Fisheries experts are meeting in Cotonou, Benin Republic from 27th August 2012 to articulate a regional framework for the integrated, coherent and efficient management of West Africa’s fish resources to enable the sector contribute effectively to the regional effort to ensure food self-sufficiency through the ECOWAS Agriculture Policy (ECOWAP).
This inaugural meeting of the Regional Fisheries Committee, will enable the experts adopt an inclusive mechanism for fostering stakeholder participation in fashioning a framework that will enable ECOWAS monitor and coordinate the sustainable management of the sector, consistent with the objectives of the five-year Regional Agriculture Investment Programme (2011-2015).
The inauguration of the committee is in compliance with one of the decisions of the September 2010 meeting of West Africa’s ministers of fisheries in The Gambia where they called for the committee as an advisory body of national, regional and international players in the sector and as a forum for stakeholder dialogue.
The meeting also adopted a regional policy and strategy for the coherent management of the region’s fisheries and aquaculture sector. The committee is expected to contribute to regional integration through participatory governance, facilitate joint monitoring and evaluation, provide a platform for the peer review of policies in the sector as well as close the existing gaps in the institutional governance of the different aspects of fisheries management to ensure coherence in compliance with the 2005 decision of regional leaders.
This five-day meeting will specifically develop a road map on the implementation modalities and operation for national committees; develop a framework for sustainable fishing and aquaculture development; agree a methodology for assessing indicators for monitoring policy coherence for the sector and compose the sub-committees to handle the issues of governance, trade and aquaculture.
Participants in the meeting will be drawn from directors of fisheries of ECOWAS Member States, officials from the ECOWAS Commission, non-state actors, intergovernmental organizations and development partners.
2012 AllAfrica