Policymakers ‘fail to support small-scale fisheries’

[NAIROBI] Small-scalefisheriesprovide livelihoods for millions of people globally, particularly in the developing world, but are overlooked bypolicymakers, making the need to understand their diversity, roles and resilience critical, researchers say.

In a纸本月出版Nature Food, researchers call for better understanding of the small-scale fisheries sector, along with targeted action such as ensuring that policy goals support the sector actors to derive sufficient benefit from their activities and investments.

“The small-scale sector provides more than 50 per cent of what human beings eat from aquatic [water] environments. We are at a watershed moment for blue foods [fish and other foods from water bodies], and simply cannot move in the right direction without putting small-scale fisheries and aquaculture front and centre,” says Rebecca Short, study co-author and researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Centre.

“The small-scale sector provides more than 50 per cent of what human beings eat from aquatic [water] environments.”

Rebecca Short, Stockholm Resilience Centre

她补充说，在非洲制定和制定有效政策的能力可能很差，而小型演员最终可能会被最边缘化。

“Importantly, our study also encourages these policymakers to be thinking about fisheries and aquaculture [controlledfarmingof fish and other living things in water] together, as intertwined, and for the critical role of terrestrial systems to be included,” she explains.

“这在诸如撒哈拉以南非洲等地区尤为重要，因为小型演员仍然与他们的环境紧密相关，并证明了一些最伟大的人beplay足球体育的微博innovations她补充说：“渔业，水产养殖和陆地生产与其他经济领域之间的多元化。”

The study was based on more than 70 case studies spanning diverse geographies and systems across fisheries and aquaculture.

据Short称，蓝色食物约占撒哈拉以南非洲人群消耗的蛋白质的22％。

The fisheries sector is estimated to support the nutrition of more than 200 million people across Africa, employing over two million fishers, and has high growth rate, Short adds. Small-scale fisheries and aquaculture play an enormous role in the nutrition, livelihoods, culture and identities of Sub-Saharan African people and nations.

“例如,[为]的小规模的渔民African Great Lakes, catching small-bodied species such as ‘Dagaa’ or ‘Usipa’, plays a hugely outsized role in the provision of blue foods that extends far beyond the lakeside communities who are mostly involved in production,” says Short. “Recognition of the value of fisheries and aquaculture beyond revenues is what is missing in decision-making, particularly at high levels.”

Rosamond Naylor, a co-author of the study and founding director at the Center on Food Security and the Environment at Stanford University in the United States, says that demand for aquatic foods is set to rise globally, with Nigeria and Ghana expected to experience a 2.6-fold and 2.8-fold increase in total demand, respectively. Population growth will be a major driver of this increased demand for aquatic foods consumption.

斯特林大学的合着者兼教授戴夫·利特尔（Dave Little）解释说，孟加拉国稻田的小型水产养殖采用了小规模的水产养殖，为孟加拉国的少年鱼类生产带来了额外的灌溉稻米。

“Development investments, built on the success of participatory trials with farmers led to widespread production of juvenile fish to supply local pond food fish production, stimulating livelihoods of small actors both upstream and downstream,” Little tellsSciDev.Net.

Edward Kimani, chief research scientist for fisheries and aquatic ecology at the Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute, agrees that policies in many African countries fail to adequately support small-scale fisheries mainly because the sector’s production and supply systems are widespread.

“Aquatic foods have untapped potential for providingsustainablediets,” says Kimani, adding that governments need to become more aware of their benefits so that the right policies are developed to support the fisheries sector.

Production and consumption of fish and other aquatic food, Kimani explains, has been increasing worldwide and this will be witnessed in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world by 2050 as global aquaculture advances and the management of wild aquatic food resources increases.

这件作品由Scidev.net的撒哈拉以南非洲英语桌子制作。