FishFAD aims to address FAO’s Strategic Objective 2: Make agriculture, forestry and fisheries more productive and sustainable and Strategic Objective 4: Enable more inclusive and efficient agricultural and food systems. These objectives are achieved by economically and socially empowering fishing communities in beneficiary countries to enhance food security and nutrition.
The project will address the overall Outcome of the Country Programming Framework–Sustainable increase in production, trade and marketing of domestic agriculture products and healthy consumption of diverse, safe and nutritious food.
It aligns with the beneficiary countries’ relevant policies: the Green Growth Framework and the draft National Fisheries Policy of Fiji; Kiribati 2020 Vision; the Strategic Development Framework, the Food Security Policy and the Fishery Policy of the Republic of the Marshall Islands; Palau’s offshore fisheries policy and national sanctuary act; the National Food and Nutrition Policy and the Strategy for the Development of Samoa; the Tuvalu Fisheries Department Corporate Plan, the Tuvalu Te Kakeega III and the National Strategy for Sustainable Development; and the National Sustainable Development Plan and the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Policy of Vanuatu.
FishFAD also aligns with the “New Song for Coastal Fisheries: pathways to change - the Noumea Strategy” and the “Future of Fisheries: A Regional Roadmap for Sustainable Pacific Fisheries”, which were both endorsed by Pacific leaders in 2015, along with the “Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the Context of Food Security and Poverty Eradication”, which was endorsed by the FAO Committee on Fisheries in 2014. The project will also support the SIDS Global Action Programme on Food Security and Nutrition that launched in 2017.
This project was designed with a long-term vision of bringing good governance and managing nearshore tuna fisheries, economic development and shared benefits for fisheries’ small-scale operators, framed by a community-based approach to small-scale tuna fisheries.
FishFAD is expected to contribute to enhanced food security, livelihoods and revenues in selected fishing communities through promoting nearshore FAD programmes in participating Pacific Island countries.
Selected nearshore fishing communities in the target countries are empowered to reap increased social and economic benefits from safe and sustainable small-scale tuna fishing practices.
The project will achieve these aims by strengthening existing FAD programmes or developing and piloting new programmes, strengthening fishers’ associations and cooperatives, improving safety at sea for FAD fishers, and promoting alternative activities in selected communities in the participating countries.