CIFE is organizing an international training course on 'Fisheries Co-management for Sustainable Livelihood Development' where the focus will be on exploring and analyzing  a variety of inter-related perspectives helping learners to build up comprehensive field capabilities.

In many developing countries, population pressure and limited alternative employment opportunities, coupled with the inability and reluctance of governmental inactions to take necessary conservation and management decisions, have resulted in severely over fished coastal and inland resources and increased threats to the livelihoods of fishers. This has generated calls for improved management strategies and sustainable use of aquatic resource systems.

Thus challenge of the day is how to conserve and ensure sustainability of fishery resources and protect the livelihoods of fishing communities. For this, policy planners and resource managers are searching for better ways of managing fisheries. As the current top down and bureaucratic fisheries management approaches based on centralized government interventions are unable to address most of the confronting issues; the participatory approaches are gaining grounds.  The concept of co-management is gaining acceptance as an alternative fisheries management strategy in contrast to the top down, centralized government managed approach. Here the fishers participation., local stewardship; greater responsibility, authority and participation of those involved in fishing sector in decision-making; and recognition of not just fish, but the ecosystems in which they live is emphasized.  Such “co-management” recognizes the need for management decisions to be made in collaboration with fishers who use and depend upon the resource. However, the actual process of co-management needs to be understood for its effective implementation.
 

What is co-management?

Co-management is the management of a resource with a view to protecting it and ensuring its sustainability. This implies the participation of the population and all other stakeholders. The key concept behind co-management is power sharing between the owners or agents managing the resource and users of the resource. It gives resource users a meaningful role in the management of their resources. In co-management regimes, users share with government both the power to make decisions and accountability for those decisions.

Co-management can be defined as a partnership arrangement in which the community of local resource users (fishers/fish farmers), government, other stakeholders (boat owners, fish traders, boat builders, businesspeople, etc.) and external agents (non-governmental organizations (NGOs), academic and research institutions) share the responsibility and authority for the management of the fishery/aquaculture. Through consultations and negotiations, the partners develop a formal agreement on their respective roles, responsibilities and rights in management, referred to as 'negotiated power'. Co-management is also called participatory, joint, stakeholder, multi-party or collaborative management.
 

Why Co-management?

Co-management can enhance the scientific understanding of fisheries resources, the effectiveness of management initiatives and the compliance with those initiatives. It also deals with issues of social justice and equity.

Objectives:

·  To enable the participants in conducting need assessment of the stake holders and their fulfillment through community participation
 

·  To facilitate mobilization of the participating institutions to promote the welfare measures of the stake holders
 

·  To educate networking with the participating communities for taking common decision required to manage the resources

·  To enable the participants in facilitating empowerment of the local resource users, to share the power and responsibility for resource management with the government.

Training Methodology:

The key feature of the training course is innovative educational and learning methods ensuring that the trainings are relevant and appropriate to local needs, aspirations and conditions so that learners adapt knowledge and experience gained as per situations in their own countries and regions. To achieve this, different training methods and techniques like lectures, group work discussions, field level demonstrations, case studies to mention only a few will be employed. There will be immense opportunities for participants to play an active role in the learning process. The thrust of training course will be on experiential sharing and individual reflection across-disciplines. The training course will have due weightage on theory as well as practical with hands on training. An online pre-training interaction will be held to have a competent participatory curriculum content as per the needs, knowledge and skill sets of learners. In addition, post training evaluation in form of concept and measurement will be done to analyze the subject knowledge. 

Expected outcome:

Participants will gain a new body of knowledge and skills and the training course will bring together participants from different countries to discuss, review and draw common and not so common themes emerging from specific countries. This will also result in development of inventory of partners and shared experiences enhancing the ability of learners to access, assess, adopt, and apply knowledge, to exercise appropriate judgment and to collaborate with others.

At the conclusion of the trainings, participants will be able to appreciate the varied interest and concerns of the different stakeholders. This will eventually lead to the judicious utilization of the different resources in an environmentally sustainable, ecologically sound, technically feasible, socially acceptable and culturally compatible manner which will lead to a better standard of living.

Target training beneficiaries:

·   Natural resource managers

·   Non government organisations

·   Representatives of government agencies

·   Fisheries professionals

·   Community-based groups and local government authorities

·   Fishers co-ops, fishers / farmers federations

·   Elected government officials

·   Academicians and scientists

·   Policy planners

Course Content:

The possible course content for the training course is listed below but in addition online pre-training session will be held to have a competent participatory curriculum content as per the needs, knowledge and skill sets of learners.

·  Co-management – Origin, Concept, Process

·  Transition from Traditional to Contemporary Fisheries Management

·  Need of the of co-management

·  Classification of fisheries co-management

·  Co-management - A Process

·  Contributing Factors for Successful Co-management

·  Benefits of co-management - equity and social justice, organization

·  Property rights in fisheries co-management

·  Perspectives of the biologist, the economist and the social scientist on co- management

·  Fisheries co-management case studies from different regions and from different types of fisheries

·  Gender issues in co-management

Faculty:

CIFE has experienced faculty of global competence and international exposure to conduct training programme on Fisheries Co-management for Sustainable Livelihood Development'. The institute also has multidisciplinary faculty to enrich the participants on the concerned sub-topics.

Course Director

Dr A. K. Reddy
 

Central Institute of Fisheries Education

Deemed University

Indian Council of Agricultural Research

 Seven Bungalows, Versova,

Mumbai – 400 061

Phone: +91- 22-26361446/7/8,

 Fax:    +91-22-26361573

E-mail: contact@cife.edu.in or

          akreddy@cife.edu.in

website: www.cife.edu.in