(fao / 03-05-10)  The First Regional Inception Workshop and First Programme Steering Committee meeting of the Regional Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (RFLP) took place in Phuket with the assistance of senior officials from the governments of the six participating countries together with representatives of Spain and the FAO.

The six Asian countries mapped out detailed plans to address severe poverty of artisanal and small scale fishers and halt ecosystem degradation, emphasizing the need for participatory and sustainable approaches.

Coastal communities make important but often poorly recognized contributions to the food security and development of many millions of people. A four year regional programme for fisheries livelihoods implemented by FAO aims at building a base for positive change in the daily lives of fishers, funded by the Spanish Agency for International Development Cooperation (AECID).

Concrete plans to be implemented during 2010, for each of the participating countries – Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam – were officially approved during the first Steering Committee meeting in Phuket on 27 April.

The Spanish Ambassador to Thailand, HE Ignacio Sagaz, underlined the importance of results based project implementation by the countries and FAO, and reiterated Spain’s commitment to support artisanal and small scale fishery coastal communities in the 6 countries in order to address severe poverty and to halt “ecosystem degradation”.

Sustainable management of fishery resources

Co-management mechanisms will be promoted by the programme to increase the capacity of local institutions and people for a wide series of critical issues such as safety at sea, the quality of fish products and enhanced access to marketing chains, which allow fishermen and their families to diversify in the future their activities and increasing their income.

This could be achieved through micro finance facilities and sharing of knowledge among all the participating communities.

Support to fisheries management and sustainable livelihood enhancement is urgently needed in order to support artisanal and small scale fishers, fisher communities, and entire coastal populations and economies.

“FAO urges countries to adapt an ecosystem approach and promote direct involvement of small fishers in participatory natural resource management, environmental protection as well as mitigation and adaptation to the effects of climate change”, stressed Hiroyuki Konuma, FAO’s regional chief in Asia.

To this end, the FAO implemented regional programme for fishery livelihoods, based in Bangkok, is looking at cross-cutting themes in the areas of environmental sustainability, resilience of coastal communities and gender mainstreaming.

Intervention Spanish oceanographic chips

The representative from the Minister of Environmental and Rural and Maritime Affairs of Spain, Sebastian Fraile, offered the use, at no cost to the participating countries, of Spanish oceanographic research vessels to conduct exploration studies of sea natural resources, as they are doing in other oceans.

“In the six countries there are large coastal insecure and vulnerable areas and millions of people are dependent on an increasingly depleted and degraded resource, due to overcapacity, resource access conflicts, and inadequate resource management”, noted the FAO regional project manager, José Parajua.

The FAO programme has now established an office in each of the six countries, local staff has been hired, and national mechanisms have been put in place during the first quarter of this year, FAO said.