Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods (West Africa)

Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods
Programme
West Africa: Regional

Partners

Start date
11/1999

End date
11/2006

Commitment (£)
21,547,660

Fisheries Department, West African nations, Food and Agriculture Organisation

DFID

Collaborators

Singleton Consultant (Natural Resources Institute) - framework for code of conduct

Contacts

Website: http://www.sflp.org/

Kyriakos Kourkouliotis, Information-Communication Officer infos@sflp.org

Ansen Ward, NRI Consultant (code of conduct), A.R.Ward@gre.ac.uk

Purpose

Livelihoods in artisanal fisheries communities improved.

Widely replicable policies for sustainable and equitable fisheries adopted.

Develop a framework for a code of conduct for responsible fisheries utilisation and sustainable livelihoods in the post-harvest sector.

	Lessons:
	Policy Briefs
	Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme Flyer. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Reducing Fisherfolk's Vulnerability Leads to Responsible Fisheries. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Impact of HIV/AIDS on Fishing Communities. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Contribution of Fisheries to National Economies in West and Central Africa. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Microfinance Helps Poverty Reduction and Fisheries Management. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Promoting Literacy to Improve Livelihoods in Fishing Communities. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Gender Policies for Responsible Fisheries. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Building Adaptive Capacity to Climate Change. 2007. PDF NEW
	Making Global Governance Work for Small-Scale Fisheries. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Information and Communications Technologies Benefit Fishing Communities: Policies to Support Improved Communciations for Development. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Making Fish Trade Work for Development and Livelihoods in West and Central Africa. 2007. PDF French PDF NEW
	Papers
	Fighting AIDS in the Fishing Communities of West Africa HTML
	Participation in Artisanal Fisheries Management for Improved Livelihoods in West Africa - A Synthesis of Interviews and Cases from Mauritania, Senegal, Guinea and Ghana. Noeky M. Lenselink. 2002. HTML
	Livelihoods Systems Profiling: Mixed methods for the analysis of poverty and vulnerability (PDF) / (PDF) 2MB
	Poverty Profiles of Artisanal Fishers: Methods based on the SLA Model. (Neiland, A. and C. Béné, 2004, Poverty and Small-scale Fisheries in West Africa, FAO and Kluwer Academic Publishers) (PDF)
	Structural Adjustment Policies and Sustainable Livelihoods in West African Inlands Fisheries. B Blaike, 2001 (PDF)
	Guidelines for Programme and Project Monitoring and Evaluation. B Blaie et al, 2001 PDF
	Fisher Farmers or Farmer Fishers? Rural Livelihoods on Lake Bagre and Lake Kopienga, Burkina Faso. March 2003. Poverty profile in French (Word) / Brief in English (PDF)
	Ecomonic crisis, ethnic clashes and livelihoods on Lake Koussou, Cote D'Ivoire (PDF)
	When credit follows indebtness: fishers dependency on Lake Selingue, Mali, Full poverty profile in French (Word) / Brief in English (PDF)
	Isolated livelihoods, migration and weak social captial on Southern Lake Volta, Ghana. January 2003. Full poverty report in English (Word) / Brief in English (PDF)
	Training Manual - The SFLP approach for the development of artisanal fisheries communities HTML
	Guide for the preparation of community projects HTML
	Fisheries Code of Conduct HTML
	Many more details and documents are available on the SFLP website HTML
	Audio- WRENmedia Interview
	African fisheries - raising the stocks HTML

Purpose

Lessons

Use of SL Approaches

Other Fisheries Projects

Contribute

Use of Sustainable Livelihoods Approaches

The Sustainable Fisheries Livelihoods Programme (SFLP), financed for a period of 7 years, started its activities in November 1999.

The SFLP represents a partnership between the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland (DFID), the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO) and 25 participating countries in West Africa. The Programme is funded by DFID and executed by the FAO.

The Programme’s interventions are informed by:

The existence of major threats and constraints to the sustainable use of aquatic resources by artisanal coastal and inland fisheries communities.
The possibility of improving livelihoods and reducing poverty within communities by using an appropriate approach, the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) in conjunction with the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF).
The observation that information is lacking among fisheries communities and decision-makers. If such information is made available to them, it would contribute to improve fisheries communities livelihoods as well as facilitate the inclusion of the fisheries communities aspiration in public policies.
The importance of supporting and strengthening at different levels (local, regional, national) the participating and consultative mechanisms that impact on both resource exploitation methods and community livelihoods diversification strategies by a holistic approach.

The 2 main working and reference tools of the project are the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) and the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) especially with regards to the incorporation of some provisions in national plans and policies.

In each participating country, the SFLP proceeds in stages. Sensitisation work is conducted in fisheries communities. This provides the opportunity to explain the Sustainable Livelihoods Approach (SLA) and how communities should think of their project's activities in terms of improving their livelihoods. The second stage involves a participatory diagnosis of the livelihoods of fisheries communities using the Participatory Rural Appraisal method (PRA).

At the end of this exercise, a community action plan is prepared, comprising a series of interventions that are considered to be priority. On this basis, the support team assists the communities to formulate their community projects, clearly defining the monitoring indicators to be used to measure progress and the impact of activities on their livelihoods. These monitoring indicators are reviewed regularly by the communities, taking into account emerging changes. Community project proposals are then screened by the NCU and submitted to the Regional Support Unit (RSU) of the SFLP for approval.

	Other Fisheries/Coastal Livelihoods Projects:
	Post Harvest Fisheries Project (Cambodia and Ghana)
	Sustainable Coastal livelihoods (India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh)
	Poverty and Reefs Initiative (Global)
	Why not contribute?

Contribute:

Livelihoods Connect welcomes details of how sustainable livelihoods approaches are being used by your project. Simply complete the Sustainable Livelihoods Project Summary Form and send it as an email attachment to:

livelihoods-connect@ids.ac.uk.