Understanding the past to plan for the future: The small-scale fisheries at Ilha Grande Bay, Brazil

•Sectorial and fragmented nature of policies exacerbates small-scale fisher's problems.•Impacts of development policies have degraded resources on which fishers depend.•Environmental restrictions intensify marginalization of small-scale fishers.•Adding value to fish products has the potential to increase the territory's reputation.•Sustainable territorial development require studying interactions among fisheries and tourism. The fragmented and sectoral character of conservation as well as development policies has exacerbated the problems faced by small-scale fishers in developing countries. In Ilha Grande Bay (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil), traditional small-scale fishers (“Caiçaras”) has struggled to respond to the contemporary challenges of overfishing and territory loss, which emerged, in part, as consequence of biodiversity conservation and development policies implemented over the last fifty years. In this paper, we aim to explore a sustainable territorial development approach to improve quality of life of fishing communities while conserving the land and seascape that they explore. We first look at the past phases of the development trajectory of Ilha Grande Bay in order to plan for the future. Data collection involved analysis of documentary sources, direct observation in decision-making arenas, and semi-structured interviews. We analyzed four periods from the development trajectory, focusing on small-scale fishing. Our findings show that the set of policies reviewed has strengthened the connections between biodiversity loss and poverty over the years. The viability of STD strategies depends on the recognition of the complexity of interactions among fisheries, environmental protection and tourism, and on the need to create a supply chain that adds value to fishery products which sustain livelihoods and has low environmental impact.