FAO.org

Georgetown, Guyana 11-14/04/2023 

The Development Law Service (LEGN) of the Legal Office of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO), in collaboration with the Sustainable Wildlife Programme, has been assisting the Guyana Ministry of Agriculture’s Fisheries Department to develop new regulations on fisheries co-management as well as a bill on aquaculture. Multi-stakeholder consultations and validation exercises have taken place over the past two years.

The latest meetings, held in April 2023, aimed at collecting final comments from the stakeholders and to reach an agreement on the content of the proposed regulatory changes that will be put forward for the consideration of Guyana’s Parliament later this year. The proposed regulatory changes were presented to and discussed by representatives from government authorities, including the Ministry of Agriculture’s Fisheries Department, the Guyana Wildlife Conservation and Management Commission, the Environmental Protection Agency, non-governmental organizations such as the World Wide Fund for Nature, and representatives from community villages, in meetings held in Georgetown, Mabaruma, and Moruca.

If approved and validated by Guyana’s Parliament, the proposed regulatory changes will introduce amendments to the Fisheries Act of 2002 in respect of inland fishing, fisheries co-management, and aquaculture. The regulations will introduce detailed arrangements for setting up fisheries co-management areas, where fisheries co-management committees, composed by representatives from community villages, government authority and interested stakeholders, will be able to jointly manage and conserve fisheries resources in a delineated area. Among many other provisions, the proposed regulatory changes will also introduce detailed arrangements for aquaculture, a sector currently not specifically regulated by the existing national legal framework.

For related information, see here the Facebook page of the Guyana’s Department of Public Information.