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AGRICULTURE

National policy on fisheries co-management in the offing

Date Created : 3/30/2018 2:06:33 AM : Story Author : Dominic Shirimori/Ghanadistricts.com

The concept of fisheries co-management, a strategy for managing fisheries where authority for decision making is shared between government and resource users is believed to bring significant improvement in the fishing sector when introduced and properly implemented and sustained.

The Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development, Francis Ato Cudjoe at a USAID/Sustainable Fisheries Management Project (SFMP) media outreach event in Takoradi announced that The Ministry of Fisheries and Aquaculture Development in collaboration with the Fisheries Commission has gone far with a national policy framework on co-management and is hopeful of having the policy ready by middle of this year.

He disclosed that they have finished with stakeholder engagement, and the document is to be sent to cabinet for approval then parliament will have the opportunity of debating it and passing it into an Act.

Giving insight into fisheries co-management to the media, Mr. Kofi Agbogah, an official from SFMP noted that the practice is deemed to be the best practice of decentralizing fisheries management and more effective than top-down command and control management system where the resource users are only told things to do.

According to him, the benefits are enormous and have proven to be a more collective responsibility between the resource users, experts and government.

Some of these benefits include;

• Fishers having day to day local knowledge of the fishery,

• Fishers Providing practical solutions to complex problems

• Fishers can develop rules viewed as legitimate because they emanate from them

• There is high likelihood of compliance

• Effective mechanism for community development

• It leads to participation in solving community needs.

Even before the development of the national co-management framework, USAID/SFMP has supported and funded draft local management plans which have been developed with communities in the Densu, Pra, and Ankobra estuaries to help in the sustainable Fisheries Management Project.

SFMP as parts of its conservation and restoration efforts of mangroves and fisheries resources introduced the co-management concept that has been well accepted by the people. The people have formed local management committee that works with stakeholders to ensure that their practices are sustainable enough to ensure fish for the future.

A field trip to the Ankobra Estuary also revealed a great appreciation of the system by the people particularly the introduction of livelihood diversification system where the people through Hen Mpoano, a local partner of USAID’s Sustainable Fisheries Management Project have introduced a village Savings and Loan Association (VSLA) concept that empower them financially towards their own peculiar needs and also serve as a means of organizing the community members for fisheries and mangrove management.