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BONGOLON, Guinea – An experiment in community surveillance
of inshore fishing grounds has succeeded in reducing illegal incursions
by industrial trawlers by 59 percent. The success suggests that
partnerships between small-scale fishers in their motorized canoes
and the Guinean coast guard – which lacks the equipment and
resources to patrol 300 kilometres of coastline effectively –
may be the key to reducing incursions.
Deaths at sea
Poor fishing communities from the Congo to Senegal complain bitterly
about daily, sometimes fatal, encounters with industrial fishing boats
that poach in the richly stocked zone reserved for small-scale fishing.
The industrial boats, some national, others foreign, destroy the nets
of the small boats when they drag their heavy industrial nets over
them. They rarely pay compensation.
In Guinea in 2000, before community patrols began in the zone around
Bongolon and two other project fishing villages, industrial boats
made 450 illegal incursions into the zone, according to government
figures. The boats injured 12 fishers in collisions with their canoes.
Only 56 incursions were recorded in the first six months of 2002.
Partnership is hailed as the way forward
FAO’s Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme is hailing
the success of the project as proof that bringing small-scale fishing
communities into the fishing sector as full partners is the way forward,
both for poverty reduction and for fisheries conservation.
In Bongolon, trouble with industrial boats had reached crisis proportions.
Five men had died when their boat was destroyed by a trawler. Small-scale
boat crews were afraid to put to sea. Now, according to community
elder Sekhouna Sylla, villagers are overjoyed that, thanks to the
new surveillance system, fishing has resumed.
“Many of us are now able to obtain credit at the Rural Credit
Bank because they now believe that we will be able to repay the loans
by catching and selling fish,” he says. “Fishing families
have started sending their children to school again.”
Will surveillance be expanded?
In Conakry, the capital, members of the National Coordinating Unit
of FAO’s Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme are important
players in key fisheries institutions. They must act as catalysts
and advocates within the fisheries establishment if the partnership
between fishing communities and the coast guard is to be institutionalized,
with a dedicated operating budget to cover its extension to the
entire coastline.
“I have done a major impact study on the community surveillance
project, which documents its success,” says Mamadou Moussa Diallo,
a member of the National Coordinating Unit and a socio-economist at
the influential Boussoura National Centre for Fisheries Science. “I
think I am getting through to my colleagues about the system. I explain
the methodology and how it works. They are interested.”
Poverty reduction potential
Guinea has a national poverty reduction strategy that includes the
country’s 30 000 small-scale fishers.
Abdourahamane Kaba, Director-General of the Boussoura Centre, explains
that coastal fisheries are not at their limits. “There are important
resources that are not sufficiently exploited. Small-scale fishers
will have to diversify and catch high-value species. They will need
training and new techniques. But there is a potential for fisheries
to contribute to poverty reduction,” he says.
The coast of Guinea is guarded by the National Centre for Fisheries
Surveillance and Protection, which has a budget for six or seven patrols
per month. How does Mohamed Sidibé, the Centre’s Assistant
Director-General, rate the community surveillance experiment?
“It is a good success. After all, now our boats can intervene
when there is a call and not patrol at random,” he says. “In
the beginning, my patrol officers were a bit sensitive about the project
– they thought they might be replaced by village patrols -–
but now the spirit has changed. The system isn’t perfect, but
we can perfect it.”
“The Centre doesn’t have the means to expand the network,
but community surveillance has been included in the government strategy
against poverty,” he says. “The government will find the
means to pay for its expansion.”
February 2003
Contact:
Peter Lowrey
Information Officer
Peter.Lowrey@fao.org
+39 06 570 52762
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