State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004 - Library

20
The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2004
Box 2
Emergencies and fisheries
Natural hazards such as cyclones, floods, typhoons, sea surges, tidal
waves, earthquakes and landslides can have a devastating effect on
fishing communities – destroying fishing boats and equipment, or
sweeping away their houses. A compelling example is the 1996 cyclone
in the Bay of Bengal in which 1 435 fishers were reported as dead or
missing and thousands of fishing crafts and other equipment were
estimated to be lost or damaged.
When, following a disaster, fishing communities are no longer
able to meet their basic survival needs and/or when there is a threat
to their life and well-being, as in the case of armed conflicts, they face
an emergency situation. Developing countries, especially the poorest,
suffer disproportionately from emergencies because they lack the means
to prepare for them and to deal with their aftermath. In view of the
importance of fisheries in developing states (in terms of production,
protein intake, employment and foreign exchange), there is a need to
review the role that fisheries interventions can play in emergency relief
operations.
In situations of emergency, fisheries interventions may be critical
to help restore production and/or as a source of immediate income
and food. Data gathered in the Sudan (northern sector) over a oneyear
cycle have shown that whatever the season and the location,
fish commodities (mainly sun-dried fish) form the cheapest and most
accessible source of animal proteins for the displaced and poor sections
of the communities. Furthermore, sun-dried fish plays a crucial role in
ensuring people’s food security during the period between the first
rains and first harvest (the “hunger gap”) and during the active
measures that limit year-round activity (e.g. closures of selected fisheries at certain
times of the year, limits on total annual catches of selected species so that commercial
fishers may fish for only a few days of each month until the quota is reached) or limit
the number of commercial licences and the number of fish caught per
trip. Increasingly, operators have to turn to other activities for supplementary
income.
Although the national statistics available to FAO are often too irregular and lacking
in detail to permit a more in-depth analysis of the employment structure at world level,
it is apparent that, in most important fishing nations that systematically provide this
information, the share of employment in capture fisheries is stagnating and increased
opportunities are being provided by aquaculture.
In China, where the combined numbers of fishers and fish farmers (12.3 million)
represent nearly one-third of the world total, in 2002, 8.4 million people worked in
capture fisheries and 3.9 million in aquaculture. However, existing fleet-size reduction
programmes in China, aimed at reducing overfishing, are reducing the number of
full-time and part-time fishers. The latter have decreased by almost 2 percent from
two years before and there are plans to move 4 percent of the total number of fishers
to other jobs by 2007. The policy tools to accomplish this include, among others,
scrapping vessels and training redundant fishers in fish farming, where employment
in 2002 increased by 6 percent compared with 2000 levels. A similar trend of increased