F isheries Co-management National Workshops on Key Issues in the Marine Fisheries Sector

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1.1.2 F isheries Co-management

Activity Lead: Kofi Agbogah Activity Team: CRC CoP, Communications Officer, MOFADFC. FoN, Attorney General’s OfficeParliamentary committee responsible for fisheries The SFMP will work closely with MOFAD and the attorney general’s office on procedural processes and strategies for developing legislative amendments to the fisheries act. While the WARFP work on legislative reform is broad based and places some emphasis on co- management, SFMP will augment those efforts. Our strategy will focus on bringing stakeholders’ participation and input into the process via various national meetings and workshops. Hen Mpoano will facilitate and coordinate the national level work needed for the legislative reform process with MOFAD, FC and WARFP and the Legislative Drafting Division and the Parliament select committee on Food, Agriculture and Cocoa Affairs including natural resources and fisheries and the Parliamentary sub-committee on subsidiary legislation. 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. In Year 2, SFMP will begin a processes of bringing stakeholders up to speed on what fisheries co-management is and how it could be implemented in Ghana as well as what institutional structures are necessary to ensure successful fisheries co-management as well as and prepare recommendations on how fisheries co-management can be structured in law as part of the legal reforms planned by MOFAD. 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.

1.1.3 Policy analysis on potential alternative benefits for fishers compared to the fuel subsidy