Institutional capacity development for sustainable aquaculture and fisheries: Strategic partnership with local institutions.

Many people living in the rural areas in the Philippines, as in other developing countries in Southeast Asia, depend on aquatic resources for their food and livelihood. For the past two decades, the Aquaculture Department of the Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center (SEAFDEC-AQD) has been working with fishing communities and people’s organizations, business sector, local government units, national government agencies, non-government organizations (NGOs) and academic and other research institutions to promote the efficient conservation, management and sustainable development of the country’s fisheries and aquatic resources so that these may continue to serve the needs of the people today and tomorrow.Using the lessons learned from those two decades of multi-sectoral and inter-disciplinary collaborations, SEAFDEC-AQD launched in late 2006 a project called Institutional Capacity Development for Sustainable Aquaculture (ICDSA) to hasten the transfer to and adoption by coastal villagers of appropriate technologies that would enhance the productivity of aquatic resources and at the same time safeguard the fragile balance of the aquatic ecology.The experience of SEAFDEC in coastal resource management shows that it is important to engage the collaboration of the local government units and other “on-the-ground” institutions, such as NGOs and people’s organizations, to be able to introduce effectively any social and technological interventions to target community-beneficiaries. However, before a fruitful collaboration among these institutions could be attained, there is a need to build their capacities, and those of the beneficiaries, for the vital roles that they play in the implementation of livelihood projects and environmental management programs.As of January 2008, SEAFDEC-AQD is implementing ICDSA projects in four provinces—Antique, Capiz, Guimaras and Northern Samar in central Philippines. In the pipeline are similar projects for a province in southern Philippines and two provinces in the north.