N.G.O wants to use catch shares in fisheries sector
The Environment Defense Fund is a non profit organization based in the United States. It has about four hundred employees worldwide who work on climate, ocean, human, land, water and wildlife issues. The group has helped countries to implement catch shares, an incentive-based management of fisheries, which has successfully aligned fishermen’s livelihoods with conservation outcomes. The American NGO has been working in Belize and this morning at the Coastal Zone Management Agency Training Room, it hosted an open lecture under the theme Using Catch Shares to Revitalize Belize’s Fisheries Sector.
Kate Bonzon, Program Manager, Oceans Enterprise, E.D.F.
“The catch shares are a way to manage fisheries. And there are catch shares all over the world. There’s about eight hundred different fisheries managed under Catch Shares in about forty different countries. They way that most fisheries are managed today without catch shares is kind of like a child’s piñata party at a birthday, where the piñata breaks open; there’s a bunch of candy on the floor and everybody goes rushing to get as much as they can as fast as they can. What catch shares does is it actually gives people a secure share of the catch or candy that is out there. So I know that I get ten pieces no matter what and somebody else gets ten pieces no matter what. When you do that and you give to fishermen for a long period of time; then they start to be able to take care of the Fishery in a different way.”
Doug Rader, Chief Ocean Scientist, E.D.F.
“We’re convinced in Belize it could be a key tool in the toolbox to build a healthy ocean, not only for fish, but also for people.”
Jose Sanchez
“How does it work?”
Doug Rader
“Catch shares works either by taking a piece of the ocean and dedicating it to an individual or to a community so that they can manage that piece of the water in their own best interest in the long term instead of people from all over racing to catch the last fish. This set of tools and it can be done either by a quota system that allocate a part of the fish pie to the individual or to our community or by allocating a piece of the bottom to those same people then it does act like money in the bank that grows in value as the condition of the fish popular improves, thus reinforcing good stewardship.”
Jose Sanchez
“Now how do you sell that to the fishermen?”
Kate Bonzon
“Well, there is a lot of different ways to do it. You can actually give it away to the fishermen. You can give to them as a share that they will own into the future. You can actually make fishermen pay for it. Or you could give it to your community and then let the community figure out how to divide it up amongst people.”
Jose Sanchez
“The Coastal Zone Management Agency, are they on board with this idea?”
Kate Bonzon
“The C.Z.M.A.I. is a partner with us, with the E.D.F. working on this. They are interested in this, then order to make fishing more sustainable and make fishermen in the fishing communities more profitable here.”
Jose Sanchez
“Who’s going to the fishermen and actually show them this new approach?”
Kate Bonzon
“We have a team of people here in Belize, made up of Americans and Belizeans and it is very important to work with fishermen directly and to understand what their needs are and understand how they fish, what’s important to them and then be able to craft a solution with them and not have us just tell them what to do. So we’re out working in a number of different communities, working with fishermen all up and down the coast.”
