Legislative Reform for Fisheries Co-management

13 IR 1: Strengthened enabling environment for marine resources governance The SFMP intends to achieve this result through a combination of legal and policy reform initiatives carried out at the national level and with significant stakeholder engagement. National activities, especially concerning small pelagic stocks, will also need to be coordinated at the Guinea Current Regional scale. Law enforcement and child labor and trafficking activities will take a two-track approach with national policy level components coupled to field efforts. Strengthening law enforcement capacities will reach down to each coastal region, starting with the Central Region in Year 1. With regard to the child labor and trafficking, the field focus is in the Central Region, where this practice seems to be most pervasive. Key outcomes and results expected over LoP as described in the Program Description include the following: • Fisheries Act amended with explicit language for co-management and use rights • Strategies for fishing capacity reduction and fuel subsidy phased-out debated and policy options presented to MOFADFC • Policy recommendations concerning ways to reduce child labor and trafficking presented to the National Child Labor Steering Committee • Significant decrease in IUU fishing through increase of arrests made and successful prosecutions that act as real deterrence and coerce more compliant fishing behavior • Advances made toward fostering regional leadership to attain a harmonized trans- boundary response to Sardinella stocks.

1.1 Legislative Reform for Fisheries Co-management

Activity Lead: Crawford Activity Team: Kofi AgbogahHM, MOFAD. FoN, Attorney General’s OfficeParliamentary committee responsible for fisheries The SFMP will continue ICFG’s focus on the need for legislative reform to make co- management a reality by working closely with MOFAD and the attorney general’s office on procedural processes described in the proceedings of the 3rd National Fisheries dialogue organized in Elmina in 2013. The Chemonics FtF Policy project will also be consulted. While the WARFP work on legislative reform places some emphasis on co-management, we will augment those efforts. Our strategy will focus on bringing stakeholders’ participation and input into the process via various national dialogues, meetings and workshops. Hen Mpoano will facilitate and coordinate the legislative reform process with MOFAD, FC and WARFP to facilitate the administrative procedures and drafting of amendment sections on co-management and use rights, in coordination with the attorney general’s Legislative Drafting Division and the legislative sub-committee for natural resources and fisheries Parliamentary sub-committee on subsidiary legislation. As an amendment is currently underway to improve the legal framework to address the problem of IUU fishing, it is likely that other legislative changes such as on co- management will need to be bundled with a host of other WARFP supported revisions underway. The timeframe for submitting an amendment to the Fisheries Act to Parliament is in 2018. The co-management legal reforms therefore will not be fast tracked unless there are indications these could be done as a minor amendment in a shorter time frame. 14 We will run a public engagement process also see Communications section IR3 to insure fishers and the public are well informed and can voice their opinions and have inputs and say into the way co-management can best be implemented in Ghana, taking into consideration lessons learned from past efforts. Important in this process is the participation of women’s groups as women play key roles in fish processing and marketing and many are also vessel owners. Legislative reforms on co-management must also acknowledge the role of women in fisheries and therefore formalize and ensure their role in co-management processes as well. Another critical aspect of legal reform is incorporation of sustainable financing mechanisms for co-management. This was highlighted as a critical challenge that led to the failure of the first round of community-based management committees more than a decade ago. Table of Key Activities and Milestones Who Activity 1.1 Legislative reform Q1 Q2 Q3 Q4 HM Establishing an informal working group , AGMOFADFC Parliament X HM Parliament committee briefings X CRC Determine and incorporate legal public consultative requirements into the process and strategy for drafting co-management amendment sections X CRC Coordination with WARFP legislative reform initiative X X X FoN Stakeholder caucuses FoNDAA and hearings at major landing sites: Tema, Elmina, Axim, Sekondi X X CRC, MOFADFC? Multimedia Communications campaign on legislative reform strategy is described in IR 3 X X List of Key Outputs • Communications materials See IR 3 • Parliamentary briefing packets Agbogah [POL001] • Written summary of all stakeholder comments and inputs from meetings FoN [POL002]

1.2 National Fisheries Dialogues Policy issues