A report on a fisheries conflict management training workshop in Laos

A conflict management training workshop was delivered in October 2019 in Vientiane, Laos, to fisheries practitioners. Discussions held during the workshop highlighted conflict as a key issue within community-based fisheries management and the need for fisheries staff from various sectors, and the communities they work with, to have an understanding of conflict management concepts and related skills. Key themes of the discussions of fisheries conflict in Laos were related to property rights, lack of adherence of fishers to regulations, funding for local community activities and weak governance structures. The key learnings of the training workshop are that fisheries practitioners are dealing with social conflict in their work activities and need support in managing these conflicts, as for many fisheries professionals this work is outside their main area of expertise. There is a role for further research into fisheries conflict in Laos to provide context-specific insight, but this must be accompanied by appropriate knowledge exchange to allow practitioners to make use of these insights for real-world conflict management activities.