these groups and between men and women. These efforts should be expanded to other contexts with the appropriate monitoring efforts in place.
4.3 Improving
Information for Decision-Making
A primary cause of weak governance in small-scale fisheries is the lack of knowledge and information about the sector. Conventional fisheries information systems that have
been developed mainly for “northern” fisheries systems are poorly suited for small-scale tropical fisheries sector due to the multi-species nature of the fisheries, large number of
fishers, numerous dispersed landing sites, and high proportion of total capture fisheries consumed locally that do not enter commercial market chains. Basic demographic and
technology information is needed for policy and management on the number and sex of small-scale fishers and their households, number and variety of boats and gear,
demographic and catch information on gleaners, livelihood and occupational structure for men and women, location of operation, and annual catch and sex-disaggregated data on
post-harvest fisheries activities, including unpaid labor, employment and enterprise ownership. Expanded collection of sex-disaggregated data for fisheries will enable
countries to determine both women’s contributions to the fisheries sector, as well as national and sub-national resources spent to improve women’s employment and
enterprise income from fisheries-related activities. Increased availability of sex- disaggregated information will increase the relevance of proposed policies and avoid
negative impacts on women’s economic or political status or their access to resources. For small-scale fisheries, limited resources dictate that information gathering and
management needs to be efficient. Information must be acquired and managed in the context of a plan with a clear view of how it will be used in policy and management.
Information systems need to be low-cost, have low data requirements, and be easy to obtain. Rather than focus exclusively on male boat fishers, fisheries statistics need to
provide a more complete picture of the involvement of both men and women in the fisheries sector and value chains. Information also needs to have carefully planned
communication strategies to get information to policy makers in an efficient manner. Rapid appraisal techniques have been developed that provide alternatives to the
conventional sampling and census-based methodologies that dominate scientific research. Rapid appraisal allows for the quick acquisition of key information, which is perceived as
essential to management decision-making. Fisheries regimes that are less data intensive and, therefore, considered more appropriate from an information standpoint as well as for
easier enforcement include application of territorial use rights in fisheries and no-take marine reserves.
4.4 Preventing
