FAO.org

Following a busy week with over 30 sessions of the SSFOpenHouse to highlight the importance of small-scale fisheries and celebrate their unvaluable contributions, the last day was dedicated to “Capacity and Prospects”. The fifth day was dedicated to seven events, all focused on capacity building, and best and adaptive management practices.

The FAO Smart Fisheries Co-management project team presented the webinar "Developing guidance and sharing lessons on co-management in Asia", to showcase co-management experiences in selected Asian countries, discuss lessons learnt, and present the draft guidebook for evaluation fisheries co-management effectiveness being developed by FAO.

The 90 minute webinar agenda was jam packed with Mr. KwangSuk Oh, FAO Senior Fishery Officer moderating the overall session, and Ms. Lena Westlund, FAO International Fisheries Analyst, moderating an interactive Questions and Answers session.

The webinar discussed fisheries co-management in the context of chapter five of the Small-Scale Fisheries Guidelines, which deals with governance of tenure and resource management.

To support the team, two experts in governance and fisheries management joined the live event to give an overview of the fisheries co-management situation in the selected Asian countries of Viet Nam and the Philippines.

Dr. Hue Nguyen Thu, founder of the Centre for Marinelife Conservation and Community Development (MCD), a Non-Governmental Organization pioneering in environmental protection and community development in Viet Nam presented the experience of co-management of small-scale fisheries resources from Viet Nam Central Coast and showed samples of a co-management plan. Dr. Hue underlined the importance of the role of small-scale fisheries in the context of the country, with about 36 000 hectares of coastal communes, and illustrated the sites where MCD is practicing co-management. The challenge is, Dr. Hue stated, that the law regulating fisheries co-management in Viet Nam is recent, so the co-management system in local communities must be adaptive to the law and to communities’ own capacity.

The experience of fisheries co-management in the Philippines was described by Mr. Roquelito Mancao, Senior Director for Programme Implementation and Support of Rare in the Philippines, a country with over 1.9 million people registered in the small-scale municipal fisheries sector. Mr. Macao underlined that the Philippines supports the co-management and protection of the rights of fishers, especially in local communities. Moreover, several Philippines associations are already involved with projects to empower communities to participate in and to benefit from good management practices and decision making. Mr. Macao also illustrated a pilot programme run in the Philippines which lead to the development of a fisheries co-management strategic plan, established to ensure fishing privileges to registered users from five villages. The programme was replicated in about 40 Local Government Units.

In closing, Dr. Elisabetta Martone, FAO Fishery Officer, introduced the draft of the FAO Guidebook for the evaluation fisheries co-management effectiveness which is being developed in the framework of the KOFAP programme. The Guidebook aims to offer a method to evaluate the performance of a fisheries co-management system and/or a fisheries co-management plan to enhance its effectiveness in delivering benefits and in contributing to environmental, social, and economic sustainability and good governance. The Guidebook will provide a flexible approach, to include all operational scales of fisheries.

Webinar attendees, mostly from NGOs but also from research institutes, academia and government, were asked to participate in an interactive poll to identify key words better describing fisheries co-management. The victory palm goes to: participatory, government support, strong legal basis. 

Answers to the interactive poll: What three words describe a successful co-management arrangement?

Mr. KwangSuk Oh concluded the session by summarizing some lessons learnt and shared: first, tenure and user rights are essential to promote the three pillars of sustainability and livelihoods, underpinned by robust participation-based fisheries co-management; second, a supporting legal and institutional framework can facilitate the emergence and development of co-management as it contributes to clarify and legitimize tenure (fishing) rights over fish resources; third, a well-written co-management plan with clear goals and objectives at community level enhances fishing communities sustainability, and lastly, it is essential to provide capacity building programmes for stakeholders at all levels to improve the performance of their fisheries co-management activities in a participatory way for sustainable fisheries and livelihoods.