OVERVIEW
TITLE: ENHANCING SMALL SCALE FISHING SECTOR´S PARTICIPATION IN DECISION-MAKING
DURATION: January 2016-December 2017
COORDINATOR: AZTI
PARTNERS: South Western Waters Advisory Council (SWW AC); Fundación Lonxanet para la Pesca Sostenible, Basque fisherman Javier Sarobe
TOTAL BUDGET: 293.036,00 euros
DG MARE CONTRIBUTION: 263.732,00 euros
PROJECT
MARE2014/04 is project which has received funding from the European Union DG MARE with agreement number MARE2014/04-SI2.723886. The project consortium is made up of 4 partners coordinated by AZTI (Basque Country). The consortium comprises both stakeholders representative of the fishing sector and experts from three key academic disciplines of fisheries sciences (ecology, economics and social sciences). The project runs for 24 months and aims to enhance small scale fisheries (SSFs) participation in decision-making. To this general aim, the objective of this Project is the identification of actions to encourage and enable a broader participation in decision-making of the small scale fishermen organizations – by analyzing the existing organizations and bodies that represent the SSFs.
The project builds on the wide consortium’s experience, and in particular AZTI´s experience, in the field of small scale fisheries (SSFs) management and policy advice for local, regional and European bodies. The offer rests especially on the background of the consortium in the field of governance and stakeholder involvement in the decision-making processes. This proposal benefits from the AZTI´s key scientists experience in the last ten years but specially from previously developed European studies under the framework of different calls.
Fundación Lonxanet para la pesca sostenible implements innovative proposals in the social, environmental, economic and community involvement fields, to enable the transformation of the traditional fisherman into an entrepreneur and active citizen. The Lonxanet Foundation’s mission is to contribute to the empowerment of traditional fishing communities by establishing links with the fishing sector, thereby bringing about a common approach to proposals, projects and actions based on criteria of sustainability and community involvement. The purpose is to solve or minimize problems and advance the process of positioning traditional fishermen as guardians (managers or joint managers) of the ecosystems in which they perform their productive activities.
Finally, the SWW AC is one of the 7 Regional Advisory Councils established by the Council in order to stimulate the participation of the interested parties in order to reach the objectives of a sustainable fishing activity as established by the Common Fisheries Policy (http://www.ccr-s.eu/EN/index.asp). This project will be developed under the umbrella of the SWW AC which includes 60% of the representatives from the fishing sector (fishermen, ship-owners, organizations of producers, transformers, wholesale fish merchants and organizations of market) of five Members States (Portugal, Spain, France, Belgium and Netherlands). One of the topic groups under SWW AC is the Traditional Fisheries Working Group where the SSFS have a relevant role.