Inland fisheries are ubiquitous and provide multi-pronged and significant benefits to society. They are also predominantly small-scale, as they appear in diverse forms of capture and culture practices. However, the current status of inland fisheries that reveal both bright spots and deteriorating conditions are insufficiently known, risking underestimation of their merits, diverting policy and research attention, and inviting further marginalization of the sector.As part of a broader effort to generate a more coherent understanding of the sector's integral functions as well as the key factors that pose threats to its maintenance, this compilation aims to create a global-level survey of governance challenges that inland fisheries around the world are facing. In the process, it also seeks to highlight useful lessons for alleviating challenges and thus improving governance.