Here a fish, there a fish; everywhere a fishy fish.

Here a fish, there a fish; everywhere a fishy fish.

In 2000, the Royal Government of Cambodia (RGK) initiated a reform of the fisheries sector, which included the release of 56% of fishing lots for the development of community fisheries. The Community Fisheries Development Office (CFDO) within the Department of Fisheries (DoF), part of the Ministry of Agriculture, Farms and Fisheries (MAFF), is responsible for facilitating the development of community fisheries and management of community fisheries (CF) in the whole country.

The important changes are in the access of local villagers to concessions, to facilitate the development of community-based management of fisheries. A new fisheries law and sub-decree on Community Fisheries has been drafted and the government is encouraging a partnership approach towards this initiative.

Much of the development of community fisheries in Cambodia has been done by the Department of Fisheries in cooperation with provincial fisheries offices and various NGOs. However, it is important that the CFDO itself is able to play an active role in the development and management of community fisheries as this is its mandate.

The development of these community fisheries started in June 2003 and has been continuing since. It has now reached the stage where fully established community fisheries have management plans, charters, bylaws and elected members, the rest of the CF’s are at various points along that chain of implementation.

Unfortunately, government support for this initiative is mostly seen as political, building popular support in rural areas for the decision. However, the establishment of the new department to oversee this handover and the subsequent management of it, is woefully under resourced. The staff of CFDO is enthusiastic and even dynamic, but their government salaries (US$30/Month) are the only financial input from the RGK for the whole department.

So what about the rest of the work that needs doing; establishing community fisheries (CF), holding elections to nominate officers of the CF, training members of the CF in sustainable resource use and aquaculture, establishing/promoting aquaculture to provide a dry season resource, signposting/delimiting protected areas, capture and destruction of illegal fishing gears – e.g. mosquito netting, UXO, electro-shock gear, et cetera ?

The money for the rest of the work has to be sourced by the CFDO itself from NGO’s and IO’s and from bank loans.
Of course, this means that the various ‘projects’ that are being run by the CFDO/DoF are being steered by the donors, and not by the CFDO/DoF and certainly not by the villages, communes and committees that will actually be managing the resource.

Now normal operating procedure for these organisations is for them to initially release money in small amounts for ‘pilot projects’

- For Example:

Three villages, in three different provinces, receive a training course on ‘Strengthening Community Fisheries’ this is a two day workshop covering such critical fisheries management skills as; minute taking, report writing and meeting facilitation.

A notice board is commissioned, constructed and erected outside the CF Headquarters with the relevant law, sub decree and Prakas displayed. Along with the list of CF committee members and their local CF bylaws.

A couple of signposts are put up in prominent places saying – do not use mosquito nets/poison/acid/bombs to fish with, or the equivalent …

Smaller signposts were then put around the fish sanctuary, delimiting the area.

Prior to all this being done, several applications were submitted to the funding agency, along with a schedule and work plans and a budget.

During the running of the project, a workshop report and a technical report had to be submitted for each CF.

The construction and erection of all the signposts was done together as a separate component – another set of reports.

Three months after the training courses another field trip was undertaken by the project staff to monitor and evaluate [M&E] the effectiveness of the training that had been given – another report prior to the field trip, designing an M&E matrix framework for the trip as well as questionnaires to populate the M&E Matrix and of course a report of the methodology and progress of the M&E Fieldtrip.

All in all a lot of work to train less than a 100 people in how to take minutes of a meeting and to put up some signposts.

How much did the funding body donate?

A mere US$10,000

All that work, running around, sailing up and down rivers and taking minibuses, taxis, motodope’s, around the country, reviewing, writing reports, for a ‘pilot project’ for a lousy 10k split over administrative functions and three CF’s

It is estimated that Cambodia as a whole will need over 1,000 Community Fisheries to be established and trained to manage the 56% that they have had donated to communities.

Having the civil servants responsible for doing this running around chasing funds, driving from one province to the next [all by public transport I might add, not fancy white 4x4 Landcruisers ] filling report after report after report back to the funding body, cap in hand for the next few dollars, is no way to run a Country’s major resource.
Hell, it is no way to run the entire Country.

I mean, let us face it, fish is very important to Cambodia, it represents up to 75% of the annual animal protein intake in some areas [that is around 80Kg per person, per year]

Fish, fishing, fish products, fishery stakeholders and post harvest fishing activities employ nearly 4 million people in this Country, not too mention the amount of casual or subsistence level fishing that goes on at a family level.

The annual catch weight of freshwater fish in Cambodia is estimated at US$ 200 million, which increases in value as it passes down the supply chain to the point where it represents 15% of Cambodia’s GDP.

Surely we can do better than spending all our time chasing around after some NGO’s for a few thousand dollars…