The Opportunity The Recommendations for Secure Fishing Communities and Sustainable

6. Recommendations for Secure Fishing Communities and Sustainable

Resource Management: A Strategic Opportunity for USAID Investment in Small-Scale Fisheries

6.1 The Opportunity

USAID is strategically positioned to promote more sustainable fisheries management. The Agency can assist in addressing the key issues plaguing small-scale fisheries in developing countries, which are: • weak governance including a lack of defined and enforced property and use rights, • excess fishing capacity, • illegal fishing, • endemic poverty, and • impacts of globalization of fisheries trade. Many of these issues were highlighted in the October 3, 2006 Presidential Memorandum to the Secretaries of State and Commerce see Appendix 1, which urges them to work with other countries and regional and international organizations to promote sustainable fisheries and end destructive fishing practices. 4 Failure to address these issues effectively in the past is resulting in significant social and economic consequences for millions of people living in fishing communities. It negatively impacts billions of primarily poor people who rely on their catches as a critical source of high protein food and it severely impacts marine and coastal ecosystem resilience and biodiversity. These problems will only worsen if national governments and international donors continue to give low priority to capture fisheries issues. As mentioned numerous times in this report, USAID cannot expect to address all of these issues alone. It will require partnering with national governments, NGOs, other donors, the private sector and other U.S. government agencies to address these challenges in a strategic, multifaceted and coordinated manner.

6.2 The

Goal USAID should make an organizational commitment to address several critical issues in fisheries management. The goal should be to achieve economically and politically secure fishing communities by strengthening governance for sustainable small-scale fisheries . The emphasis should be on the small-scale fisheries, which have often been neglected by fisheries assistance and development programs in the past. USAID should only address the industrial fishing sector in those instances or on those issues where this sector is 4 http:www.whitehouse.govnewsreleases20061020061003.html 68 negatively impacting small-scale fisheries. With this said, USAID emphasis should be in two primary areas: • Strengthening governance capacity for small-scale fisheries, and • Reducing excess fishing capacity With respect to strengthening governance, USAID should champion the imperative of placing small-scale fisheries management into the context of integrated approaches, including ecosystem-based management. This needs to be done carefully, however, as in the developing country context it involves increasing complexity of management arrangements in countries where capacity is typically weak and where participatory planning processes are fundamental to encouraging commitment to change. Emerging experience from the Philippines will likely provide insights in adapting this approach in other developing country contexts. Capacity-building of resource managers, users and governance institutions will be important. While intervention needs to be tailored to the local context, co-management approaches and spatial management techniques such as marine reserves and zoning should be emphasized. It should be noted, however, that the problems of small-scale fisheries cannot be solved from a sector-based approach alone. Many of the solutions must also come from outside the fisheries sector. Therefore, an integrated approach must also include addressing political and economic marginalization as well as community and economic development including livelihoods. With respect to reducing fishing capacity, the strategies being applied to industrial fisheries such as vessel buy-backs and individual transferable quotas ITQs are not applicable to small-scale fisheries. A multifaceted approach is required, especially one that integrates resource management with a livelihoods approach. Resource management should involve strategies that include access control and defined property or user rights, including the adoption of marine tenure regimes and localized territorial use rights. Basic fisheries management techniques such as gear restrictions and fishing effort reduction should also be implemented. A special emphasis should be on strategies for excluding industrial fishing vessels—especially large trawlers—from inshore grounds, which often are already legally designated as reserved for artisanal fisheries. Lastly, investment in the certification of artisanal fisheries products for exports to the U.S. and elsewhere should be pursued where possible. This requires niche marketing and in some cases combining the products from several locales so as to guarantee adequate supply. This also requires working with the private sector to create the demand for products and the willingness for the private sector to invest in sound management.

6.3 Rationale As identified in Table 1 of this report, the direct socio-economic and environmental