Speech delivered by Mr. Michael B. New, Senior Aquaculturist, Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme, FAO Rome at the Opening Ceremony of the Second Provisional Governing Council Meeting, FAO Regional Office, 12 January 1988.
Your Excellencies, distinguished delegates, colleagues and friends, ladies and gentlemen:
Last week, an opening statement to the Conference of Plenipotentiaries for the Adoption of an Agreement on NACA was read by N. Kojima, the director of operations of the FAO Fisheries Department, on behalf of our Director General, Mr. Edouard Saouma. In this statement, Mr. Kojima stressed the importance being placed on the further expansion of aquaculture by many of the FAO's member countries. He noted the preeminence of your region in this field and praised the significant contributions which NACA has made to regional aquaculture development in Asia and the Pacific over the past seven years. Indeed NACA is regarded by FAO as a model which other regional regional aquaculture projects would do well to emulate.
As a representative of FAO, Rome I want to assure you that NACA, in its growing independence, will continue to receive operational and technical backstopping from the FAO Headquarters Fisheries Department Staff. In addition, as a representative of the UNDP/FAO global and inter-regional project ADCP, the Aquaculture Development and Coordination Programme, which organized the 1976 FAO Technical Conference on Aquaculture in Kyoto, from which NACA originated, I wish to state that ADCP itself also has a role and duty to cooperate with and coordinate, where appropriate, the activities of the several regional aquaculture projects which it has spawned.
ADCP will continue to work with and support NACA wherever our activities are complementary. One example of such an activity in 1988 is the joint ADCP/NACA workshop on the marketing of molluscs which is now being planned. Another is the seminar on the investment potential of small-scale aquaculture projects, which ADCP hopes to organize in conjunction with NACA, the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, and the Asian and Pacific Agricultural Credit Association or APRACA. ADCP is also supporting, through use of funds generously provided by CIDA, the activities of NACA in the socio-anthropology of aquaculture and those of the Regional Seafarming Project, which NACA is coordinating, in mollusc culture.
Latin America already has a regional aquaculture project which is linked to NACA through ADCP. In addition, a large regional aquaculture project for Africa is in the preparatory phase. ADCP seeks to encourage cooperation between Asia and both Africa and Latin America, where aquaculture potential is still latent. We would like to see this manifested not only through trainees from these two continents attending courses in Asia, but also in TCDC activities - east/west cooperation. The benefits for Africa and Latin America in receiving Asian aquaculture expertise are obvious but we believe that Asian aquaculturists would also benefit through this exposure to new environments and potential aquaculture species, and through the experience in training and dispensing information to others which such cooperation provides. One of the eventual results of such activities might be the fostering of joint-venturing between commercial enterprises in Asia and in the other two continents, whose aquaculture marketing opportunities might complement rather than compete with those of Asia. ADCP hopes that NACA, which has already introduced students from other regions into its various training programmes, will also play a leading role in encouraging the practical use of Asian aquaculture expertise in the environments of Africa and Latin America.
Returning to Asia, we note that new proposals for aquaculture research activities are being conducted by the CGIAR (the Consultative Group on International Agricultureal Research) Technical Advisory Committee. The exact nature of these activities and their location are not yet known, but they are likely to centre on Asian Aquaculture at first. We are confident that the NACA Lead Centres have the capability to take an active part in this initiative and we hope that NACA will influence the direction of CGIAR aquaculture activities through its established linkages in aquaculture research, training and information exchange.
In the statement read by Mr. Kojima to the Plenipotentiary Conference last week, he thanked the members of the Provisional Governing Council and the staff of NACA, especially the Coordinator, Mr. Chen Foo Yan, for their essential and dedicated contributions to the current success of NACA. In endorsing these remarks, it gives me considerable pleasure, as representative of today's ADCP, to also warmly welcome the presence of Dr. T. V. R. Pillay, the first programme leader of ADCP, at our meeting this week. Eleven years after the Kyoto FAO Technical Conference on Aquaculture and seven years after its birth as one of the progeny of that Conference, NACA is not only alive but it is vigorously flourishing. Its own programme is expanding, it is coordinating other aquaculture projects, and it has now adopted an Agreement to become a truly independent inter-governmental body. I think we all owe Mr. Chen and Dr. Pillay a great debt and it is my pleasure to be able to thank them on behalf of the FAO Fisheries Department on this occasion.
Finally, I would like to say that I look forward very much to continuing to work alongside you personally in the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia (and the Pacific). I wish you every success in your second Provisional Governing Council meeting. Long live NACA! Thank you.
