1. The FAO/WorldFish Center Workshop on Interdisciplinary Approaches to the Assessment of Small-Scale Fisheries (SSF Assessment Workshop) was held at FAO headquarters in Rome, Italy, from 20 to 22 September 2005.
2. The Workshop was organized jointly by the WorldFish Center and FAO through its FishCode Programme, as a first step in a process to develop a collaborative project towards capacity building for small-scale fisheries assessment in developing countries. The overall aim of the project is to assess and enhance the contribution of small-scale fisheries to food security, poverty reduction and sustainable resource use.
3. As pointed out in the draft Workshop Concept Note shown in abridged form in Appendix A, there is a strong need to facilitate this process through the development of a comprehensive interdisciplinary approach to SSF assessment. Such an approach should be one that integrates understanding of the biological dynamics of fisheries (at both exploited species and ecosystem level) with their social, economic and institutional/governance aspects, nesting explicitly the assessment in the broader context in which small-scale fisheries operate.
4. The Workshop was thus specifically tasked to:
discuss the draft concept note, the validity and feasibility of the proposal, and on this basis outline an implementation strategy for a collaborative project on SSF assessment capacity building, inviting other partners to join as appropriate.
