Pre-analysis of India's coastal states and union territories
Goal
Conduct a pre-analysis of India's coastal states using the model developed by WWF's Community Based Certification Program.
Background
Since helping establish the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) , WWF has taken a special interest in applying certification as a conservation tool in small-scale fisheries. Small-scale fishers comprise approximately 94% of the world's fishers and produce nearly half of the global fish supply for human consumption. Along the world's coastlines, these small-scale fisheries provide most of the protein and jobs for neighboring communities, yet are more threatened than other fishers by coastal habitat destruction and pollution due to human activities on land. Since beginning this work with community fisheries in 1999, WWF's Community Based Certification Program has grown to include 15 projects worldwide. With WWF's global network of organizations and its partnerships with local NGOs, it is well equipped to facilitate MSC certification of community-scale fisheries in both developing and developed countries.
Through the work of the Community Based Certification Program, WWF has learned a number of important lessons about applying MSC certification to small-scale fisheries and continues to develop creative ways of working with community fisheries. The recently created pre-analysis model is one such creative tool. This model guides the user through a number of steps which
1) outlines the fisheries of the specified region
Over the last year, WWF-India has been working to establish an MSC program. It identified three candidate fisheries for MSC's certification, one of which was pre assessed as per MSC's principle and criterion last year.
Besides, WWF-India also identified more candidate fisheries in consultations with its partner Suganthi Devadason Marine Research Institute, Tuticorin.
Formal presentations and invited lectures on MSC and its benefits were made in an International Conference on Indian Ocean organised by International Collective in Support of Fishworkers Forum (ICSF) and in a training course for fisheries Scientists,. Managers, NGOs, etc organised by Central Institute of Fisheries Education, Mumbai. Informal discussions were held and MSC concept was introduced to a wide array of stakeholders like R&D Institutes, fisheries management bodies like Bay of Bengal Programme of FAO, based in Chennai, Fisherfolks' organisations, NGOs working on sustainable fisheries, etc.
Key elements of the projects
- Full informational log of the pre-analysis process.
- Fishery profiles for the top tier fisheries identified through the pre-analysis process.
- Recommendation for pre-assessment candidate.
- Recommendation for development of larger scale MSC implementation in India
