FAO.org

29 May 2024, Diamniadio, Senegal – As part of the process of drawing up a management plan for the sardinella fisheries, the Directorate of Maritime Fisheries, with the support of the FAO's EAF-Nansen Programme, organized a workshop to review and validate the management plan for sardinella fisheries in Senegal on  29 May 2024  at the Ministry of Fisheries, Maritime and Port Infrastructures, at the Ousmane Tanor Dieng Ministerial Sphere in Diamniadio.

"Sardinella in Senegal is facing a worrying situation of overexploitation, marked in particular by a drastic drop in landings of round sardinella in recent years", according to the Director of Maritime Fisheries, Mr Diène Faye. 

This workshop, which brought together more than 70 participants from all the main fishing sites in Senegal, marks an important stage in the process of drawing up the management plan, which began in 2021. For more than two years, following an initial phase of consultation and diagnosis of the fisheries situation, all stakeholders have been asked to contribute to identifying the objectives and measures to be taken to manage these fisheries. More specifically, this meeting marked the end of the process of drawing up the management plan and enabled the stakeholders to make their final recommendations and validate the sardinella fisheries management plan (FMP). The meeting also provided an opportunity to update the timetable for the process of validating and adopting the plan.

In his opening remarks, the Director of Maritime Fisheries, Mr  Faye, recalled that sardinella in Senegal are facing numerous challenges, such as overfishing and the effects of climate change, before adding that: in the face of these major concerns, it is urgent to act under scientific recommendations. 

When presenting the FMP, the consultant responsible for finalising the plan, Mr Moustapha Kébe, stressed the importance of Senegal's sardinella fisheries, which is undoubtedly the most important in terms of its social and economic role, hence the need to manage it. This is to restore sardinella stocks sustainably and guarantee their contribution to sovereignty, food security, economic activity, and employment in Senegal.

"We must ensure that the regulations for sustainable fishing are respected above all else, and this is our responsibility," declared Mr Malick Fall of CONIPAS, an interprofessional council of artisanal fisheries in Senegal. 

The meeting lasted one day and enabled Senegal to take a step towards adopting the ecosystem approach to fisheries, a holistic and risk-based management approach that is promoted by the EAF-Nansen Programme and considered by FAO to be the principal framework for achieving sustainable fisheries. It takes into consideration the ecological, human, and social dimensions of sustainability, aiming to reconcile a broader set of technical, policy, and governance sustainability objectives in a more participatory and adaptive fashion. 

The EAF-Nansen Programme is a longstanding partnership between the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and Norway, executed in close collaboration with the Norwegian Institute of Marine Research (IMR).

The Programme is also one of the endorsed ‘Decade Actions’ under the United Nations Decade of Ocean Science for Sustainable Development (2021-2030).