Mozambique Leaders Recognize Importance of New Program to Country s Fisheries

Transcription

1 July 2016 Progress Update #5 The Fish Forever Progress Update is a regular communication to supporters and stakeholders on the key advances we are making on the ground, the challenges we are working to surmount, and the learning and adaptive management we are doing along the way. A Parliamentary Delegation from Mozambique visiting Rare s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. Mozambique Leaders Recognize Importance of New Program to Country s Fisheries Fish Forever was honored to welcome a high-level parliamentary delegation from Mozambique to Rare s headquarters in Arlington, Virginia, on the occasion of the recent Fish Forever Mozambique office launch and site selection. The delegation, led by Hon. José Mateus Muaria Katupha, Spokesperson for the Permanent Committee, and sponsored by the International Conservation Caucus Foundation, was comprised of parliamentary leaders from Committees with environmental, economic, agricultural, defense, and international cooperation portfolios. With nearly 85% of the country s fish being caught by small-scale fishers, the support and engagement of these leaders and policy makers is vital for both long-term conservation success and livelihoods and food security. National Geographic s Pristine Seas also joined the delegation and previewed a new film, Mozambique: the Beautiful Coast, prompting an inspiring conversation on the future of Mozambique s small-scale fisheries. The delegation was enthusiastic about Rare s work in-country, recognizing shared priorities to protect Mozambique s communities, livelihoods, and food security. Acknowledging that the stakes for Mozambique s coastal fisheries are high 88 percent of stocks are fully exploited or overexploited, and the country s long-term food and job security is dependent on their fisheries future the meeting participants expressed the collective belief that there is real hope for Mozambique to turn around small-scale fisheries and move from depletion to recovery. The delegation visit, coupled with the launch of the new Fish Forever program partnership with Mozambique s National Institute for the Development of Fisheries and Aquaculture (IDEPA) as its chief implementing partner, demonstrate a strong political will to reform the country s coastal fisheries. The Fish Forever team, led by Country Director Domingos Gove, a well-known regional expert in fisheries, is currently training IDEPA extensionists as campaign managers in order to further empower national and local ownership of the Fish Forever approach. With technical help from IDEPA and Fish Forever, community members will collectively design and manage their own TURF+Reserves, helping to scale up local, rights-based management for Mozambique s small-scale fisheries. The diversity of the six program sites selected along Mozambique s southern and northern coasts will help Fish Forever to create valuable learning opportunities for national scaling. In wrapping up the delegation visit, the participants expressed a strong commitment to establish a conservation caucus that will advance a conservation agenda in Mozambique s Parliament. Key decision makers are demonstrating a depth and strength of commitment to test new approaches and make important changes to help bring rights-based management to scale on the Mozambique coast. 1

2 Brett Jenks (CEO of Rare), Paula Caballero (Senior Director of the Environment and Natural Resources Global Practice at the World Bank Group) and David McCormick (President of Bridgewater Associates) highlight the critical connections between Finance Ministries, private-sector investors, and fish-dependent communities at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Blended Finance: Making the Case for the Cross-Cutting Benefits of Fisheries Reform How do you create a viable exit strategy for philanthropy when tackling a global problem? This is a bedrock challenge for small-scale fisheries reform, and in studying the issue, Fish Forever has pinpointed a need to identify the full suite of values (i.e., financial, environmental, and social benefits) that accrue from recovered fisheries. This information is vitally necessary for creating the justification, and thus the incentive, that the private sector and national governments need to begin funding fisheries reform in earnest. To this end, Fish Forever is undertaking a Blended Finance Initiative : building a replicable cost-benefit analysis of investments in coastal resource and fisheries management capacity, which can then be used to structure sustainable financing mechanisms for regional or local fisheries management. The financing mechanisms will include contributions from governments, multilateral institutions, philanthropy, and the private sector. The analysis will incorporate recommendations for local and national policies needed to implement reform and establish the enabling conditions for sustainable, profitable fisheries. The approach here is unique in that it will be bottom-up (data collected at the local level) instead of top-down (data disaggregated from global analyses or collected at the national level). This kind of analysis will engender typology-specific recommendations on sustainable financing mechanisms and fisheries policies, which mayors and provincial governors can use to create targeted interventions for their communities. In late June, Brett Jenks of Rare, David McCormick of Bridgewater Associates, and Paula Caballero of the World Bank presented on a panel at the Aspen Ideas festival about this idea of blended finance; the festival described the conversation as how financial leaders are leveraging the power of the national purse to address climate change and food security, looking at the case of the one billion poorest, most climate-vulnerable people who depend on at-risk fisheries. This was a great opportunity to engage a wide range of entrepreneurs, academics, financiers, and NGO partners on the possibilities inherent in blended finance for small-scale fisheries reform, and the potential positive outcomes for a range of our shared interests. 2

3 Photo Credit: Jason Houston Asha s Culture Kitchen in Punta Gorda, Belize which supports sustainability harvested seafood. Fish, Forks and Finance : Talking Fisheries and Food Security With USAID Rare s CEO, Brett Jenks, recently took part in a USAID webinar called Fish, Forks and Finance: The Importance of Wild Fisheries to Food and Job Security, which showcased how coastal fisheries recovery is imperative to improving food security for vulnerable populations. The webinar also featured presentations from Rob Bertram, Chief Scientist at the USAID Bureau for Food Security, and two representatives from the USAID/Ghana mission and the Ghana Sustainable Fisheries Management Project. During the webinar, USAID announced their new report, Fishing for Food Security: The Importance of Wild Fisheries for Food Security and Nutrition. The report highlights the importance of wild caught fish to food security and livelihoods, pointing to fish as an important staple food in many of the countries targeted by the U.S. government s Feed the Future initiative. The report further finds that improved management could indeed help rebuild wild fisheries particularly approaches that include co-management, securing tenure rights, and ecosystem-based management (all bedrock principles of the Fish Forever program). Fish Forever was proud to be part of this intersectional event and looks forward to continuing to work with USAID to elevate these important issues. An Ambassador Visit in Indonesia In early June, Rare was honored to host the United States Ambassador to Indonesia, Robert O. Blake Jr., at one of our Fish Forever sites in Indonesia. Ambassador Blake visited the Banda Sea National Recreation Park, toured a community working on rights-based management, and met local leaders working hard to restore their local fisheries. Thank you to Ambassador Blake, the U.S. Embassy in Jakarta and U.S. Consulate General, and everyone else who was part of this exciting and inspiring visit. 3

4 IN FOCUS Testing new tools, ideas, and partnerships to help bring Fish Forever to scale Monitoring and evaluation in the Philippines. Collaboration with Pelagic Data Systems on Vessel Monitoring in the Philippines Fish Forever has teamed up with Pelagic Data Systems (PDS) in the Philippines to test a new technology solution to decreasing a key market barrier for small scale-fisheries: poor quality data. The vessel monitoring devices solar-powered, ultra-light, low-cost, and based on cellular data are the only passive tracking devices designed for coastal vessels. Fifteen fishers in three Philippine Fish Forever communities have installed the trackers, aiming to gather critical fishing activity information for use in improving the community participatory mapping process, catch traceability, fisheries management decisions, and enforcement at Fish Forever sites. More specifically, the data will provide Fish Forever sites the ability to systematically monitor small vessel fleet movement, reinforce norms around respective reserve boundaries, provide more accurate catch estimates, and help link a boat s spatial movement to its catch. Community enthusiasm for the devices has been strong: many sites had already installed the units before PDS arrival to the community. By applying the PDS data intervention to fisheries in the Fish Forever sites, Rare hopes to eventually help fill a critical data gap in the Philippine seafood supply chain. The Fish Forever team will closely monitor the knowledge generated and its applicability for expansion to additional Fish Forever sites. The partnership with PDS is one example of how Fish Forever is engaging the vast Philippine small-scale fisheries stakeholder network to address barriers and move one step closer towards national adoption of small-scale fishery reform. 4

5 IN FOCUS Harvesting seaweed from a demonstration farm in Karimunjawa, Indonesia. Growth in Seaweed Could Supply Alternative Income for Fishers As global demand for seaweed products the highest-growth aquatic plant commodity in the world increases, seaweed farming has become an exciting potential alternative livelihood for Indonesia s small-scale fishers. Through Rare, Fish Forever in Indonesia has teamed up with private sector partner Ocean Fresh to set up seaweed demonstration farms with five small-holder farmers in Karimunjawa (Nyamuk and Kamodjan Islands). These farms will test assumptions about seaweed s viability as a supplementary income source for fishers, and ultimately explicitly tie sustainable management with fishing-related alternative livelihoods. Rare and Ocean Fresh are jointly training farmers to grow more and better quality seaweed, which Ocean Fresh will buy directly from farmers at a pre-agreed 66% price premium. This intervention is expected to more than double farmer income per seaweed harvest by promoting best practices, new cultivates (seed varieties), and value addition. The first Karimunjawa seaweed farm harvest has shown positive early results: double to triple farmer net profits (per meter of seaweed planted) over previous harvests. Importantly, the pilot will explore supply chain linkages between farmer communities and buyer-partners as well as local farmers receptivity to engaging in seaweed farming as an alternative to overfishing. Ocean Fresh has expressed interest in further developing its Karimunjawa supply chain and encouraging continued seaweed farming once the pilot ends. If successful, the pilot will help offset fishing pressure at the site level, catalyzing a best practice and replicable blueprint that enables communities to engage in and benefit from private sector transactions. Rare is currently developing a scale-up plan for implementing similar aquaculture projects in additional Fish Forever sites. This Fish Forever pilot embodies major tenets of the Fish Forever approach: the importance of empowering a community with a livelihood alternative, providing an economic incentive to local fishermen, accelerating and solidifying sustainable fisheries management uptake, and stimulating private sector interest. 5