As stated by my colleagues before, small sale fisheries are very important since they have the potential to contribute significantly to food security and nutrition, economic growth, poverty eradication, rural development, sustainable resource utilization, equitable development and to provide valuable employment opportunities. Implementing the SSF guidelines set out by the FAO will ensure that these potentials of the SSF be achieved. It is important that the implementation progress takes place through:
· Partnership with fishing communities (not simply fishermen), civil society organizations (CSOs), governments, NGOs, regional organizations, donors and international agencies in order to make the program successful. Through partnership, data and information is more readily collected during the implementation process in order to make informed decisions about what is taking place. This leads to the strengthening of SSF associations and all interested stakeholders could bring their opinions and ideas forward which can perhaps be polished for application.
· Information and communication where experience sharing and collaboration is continuously promoted. Progress should be monitored and evaluated continuously in order to see if the guidelines are working or not and to have relevant statistics to make information available and shared so as to make informed decisions.
· It is also important to identify the challenges that the guidelines will face and identify how they can be overcome. Some problems are over-exploitation of resources which leads to higher prices and competing demands and access to resources which has a serious effect on food sustainability. In order to curb these problems, there should be policy responses to overuse of open-access resources include imposing licenses or quotas, moving from an open access system to a more community rights base management and small-scale fishers’ access rights can be protected through exclusion zones where the industrial fleet is banned from fishing in certain zones.
As stated by my colleagues before, small sale fisheries are very important since they have the potential to contribute significantly to food security and nutrition, economic growth, poverty eradication, rural development, sustainable resource utilization, equitable development and to provide valuable employment opportunities. Implementing the SSF guidelines set out by the FAO will ensure that these potentials of the SSF be achieved. It is important that the implementation progress takes place through:
· Partnership with fishing communities (not simply fishermen), civil society organizations (CSOs), governments, NGOs, regional organizations, donors and international agencies in order to make the program successful. Through partnership, data and information is more readily collected during the implementation process in order to make informed decisions about what is taking place. This leads to the strengthening of SSF associations and all interested stakeholders could bring their opinions and ideas forward which can perhaps be polished for application.
· Information and communication where experience sharing and collaboration is continuously promoted. Progress should be monitored and evaluated continuously in order to see if the guidelines are working or not and to have relevant statistics to make information available and shared so as to make informed decisions.
· It is also important to identify the challenges that the guidelines will face and identify how they can be overcome. Some problems are over-exploitation of resources which leads to higher prices and competing demands and access to resources which has a serious effect on food sustainability. In order to curb these problems, there should be policy responses to overuse of open-access resources include imposing licenses or quotas, moving from an open access system to a more community rights base management and small-scale fishers’ access rights can be protected through exclusion zones where the industrial fleet is banned from fishing in certain zones.