Fisheries workshop focuses on sustainable development

Aspects of good governance in the Marine industry were just one of the issues discussed during a two-day workshop held at the Fisheries Division this past week.{{more}}

The workshop is a part of the Marine Resource Governance in the Eastern Caribbean (MarGov) Project held in collaboration with the Centre for Resource Management and Environmental Studies (CERMES) at the University of the West Indies and the Fisheries Division in St. Vincent and the Grenadines. The two-day workshop was held at the Fisheries Complex on September 7 and 8, 2011, and focused on Resilience in Fisheries Governance and Social Network Analysis.

Giving remarks at the opening ceremony, Peter Murray, Programme Officer in the OECS, stated that the vision within the OECS is to have Ocean governance based on participatory decision making, hence the consultations with stakeholders.

Murray said that there exist three pillars of sustainable development which need to be considered which are the Environmental, Social and Economic issues surrounding Ocean governance.

“The extent to which we look at governance is the extent to which we link these pillars,” Murray said, adding that OECS has highlighted that member states need to reposition themselves in response to ongoing changes in the environment. Murray told participants that they will be tackling these issues during the workshop.

Also making remarks, Chief Fisheries Officer Raymond Ryan stated that the need for resilience within the fishing industry is becoming more critical, as in recent times, factors such as the downturn of the global economy, climate change and the increasing stringent for marketing of fish and fish products has driven fishers and fisheries towards unsustainability.

Ryan also stated that the capacity of the industry should be analyzed. “The capacity of the sector to experience shocks or while retaining essentially the same structure function and feedback, must be carefully analyzed. The more resilient a system is the larger disturbance it can absorb without shifting into an alternative regime,” Ryan said.

Ryan encouraged stakeholders to look at the bigger picture as fisheries is not only about the ecological, but also the livelihood of persons involved in the industry.

The workshop covered topics such as applying resilience thinking to fisheries governance in practice, social networks, governance via networks and managing networks. Patrick McConney Senior Lecturer of CERMES at the University of the West Indies, along with Murray and Keisha Sandy, Technical Officer in Caribbean Natural Resources Institute (CANARI) were the facilitators of the workshop.

The workshop was the sixth in a series of seven two-day workshops being held across the Eastern Caribbean.(OS)