Topics & Events

Satoshi NAGASHIMA (Expert of Fisheries Extension)

The project has provided support for "Community-Based Coastal Resource Management (CB-CRM)," which is carried out in cooperation between Vanuatu Fisheries Department (hereinafter referred to as "VFD") and the coastal community. In the current Phase III (2017-2021) of the Project aims to further enhance the applicability and practicality of CB-CRM approach and to disseminate it in Vanuatu and the surrounding Melanesian countries. In the Project, the Project is working on to compile outcomes in an implementation guideline and disseminate in Vanuatu other than the pilot sites based on it.

In order to continue the CB-CRM activities after completion of the project, it is essential to strengthen the capacity of VFD fisheries development officers in each province, who are the counterparts of Vanuatu side. Of course, trainings for VFD fisheries development officers have been conducted in this project, but in order to continue the activities further, it is necessary to have a system to conduct training by VFD independently and regularly.

In March 2020, VFD allocated their own budget and carried out a refresher training for VFD fisheries development officers in all Provinces at Vanuatu Maritime College in Santo for three weeks to strengthen the lacking capacities of them. In this training, Vanuatu Maritime College was in charge of "Safety at sea", "First aid", "Boat handling", "Outboard motor maintenance", "Construction/deployment of Fish Aggregating Devices (herein after referred to as "FADs"", "Fishing gear and method", etc. In addition, lectures such as "Boat registration", "Fish marketing", and "Data collection" were given by related divisions of VFD etc.

The works of fisheries development officers aren't only the coastal resource management but also included a wide range of tasks, including support for fish distributions, deployment of FADs, and support for aquaculture etc. CB-CRM approach has a concept of conducting management measure to manage coastal resources and also community development at the same time as supporting measure to support it economically. Therefore, it was important to carry out the community development by fisheries development officers in each Province through CB-CRM, and the project also decided to implement a lecture of "Community development planning method" as a part of the training.

In the lecture, in addition to having introduced CB-CRM tool manual that explains tools for management measure and supporting measure for the first time, it was supported to prepared the lecture program for conducting problem analysis on their own, analyzing relationship of activities by multiple divisions of VFD and preparing the their own activity plan appropriately.

The three-week training, which was a first attempt by VFD, was very well received by the participating VFD fisheries development officers, and there was a request from them to continue such refresher training next year. The project continues to support that VFD establishes a system to provide such refresher trainings on a regular basis.

Lecture of "Community development planning method"