An Overview Of Our Solution
Empowering Communities to Sustainably Harvest
Who is this solution impacting?
Ecosystem
Océanos/Costas
Community Type
Suburbano
Additional Information
- Population Impacted:
- Continent: África
Problem
Describe the problem
Sierra Leone is a nation recovering from civil war and struggling to protect its natural resources. More than 70% of the population lives on less than $1 a day, with 26% in extreme poverty. The nation’s oceans are famously productive, but they are under threat from pirate fishing and a lack of local regulation, the development of which is hindered by a lack of data on the type and volume of catches. This solution will empower local villages to collect data on fishery landings. Fisheries expert Mariah Boyle will work with EJF’s SL team to develop a logbook system. Training and education will be provided to local fishers, with results widely shared. This will allow communities to make informed decisions when managing their aquatic resources and creating Marine Protected Areas (MPAs).
Biodiversity Impact
Modern methods of promoting sustainable fisheries like credible certification or consumer purchasing tools cannot be applied to developing nations with limited funds and low levels of literacy. This solution creates sustainable fisheries and promotes ecosystem health in innovative ways tailored to artisanal fishers in Sierra Leone by: 1) Collecting baseline data on aquatic resources via logbooks. These will be some of the first quantifications of fish landings and stock status in the region, made publicly available to other researchers, and will be used to inform MPA creation. 2) Educating local communities about sustainable fishing and ocean impacts. Each time a logbook is set up in a community, a marine scientist will visit to teach the main tenants of sustainable fishing practices and discuss the impacts of illegal fishing by bottom trawlers and the challenges of protecting ocean health. The scientist will also help local fishers work with literate members of the community to enter their first catches into the logbook, ensuring data is properly recorded. 3) Recommending fishery regulations for Marine Protected Areas (MPAs). Data collected from the logbooks will be analyzed and specific measures will be suggested for implementation in the MPAs under development. 4) Dissemination of results. EJF will work with locals to record the studies and results using film, and share with local villages throughout the areas of Sierra Leone and Liberia where EJF operates. This will help empower the communities to become stewards of their own ocean resources.
Solution
Fishermen in the area have noticed that fish are becoming smaller and less numerous than in years past. This study will quantify every organism captured in the nets, which will allow for the calculation of current biodiversity and an understanding of the fishing impacts on biodiversity. Using the results of this work to make informed decisions, fishermen will be able to implement measures that protect the long-term viability of their aquatic resources without jeopardizing their economic returns. These may include practices such as returning female spiny lobsters to the sea, fishing with only large mesh nets, or the live release of vulnerable species. This should preserve biodiversity and help make fishers aware of the vulnerable and indicator species in local waters. Results will also be disseminated in scientific peer-reviewed articles. Artisanal fishing is only part of the impact on biodiversity. Pressure from the industrial fleets of neighboring countries and the illegal vessels offshore is contributing to the decline of local stocks. In addition to informing local fishing practices and MPAs to protect biodiversity, this solution will help local communities advocate for improved regulations and enforcement of their Exclusive Economic Zone. Crucially, detailed and quantified information on fish stocks will enable them to make sophisticated appeals to national and international regulators to address the impacts of illegal pirate fishing by foreign industrial trawlers. // Our solution will initially be applied in the villages of John Obey in Sierra Leoneƒ??s Western Area and the two dozen fishing villages within the Sherbro River Estuary. The surface area of this initial logbook study will be ~17,000 hectares while the results and education of local communities will aim to include much of the shoreline of Sierra Leone, 402 km in length, and impact fishing practices in the entire EEZ (15,974,400 hectares). Recommendations from this study will also inform EJFƒ??s work developing MPAs in neighboring Liberia, which has an EEZ of 24,615,200 hectares. It is anticipated that the solution will be applied over a four year EJF project to develop MPAs in Sierra Leone and Liberia. In addition, through partner organizations such as the World Bank and the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, EJF will be able to disseminate lessons from this solution to artisanal fisheries projects across the developing world.
Replicability
How many years has your solution been applied? 1 year // Have others reproduced your solution elsewhere? No // EJF’s International Oceans Campaign team has been working for 5 years in West Africa to combat pirate fishing and develop MPAs, and will manage this project. In the UK, this team is made up of EJF’s directors—Steve Trent and Juliette Williams—and 2 full-time campaigners. The local community organizer in the Sherbro River Estuary, Amara Kalone, will work with fisheries expert, Mariah Boyle, to implement and manage the logbooks. In John Obey, EJF will collaborate with an ecotourist venture, Tribewanted. Visiting tourists and leaders in the local community will help to ensure a successful implementation of the logbook. In the capital, EJF’s Country Representative Victor Cole will ensure that the solution has the ongoing support of the national government and partner organizations. A 3-week pilot of this solution will begin on Nov 18, 2011 in John Obey by Mariah Boyle, M.Sc. Mariah is a talented and respected marine scientist based in California with several publications and expertise in bottom trawl fisheries, sustainable harvest techniques, and data analysis. Mariah began her fisheries work in SL in Nov 2010, working with the fishers of John Obey to create a photographic guide to the fishes of the region and has experience working with other developing nations on fisheries issues. EJF’s Oceans project also draws on film, governance and community engagement experts based in their London office to teach videography classes, conduct community education events, and monitor progress. A comprehensive network has already been established in SL that this project can utilize.
Human Well Being and Livelihood Impact
This project is focused on improving human wellbeing and livelihoods along with protecting ocean health. With fishers making little money in Sierra Leone (SL), it is important to consider the social and economic impacts of proposed fishery regulations. Western management that severely impacts fisher livelihoods is not practical. Fishing is unique in this country as it is a trade adopted by those who cannot find work in other areas. Therefore, the fisher fleet is mostly composed of young men, unlike other coastal nations where fishing is a livelihood passed down amongst generations. When fish are landed they are smoked, purchased by women who transport them “up-countryâ€, and sold to inland communities. Fishing in SL employs 243,000 people, constitutes almost 10% of GDP and contributes 64% of animal protein consumed. This solution will protect and improve this critical livelihood by ensuring there will be fish to harvest in the future by optimizing the sustainability and economic return of their catches. Once complete, this solution can be refined and applied to Liberia, other areas in Africa and other coastal developing nations. While logbook studies are not new to fishery science, they are to this region, and have not been introduced where literacy, language barriers, and local fish names confound data collection. This project will be designed to involve women, the fishmongers, as much as possible. It will also encourage improved literacy in villages, as some level of reading and writing in English and Mende will be required to enter data into the logbooks. // EJF has five years of experience working with national, local and traditional leaders in Sierra Leone. This has included a recently completed in-depth governance study of fisheries management in the Sherbro River Estuary. The solution will draw on this experience and expertise to ensure that research and information dissemination is sensitive to the complex network of local administration. In Sierra Leone, villages are often governed by traditional leaders, which include town, section and paramount chiefs. In the absence of frequent contact with officials from formal local and national governments, these chiefs play an important role in day-to-day fisheries management and are critical stakeholders in this study. EJF and its partners have good working relationships with these leaders in the study areas and will leverage this to ensure the success of the logbook research and implementation of findings. It is also critical, however, to maintain a strong relationship with local councils (formed in 2004) and the national Ministry for Fisheries and Marine Resources. These bodies hold formal control over fisheries laws and regulations and are undergoing reforms to enable them to establish MPAs and play a more frequent and assertive role in local fisheries management. EJF will use its close links with these bodies in the study areas to ensure that the solution has their support and that its findings can be implemented more widely across the country—in particular in each of the four MPAs planned for creation over the coming years.