At a recent Stockholm seminar leading expert from international institutions such as the FAO, put more stressed on better management of industrial fisheries. They said that this cannot be at the expense of dealing with overcapacity in small-scale fleets. Professor Robert Pomeroy, one of the speakers, argued that the challenges of managing overcapacity in small-scale fisheries are more complex than those facing industrial fleets.
Pomeroy, Principal Scientist at the WorldFish Center in Penang, Malaysia, and a professor in the Department of Agricultural and Resource Economics, University of Conneticut, USA, talked at a seminar at the Stockholm Resilience Centre entitled “Managing Overcapacity in small-scale Marine Fisheries.”
According to him the solution posited to the overlapping and interconnected problems that affect fisheries management in developing countries were that an integrated approach to management that crossed ministerial departments is required. Ppmeory also said that in South-East Asia, access to fisheries has historically not been regulated.
Pomeroy explained that there is an urgent need to regulate the access for catches to generate sustainable yields because exponential population growth throughout the 20th century and beyond has now led to this situation. After addressing the wider issues surrounding small-scale fisheries, the presentation used Vietnam as a case study exemplifying the problems management there have faced, while also elucidating on some of the promising solutions that are being innovatively developed at the provincial level.
