USAID/COMFISH Project PENCOO GEJ Collaborative Management for a Sustainable Fisheries Future in Senegal ANNUAL REPORT October 2011 - September 2012 Cooperative Agreement No. 685-A-00-11-00059-00 Submitted to: USAID/Senegal By: The University of Rhode Island (URI) In Partnership With: Coastal Resources Center, University of Rhode Island United States Agency for International Development / Senegal Ministère de l’Économie Maritime World Wildlife Fund - West African Marine EgoRegion Environnement et Développement en Afrique-Energie Centre de Suivi Ecologique Institut Universitaire de Pêche et d’Aquaculture/ Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar Centre de Recherches Océanographiques de Dakar-Thiaroye Fédération Nationale des GIE de Pêche 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ..................................................................................................................... 3 2. INTRODUCTION AND CONTEXT ................................................................................................................ 8 3. MAJOR PROJECT ACTIVITIES AND ACCOMPLISHMENTS ......................................................................... 13 SUMMARY OF YEAR TWO ACCOMPLISHMENTS BY COMPONENT .................................................................... 15 REPORTING ON PROGRESS MADE ..................................................................................................................... 17 3.1. Strengthening human and institutional capacity ................................................................................. 17 3.2. NATURAL RESOURCES/MANAGEMENT PLANS/BIODIVERSITY CONSERVATION AND MARINE ECOSYSTEMS ........................... 19 3.2.1. Establishing a scientific basis for the creation of sustainable management units on priority stocks . 19 3.2.2. Good management practices ............................................................................................................. 32 3.2 .3. Biodiversity conservation and marine ecosystem management ...................................................... 34 3.3. CROSSCUTTING AREAS ...................................................................................................................................... 36 3.3.1. Climate change vulnerability assessment and adaptation planning .................................................. 36 3.3.2. Gender ................................................................................................................................................ 42 3.3.3. Communication, Awareness and Dissemination ................................................................................ 46 3.3.4. Governance/Decentralization/Policy reform/support to the sectoral policy letter ............................ 50 3.3.5. Science and technology ...................................................................................................................... 51 3.4 .1. Office equipment and recruiting additional staff .............................................................................. 52 3.4.2. Strategies/Mechanisms/Partnership .................................................................................................. 54 3.4.3. Lessons learned .................................................................................................................................. 54 ANNEXES ........................................................................................................................................................ 55 A1. USAID/COMFISH RESULTS FRAMEWORK ............................................................... ERROR! BOOKMARK NOT DEFINED. A2. FINANCIAL SITUATION ................................................................................................................................ 62 A3. ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING AND COMPLIANCE .................................................................................. 63 A4. PROCEDURE TO OBTAIN AUTHORIZATION TO ESTABLISH FROM THE MINISTRY OF ENVIRONMENT AND THE DEPARTMENT OF FISH PROCESSING INDUSTRIES (DITP)............................................................................ 66 A5. URL LINKS TO MEDIA COVERAGE OF USAID/COMIFSH PROJECT ACTIVITIES .............................................. 70 A6. LIST OF TECHNICAL REPORTS FOR FISCAL 2012 ........................................................................................... 71 2 1. EXECUTIVE SUMMARY The goal of the USAID/COMFISH project is to support the Senegalese Ministry of Fisheries and Maritime Affairs (AAPC), via its technical departments and particularly the Department of Marine Fisheries (DPM), in implementing the Sectoral Policy Letter (LPS) that guides national efforts on the sustainable management of marine fisheries. The LPS has several objectives, including: (i) to restrict the use of unsustainable fishing methods by introducing Best Management Practices (BMPs); (ii) to increase the income of artisanal fishermen; (iii) to help fishing communities adapt to the impacts of climate change; (iv) to strengthen fisheries’ resilience to climate change impacts on fish stocks; and finally, (v) to strengthen economic/biological sustainability with bottom-up collaborative management in compliance with the Fishing Code of 1998. At the USAID/COMFISH project’s launching ceremony, the Ministry of Fisheries underscored the limited progress to date on collaborative, participatory management through Local Artisanal Fishing Councils (CLPAs). In 2011, DPM and USAID/COMFISH found that this came from a critical lack of functional convergence in the space between priority stock distribution areas and the jurisdictions of the local institutions (the CLPAs) designated to manage those stocks. Actually, the geographical areas under CLPA jurisdiction were removed from stock areas. So, the measures taken by villages or CLPAs to control those stocks did not work. DPM and USAID/COMFISH agreed therefore to implement a concept for addressing these two concerns (geographic and biological). The idea was simply to create one Sustainable Management Unit (SMU) per fish stock. Each SMU would include all village/CLPA fishermen harvesting the same stock. It would also have a collaborative management plan, using fishermen’s local knowledge and scientific knowledge together to achieve biological and socio-economic sustainability in target fisheries. A gender strategy would be designed for these plans to achieve food security and boost socio-economic viability. To establish the SMUs, the USAID/COMFISH project did a preliminary participatory diagnosis in year two. The exercise identified: 1. The six priority species. One was sardinella - the first priority species chosen to have an SMU, which the project would establish with DPM and other partners; 2. The institutional and legal frameworks to create and/or strengthen for the process. This was how Local Conventions (LCs) on Fisheries were chosen as the main legal instrument for actors on the ground to negotiate the rules for fisheries management at the local level. The project actors accordingly deployed a three-step strategy to establish the first three local conventions (for the CLPAs in Sindia, Mbour and Joal Fadiouth) that Senegal validated and approved officially. This is why local conventions are a major innovation in Senegal’s marine fishing sector. Ten facilitators, hired from the CLPAs, led and facilitated the process during fifty workshops and discussion groups. The project took action to begin implementing these local conventions and to finalize three more CLPAs in Cayar, Rufisque/Bargny, and Yenne/Diallao in 2013. The goal was to ensure that by the end of 2013, the six local conventions established for the six CLPAs contribute to create the SMU on sardinella, the species that makes up over 80% of the fishing effort on this stock. 3. The strategies, policies and approaches to develop and implement for the SMU process. To establish the SMUs on priority species, the project needed a scientific basis that would provide deeper understanding of the potential yield of exploitable fish stocks. It had therefore to adopt an advanced scientific approach without losing sight of local empirical knowledge on fishery resource management. This was why USAID/COMFISH took steps in fiscal 2012 to initiate a series of scientific studies, data collection initiatives and biological, socio-economic and environmental 3 analyses in partnership with four key partners (CRODT, IUPA, UBC and LABEP/IRD) to support the implementation of collaborative management plans. The overall results achieved in 2012 are outlined in Table (2). The fish stocks and the fisheries that they support are an integral part of the natural resources in the marine and coastal ecosystem. This latter also contains mangrove forests, arable land, pastures, woodlands, wetlands and drylands, watercourses and abandoned farmland. Any change in one component of the ecosystem can disrupt the natural course of events in all productive resources in the marine and coastal ecosystem, whether this occurs directly (i) by a drop in rainfall, increased salinity, high temperature, frequent storms, and the change in rainfall seasonality; or indirectly by (ii) in-migrating communities that leave the hinterland to the coastal areas due to desertification,. It is in this regard that the USAID/COMFISH project and the Ecological Monitoring Centre (CSE) studied the soil dynamics and mangrove ecosystems in three CLPAs from 1979 to 2011. The findings of these studies suggest that the changes observed in natural land use