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Vulnerability in Inland Fishing Communities in Africa: lessons learned
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Summary:
The WorldFish Center has released a paper on vulnerability in inland fishing communities in Africa.
The paper underscores the need to consider that household vulnerability is related to: natural resource systems; local livelihoods; external drivers; and institutions and governance systems. It suggests that interventions should prioritize these four issues. Field data collection revealed that fishery resource vulnerability was less important to households than general food security and access to health education and credit. The paper highlights that considerations related to short-term survival take precedence over long-term stability. It notes that before addressing resource vulnerability, projects must focus on short-term needs of local communities.
Key Messages
- A critical first step in understanding vulnerability in inland fishing communities is to move away from classical fishery definitions that consider only the resource and harvest methods and, instead, recognize that fisheries operate across broad domains including the natural resource and its ecosystem, people and livelihoods, institutions and governance systems, and external drivers.
- Household vulnerability analysis structured around these four domains proved a powerful tool for understanding the diversity of vulnerability and identifying interventions to effectively address these issues as they emerge locally.
- Household vulnerability analysis in fishing communities in Nigeria and Mali revealed that, despite fishing being the primary livelihood, vulnerabilities related directly to the state of the fishery resource were ranked lower than those related to basic human needs, predominantly food insecurity and lack of access to health, education and credit services.
- When critical immediate needs cannot be met, the community’s focus on short-term survival invariably takes precedence over any consideration of long-term sustainability.
- By addressing the pressing needs of daily survival through targeted interventions, the project aimed to alleviate preoccupation with them, thereby clearing the way for broader sustainability issues to come to the fore.
WorldFish Center is a member of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
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