-e Torkman and Gomishan. Moving beyond conventional enforcement-based approaches, the research highlights women's central yet often invisible roles in household economic management, post-harvest processing, traditional ecological knowledge transmission, and cooperative participation. Drawing on local data and comparative global models, the paper demonstrates that women-led cooperatives, livelihood diversification (including handicrafts, medicinal plant cultivation, and ecotourism initiatives around Ashuradeh Island), and access to microfinance significantly reduce household dependence on high-risk poaching. The findings support a "risk-transfer" model in which diversified, female-controlled income streams lower incentives for illegal extraction while fostering long-term ethical orientations toward sustainability. The study concludes that mainstreaming gender within fisheries governance and Blue Economy policies is essential for ecological recovery, social resilience, and the long-term conservation of Caspian sturgeon populations.

کلیدواژه ها:

Caspian sturgeon conservation ، Illegal fishing ، Women-led cooperatives ، Livelihood diversification ، Blue Economy governance