3. The meeting was opened by Neil MacPherson who chaired its first day and welcomed all the participants. Participants introduced themselves and their interest in the meeting.
4. Benedict Satia welcomed the participants on behalf of Ichiro Nomura, Assistant Director-General, FAO Fisheries Department. In his address, Dr Satia stressed the paramount objectives of FAO to contribute to enhanced food security and poverty alleviation. Small-scale fisheries played an important role in achieving these objectives and provided livelihoods to millions of mostly poor people. Enhancing the contribution of small-scale fisheries in poverty alleviation has become a priority issue in the work of the Fisheries Department as evidenced by the fact that (i) the FAO biannual flagship publication on the State of the World Fisheries and Aquaculture (SOFIA) 2002, will contain an issue paper on small-scale fisheries and poverty alleviation; (ii) an agenda item of the Twenty-fifth Session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), February 2003, will address “Strategies for Increasing the Sustainable Contribution of Small-scale Fisheries to Food Security and Poverty Alleviation”, and (iii) in the FAO Medium-term Plan 2004-2009, currently under preparation, at least two entities would address sustainable development of small-scale fisheries and poverty alleviation. He then referred to the discussions and outcome of the Third Session of ACFR on poverty-related issues (more details are given below in paragraph 45).
5. Richard Coutts, SFLP Programme Coordinator, welcomed the participants on behalf of the Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (GCP/INT/735/UK). He referred to the varied activities of SFLP including poverty profiling work and application of the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) participatory assessment methods to inform, in particular, the pilot projects on the most appropriate policies and measures to contribute to sustainable livelihoods and poverty alleviation in fishing communities. He also referred to the very valuable Benin workshop on poverty alleviation and the Code of Conduct of Responsible Fisheries (November 2001) in gaining a better understanding of the causes and dynamics of poverty in West African countries. The workshop increased awareness on the need of a better integration of fishing communities’ concerns into national poverty reduction strategies (details of the outcome of the Benin workshop are given in paragraphs 12 to 14).
