12. Arthur Neiland reported on the proceedings and outcome of the Benin workshop whose objectives were to provide a general overview of poverty and poverty alleviation, to examine the relationship between poverty and fisheries management, to identify possible strategies for poverty alleviation, and to contribute to the work of the SFLP. The workshop considered what is, or why is there poverty in rural Africa, what is the relationship between fisheries and poverty, and how can poverty be alleviated. Each day there were key papers and discussion groups.
13. The key findings of the workshop were as follows:
poverty in small-scale fishing communities is a multidimensional phenomenon and cannot be exclusively attributed to endogenous factors within the fisheries sector such as overfishing or excess fishing capacity;
in comparison to rural agriculture and urban poverty, there are few detailed assessments of the nature, extent and causes of poverty in fishing communities in most countries of the region;
policies for the alleviation of poverty in fishing communities need to be multifaceted and the SLA provides a good entry point to identifying the critical causes of poverty and measures to alleviate poverty;
the better integration of the fisheries sector within national poverty reduction strategies is desirable;
the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, properly adapted to the specific characteristics of West African fisheries, provides a good basis for addressing endogenous causes of poverty in fishing communities, and for enhancing the contribution of the fisheries sector to national poverty alleviation.
14. Further conclusions of the workshop included: (i) the methodology/diagnosis of poverty needs improving, although the SLA is helping; (ii) there is little real knowledge of the relative importance of the various asset types in the asset pentagon of the SLA; (iii) there is a high complexity of situations in many countries, which means that policy-makers have tended to focus on areas other than the problematic one of political reform in looking for solutions to poverty; these have included training and technology transfer to boost productivity of natural resource systems; (iv) there was a strong willingness among participants to improve understanding and poverty alleviation through incorporation of fisheries into PRSPs, cooperation and lesson learning; and (v) the SFLP is playing an important role in contributing to a better understanding of the causes of poverty.
