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Abstract
This paper offers an assessment of the mainstreaming of fisheries in national development plans and Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers within the Asia-Pacific region. Fisheries and aquaculture in the region make a significant contribution to world fisheries production. Importantly, those directly involved in the sector are predominantly small-scale artisanal producers, a group traditionally regarded as extremely vulnerable in poverty terms. Therefore, mainstreaming – integrating a sector into every stage of the national policy process – may have important welfare implications for those drawing livelihoods from the industry. This paper examines the significance of fisheries and aquaculture to developing Asia-Pacific economies, and evaluates the extent to which the sector has been mainstreamed in national development and poverty reduction strategies using a content analysis framework. We conclude that the representation of fisheries issues, the recognition of sectoral poverty, policy responses, and stakeholder representation, is typically greater than in other fish producing regions, and there are many examples of best practice.
Acknowledgements
Financial support for the study, provided under the normative component of the DFID-funded and FAO-executed Sustainable Fisheries Livelihood Programme and FAO's Fishery and Development Planning Service, is gratefully acknowledged. The paper has benefited from comments made by delegates to the Asia-Pacific Fishery Commission's Regional Consultative Forum meeting ‘Reforming Fisheries and Aquaculture in the Asia-Pacific’ held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 16–19 August, 2006. The authors are also grateful to this journal's two anonymous referees for their perceptive and focused comments. However, responsibility for any errors rests firmly with the authors.
Notes
† Excluding countries where fisheries or aquaculture contribute less than 0.1% of GDP.
‡Data for 2000
1FAO (2005c, A-3).
2Derived from: FAO (2006a).
3World Resources Institute (2006).
4FAO (2006a).
5World Resources Institute (2006).
6Thorpe (2005, p. 18).
1PRSPs and related documents are available from the IMF website(http://www.imf.org/external/np/prsp/prsp.asp#B).
3Available from: http://www.epu.jpm.my/rm9/html/english.htm
5Available from: http://www.epu.jpm.my/rm9/html/english.htm
1. APFIC is a regional body of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). While the body includes a number of developed economies (Australia, France, Japan, New Zealand, the Republic of Korea, the United Kingdom and the United States) we restrict our analysis to countries with a 2004 Gross National Income per capita (Atlas method) of US$5000 or less (World Bank 2006).
2. For an interesting critical examination of the concept of mainstreaming, see: CitationPicciotto (2002).
3. The quote is attributable to the Head of the FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, He Changchui.
4. See, for example: United Nations (2003), and CitationPasha and Palanivel (2004).
5. Khatun et al. (2004, p. 21) suggest that substantial landings of low-value species are thrown away for want of adequate storage facilities.
6. For example, the Indian government's Marine Products Export Development Authority has an extensive network of international, regional, and sub-regional offices to coordinate fisheries processing and trade.
7. See: CitationAllison and Ellis (2001), FAO (2002a), CitationCunningham and Neiland (2005), and FMSP (2006).
8. See FAO (2007) for an overview of poverty in marginalised fishing communities.
9. Unfortunately, most census data in the region only capture full-time fishers, and thereby underestimates the real contribution of fishing to both rural livelihoods and rural economies. In the Mekong basin alone there are an estimated 40 million part-time fishers (WRI 2004, p. 36).
10. The FAO (2005b) Philippine fisheries profile, for example, suggests that ‘the ability of the sea to provide a cheap source of food and income for the Filipino masses has been severely compromised’.
11. Figures taken from FAO Food Balance Sheets represent ‘apparent consumption’, i.e. reported production less exports plus imports, divided by population. The weakness of this measure is evident where significant production is under-recorded or not enumerated, as is often the case with inland fisheries production. We note that Cambodia and Myanmar have trebled their estimations for domestic production in recent years, bringing consumption closer to the observed level (FAO 2006b, CitationHortle, 2007).
12. FAO (1997) suggest that imports to Kathmandu from India, Thailand, and Singapore are ‘mainly destined to hotels and restaurants catering for tourists and foreign residents’.
13. China exported 5.2 million tonnes of fisheries commodities in 2003 (FAO 2006a: A-3), equivalent to 10.6% of world exports for that year.
14. Approximately 40% of marine fisheries production is converted to fishmeal for poultry feed (FAO 2003b).
15. Employment here refers only to fishers, excluding workers in processing, maritime industries, etc.
16. See Note 7.
17. Equally, low levels of rural poverty in China and India, where 24% and 26% respectively of the population reside within 100 km of the coast, have different implications for the fisheries sector than in countries such as Indonesia, Sri Lanka, and Vietnam, where the proportions are 96%, 100%, and 83% respectively Citation(World Resources Institute 2006).
18. Although Sri Lanka's 2002 PRSP was ‘subsequently discarded’ for political reasons (World Bank 2006: 1), it remains in our sample in the absence of an alternative NDP. Cambodia, Nepal, and Vietnam have also produced progress reports.
19. At the time of writing, the Chinese government had not yet produced its Eleventh Five-Year Plan 2006–10; Indonesia's Medium-Term Development Strategy 2004–9 was only available in Indonesian (a language with which we are not familiar); while Myanmar suffers from ‘the absence of a credible national development plan’ (CitationIgboemeka 2005, p. 2).
20. Concerns included the prohibition of electrical nets, and developing legislation to allow the leasing of kha ponds.
21. For comparison, see the World Bank's Gender and Development website. http://go.worldbank.org/TAQVPVB610 (Accessed 21 March 2008).
22. This figure is computed from the data quoted by Sugiyama et al. (2004, p. 2) suggesting that 85% of the global number of 25 million persons directly involved in fisheries production are to be found in Asia. However, as the authors also note that ‘these figures typically represent full time fisheries and those for whom fishing is a highly significant activity – and not part-time nor seasonal figures – the actual numbers of households receiving an income from fishing activities is likely to be much higher.’.
23. Workshop on Pro-poor Policy Analysis and Dialogue at the Country Level Bangkok, 26–28 April 2005. Organised by FAO Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific, the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD), and the Ministry of Agriculture and Cooperatives, Thailand.
24. See: http://go.worldbank.org/14OG84SM00 (Accessed 21 March 2008).