Fish, fishing and livelihoods : community based organisations as focus for local development

Abstract

The central tenet to Community Based Fisheries Management (CBFM) is that users dependent on a common resource, in this case fishers and other households depending on wild fish to catch, will harvest that resource in a sustainable manner by adhering to sound environmental practices. However, fish stocks become quickly over¬exploited, when outsiders control the fishing for maximum profit and local inhabitants have no option but resorting to poaching. This is where the CBFM-SSEA project has come in. Starting from the assumption that involvement of local fishers along with the other villagers is an absolute requirement in sustainable natural resource management, CBFM-SSEA aims to transferring fishing rights of local water bodies directly to local fisher groups. Under the CBFM-SSEA project, six 'Community Based Organisations' (CBO) have been formed around six waterbodies. Through motivation, training, awareness and meetings by the partner NGO staff CBOs are becoming local grassroots institutions, capable of ascertaining long term access to 'their' water body and implementing ecologically sound fisheries management practices. The fishers from the CBO membership were then organised in Groups headed by their own elected 'Beel Management Committee' (BMC) for managing the water body.