Along with a feature on our climate change work, this year¡¯s Annual Report covers topics like fish breeding, coral reef work, post-cyclone rehabilitation, big numbers, and helping the most disadvantaged through aquaculture, to name just a few.

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This Medium-Term Plan (MTP) sets out the WorldFish Center response for harnessing fisheries and aquaculture to help address the global issue of food shortage and poverty by addressing two key development challenges: i) expanding sustainable aquaculture, and ii) ensuring productive and resilient small-scale fisheries. The MTP is developed around six major areas: 1. Global drivers of change 2. Markets and trade 3. Multi-level and multi sectoral governance 4. Improving sustainable aquaculture technologies 5. Aquaculture and the environment 6. Resilience in practice for small-scale fisheries.

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The potential impacts of climate change on fishing communities and fishing supplies are profound. To tackle this issue involves 1. Strengthening science to inform adaptation needs and mitigation options. 2. Putting knowledge into policy and practice. 3) Collaboration for climate change adaptation.

Fisheries and aquaculture both contribute to meeting the Millennium Development Goals but vulnerability to climate change threatens the contribution that they make to development. Impacts of climate change on small-scale fisheries are of great relevance to poverty reduction. Poverty undermines the resilience of social-ecological systems such as fisheries. The majority of the world¡¯s 250 million fisherfolk lives in areas that are highly exposed to climate change. A combination of climate-related stresses and widespread overexploitation of fisheries reduces the scope for adaptation and increases risks of stock collapse. Aquaculture can utilize aquatic resources of marginal economic value and can provide a diversification strategy in the face of environmental change but is also susceptible to external risk factors, including climate change. This chapter examines the concepts of vulnerability, adaptive capacity, and resilience in relation to discussion on adaptation to climate change.

There is increasing concern over the consequences of global warming for the food security and livelihoods of the world¡¯s 36 million fisherfolk and the nearly 1.5 billion consumers who rely on fish for more than 20% of their dietary animal protein. With mounting evidence of the impacts of climate variability and change on aquatic ecosystems, the resulting impacts on fisheries livelihoods are likely to be significant, but remain a neglected area in climate adaptation policy. Drawing upon our research and the available literature, and using a livelihoods framework, this paper synthesizes the pathways through which climate variability and change impact fisherfolk livelihoods at the household and community level.

International organizations are calling for fisheries to be included in a new global deal on climate change. A consortium of 16 organizations including the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the World Bank and the WorldFish Center issued a policy brief to delegates meeting in Bonn from June 1-12 for the latest round of UN climate talks. Their key message was outlined in a Commentary by two of the authors of the brief published May 28 on Nature Reports Climate Change. Nick Dulvy, Canadian Research Chair in Marine Biodiversity and Conservation at Simon Fraser University, Vancouver, and Eddie Allison, director of the WorldFish Center in Penang, Malaysia, argue that climate impacts represent a serious threat to those who depend on fisheries and aquaculture resources both for protein and as a source of income.

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Cambodia is highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change on fisheries, which supply livelihoods for millions and up to 80% of all animal protein in the diet. Most fisheries are highly variable by nature and subject to environmental change, including climate change. Hydropower dam construction, intensified fishing pressure and macroeconomic drivers are likely to affect Cambodian fisheries more immediately and visibly than climate change. Building fisher communities' capacity to adapt to these more immediate changes goes hand-in-hand with improving their capacity to adapt to climate change. A far-reaching strategy to improve adaptive capacity and strengthen resilience promises to reduce poverty and enhance food production now and in the years to come.

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Climate change poses new challenges to the sustainability of fisheries and aquaculture systems, with serious implications for the 520 million people who depend on them for their livelihoods and the nearly 3 billion people for whom fish is an important source of animal protein. This issues brief highlights key areas that WorldFish Center aims to work with partner to tackle this global problem.

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Funded by the Australian Government, The project "Poverty alleviation, mangrove conservation and climate change: Carbon offsets as payments for mangrove ecosystem services in Solomon Islands" explores whether or not mangroves can be included in offset projects. This brief outlines the key elements of the projects, its key deliverables. The project offers the Government of Solomon Islands timely advice and enhanced technical expertise to cope with the costs and challenges arising from climate change. It trains Solomon Island scientists on the implications of, and opportunities for, using tradable carbon credits as a conservation tool and livelihood opportunity.

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Relying on experience from West Africa and the Mekong Basin, the authors contend that small-scale inland fisheries are a critical element in the livelihoods of many farming households who live near water bodies in developing countries. Empirical evidence suggests that the relation between poverty and small-scale fisheries cannot be reduced to a simple correlation with income. A more thorough analysis is required. Using vulnerability and exclusions as two dimensions of poverty, we show that poverty in fishing communities includes a wide range of variables: income but also land ownership, debt, access to health, education and financial capital, and political and geographical marginalization.

This paper examines the impact of an aquaculture development project in Bangladesh on food security, with particular emphasis on the poor. The analysis shows a positive impact of aquaculture development on employment, income and consumption. A number of implications for policy in areas that might strengthen these outcomes are discussed and recommendations are presented.

This brief examines the fisheries sector in Zambia. Fisheries sector has made a small contribution (1.24%) to the country's national GDP. However, It is estimated that more than 20 percent of animal protein intake for people in Zambia is from fish. Hence there is an important role for fish and fish products in the food and nutrition security of the Zambian population, especially the urban poor and people living with HIV and AIDS (PLHIV). The brief also includes recommendations of how fisheries can contribute to the government's goal of a more inclusive, diversified and sustained economic growth.

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Fish is an important food for over 400 million Africans, contributing essential proteins, minerals and micronutrients to their diets. Paradoxically, despite the high dependence on fish as a source of animal protein, fish consumption in sub-Saharan Africa is the world's lowest. The continent is projected to need an additional 1.6 million tons of fish a year by 2015 just to maintain current consumption. The rapid increases in fish supply required over the next decades will only be possible, therefore, if these fisheries are sustained and improved, while simultaneously developing aquaculture (fish farming). This note summarizes this dual approach.

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The combined population of five South Asian countries (India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Nepal) is expected to rise from the current 1.5 billion to 2.2 billion by 2050, with the biggest increases occurring in rural areas where the poorest people

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This paper examines freshwater prawn (Macrobrachium rosenbergii) farming in southwest Bangladesh where a large number of farmers have converted their rice fields to export oriented prawn farms, locally known as gher. The gher design potentially provides good opportunities for diversified production of prawn, fish, rice and dike crops, that has brought about a 'blue revolution'. The average annual yield of prawn, fish and rice was estimated at 467, 986 and 2,257 kg ha-1, respectively. Large farmers produced higher production due to more inputs, larger farm size and longer experience of prawn farming than others. All farmers in different gher size categories (i.e., small, medium and large) made a profit, with seed and feed dominating variable costs. Despite a higher production costs per hectare, the average annual net return was higher in large farms (US$2,426), compared with medium (US$1,798) and small (US$1,420) farms. Prawn production in gher systems has been accompanied by a great deal of social and economic benefits. Most farmers associate the blue revolution with increases in income and living standards. Socioeconomic benefits of the households of prawn farmers depend on resource ownership (i.e., farm size) and are very apparent. Nevertheless, a number of significant challenges, particularly social and environmental issues, are vital in translating its benefits effectively to the thousands of rural poor.

This paper draws on approaches in ecology, biology and policy analysis to examine the tensions between dams and fisheries in the Lower Mekong Basin. We review the exceptional importance of Mekong fisheries in terms of total catch, economic value and their role in rural livelihoods. The ecological conditions necessary to sustain the fish production are also analysed. The paper then considers the implications of dam development in the Mekong Basin, drawing on recent research to review predicted changes in hydrology and the resulting impacts on fishery resources. We then consider why, given the importance of fisheries, these potential impacts are not being addressed in regional policy processes.

The objective of this technical manual is to relay the field experience of a group of scientists who have worked extensively in small fisheries in sub-Sahara Africa and Asia and lay out a series of simple and pragmatic pointers on how to establish and run initiatives for community catch assessment. The manual relies in particular on practical experience gained implementing Project 34 of the Challenge Programme on Water and Food: Improved Fisheries Productivity and Management in Tropical Reservoirs.

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This paper presents a comparative analysis of the technical and economic parameters of two community led approaches: the semi-closed water bodies and the floodplain water bodies based systems in Bangladesh. The two approaches differ in management, fish production, impact on biodiversity, capital investment and annual variable costs, share of profits and proportional benefits for the poor, and impact on allied businesses¡ªthe so-called backward and forward linkages. For the semi-closed water bodies (beels) the fish harvest increased from an annual average of 380 kg ha-1 in 2002 to 921 kg ha-1 by 2005. During the same period, the biodiversity measured for self-recruiting indigenous species, using the Shannon-Weiner Index (H¡ä), increased significantly (P<0.05) from 2.24 in 2002 to 2.56 in 2005. For the floodplain aquaculture system (Pankowri or Daudkandi model) annual fish production ranged from 1.5 to 1.8 t ha-1. Annual net economic benefit per hectare was found to be Taka 37,710¡À24,600 and 26,819¡À10,780 for semi-closed and floodplain systems respectively. The net income per kg of product was found to be Taka 44.0¡À9.0 and 13.0¡À3.0 for semi-closed and floodplain systems, respectively. The floodplain system tends to use comparatively more feed and fertilizers per unit area that pond-based aquaculture.

This review is prepared as part of the FAO Project ¡°Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and monitoring in aquaculture¡±. The review provides a compilation, review and synthesis of existing EIA and environmental monitoring procedures and practices in aquaculture in the Asia-Pacific region, the largest aquaculture-producing region in the world. This review, as in other regions, gives special consideration to four areas related to EIA and monitoring in aquaculture including: (1) the requirements (2) the practice (3) the effectiveness and (4) suggestions for improvements. Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Viet Nam are covered in some depth, and a brief overview is provided of EIA and monitoring in several other countries in the region that are in various stages of adoption and implementation of environmental impact assessment, monitoring and other environmental management measures for aquaculture.

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Aquaculture in developing countries is largely based on unimproved fish strains. There is ample evidence indicating the potential of genetic improvement programs and a range of selection methods may be used. Examples of the application of mass, cohort, within family, and combined between-within family are given. The methods are discussed in terms of their effectiveness and suitability. It is concluded that in principle all the methods can work well, provided the selection program is started with a population with a broad genetic base and that during its conduct a balance is struck between selection intensity and containment of inbreeding. Limitations to the implementation of genetic improvement programs and the challenges they face are discussed.

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This factsheet hightlights the achievements of the Adivasi Fisheries Project (AFP) targeting the disadvanged rural minorities called Adivasi. In leading the AFP, the WorldFish Center built on 2 decades of earlier work in Bangladesh on aquaculture techniques for smallholders and communities fisheries management. The AFP lifted the average income of participating Adivasi households. The increased income improved their food securities, reducing their food deficit period from 1.7 months in 2007 to 1.4 months in 2008

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The Adivasi Fisheries Project (AFP) set out in 2007 to help Adivasis in the north and northwest of Bangladesh find new and more sustainable livelihoods. It is based on 2 decades of WorldFish Center research in Bangladesh on aquaculture techniques for smallholders and community fisheries management and targeted disadvantaged rural miniorities called Adivasi. The project significantly improved Adivasi households¡¯ livelihoods. Monitoring survey results found all of the fishery-related livelihood options profitable. As farmers were able to improve their livelihoods after a single year of AFP intervention, it is expected that they will not only sustain this improvement but build on it as their experience grows and with continued technical support from the AFP in 2009.

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An index of economic vulnerability is developed and used with a more conventional measure of income poverty to explore vulnerability and chronic poverty in isolated rural communities. The method is applied to data from remote rural fishing¨Cfarming communities in Congo. The analysis highlights the high vulnerability of full-time fisherfolk and identifies mobility as a key factor increasing vulnerability. In line with other recent economic research, our work also shows that households can remain highly vulnerable even when their incomes lie well above the average local income. These different results are consistent with the more specialised literature on small-scale fisheries, confirming the robustness of the analysis proposed in this paper.

The intensification of agricultural productivity through technological innovation has often been reported to induce considerable social and economic transformation in the rural communities where those innovations are introduced. This paper investigates those changes in the case of acadja, a particular technique for intensifying fishing, which has been adopted in various parts of the developing world. Using the case of Lake Volta in Ghana, the paper investigates the social and economic impacts of this technique, looking in particular into issues of income, assets and (re)distribution of the wealth created by those acadjas. Our analysis shows that the impact of acadjas on fishing communities is mixed. While acadja certainly helps to enhance the supply of protein-rich food and may have trickle down effects at the community level, those positive contributions are greatly reduced by other more negative effects. The data show in particular that acadjas are not a poor-neutral technology in the sense that their contribution to household income seems to benefit disproportionably the wealthiest owners. As such, acadja fisheries often create negative sentiments amongst the households who cannot afford investing in this technology, creating a situation which may lead to social tension and intra-community conflicts.

Diagnosis and adaptive management can help improve the ability of small-scale fisheries (SSF) in the developing world to better cope with and adapt to both external drivers and internal sources of uncertainty. This paper presents a framework for diagnosis and adaptive management and discusses ways of implementing the first two phases of learning: diagnosis and mobilising an appropriate management constituency. The discussion addresses key issues and suggests suitable approaches and tools as well as numerous sources of further information. Diagnosis of a SSF defines the system to be managed, outlines the scope of the management problem in terms of threats and opportunities, and aims to construct realistic and desired future projections for the fishery. These steps can clarify objectives and lead to development of indicators necessary for adaptive management. Before management, however, it is important to mobilize a management constituency to enact change. Ways of identifying stakeholders and understanding both enabling and obstructive interactions and management structures are outlined. These preliminary learning phases for adaptive SSF management are expected to work best if legitimised by collaborative discussion among fishery stakeholders drawing on multiple knowledge systems and participatory approaches to assessment.

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This chapter examines the situation of small boat fishermen in eastern Indonesia, a large number of whom are now engaged in illegal shark fishing in Australia waters. The paper looks at: 1) the historical background to current developments; 2) the general shift from trochus and trepang gathering to sharkfishing that occurred in the 1990¡¯s; 3) the rapid increase in the market for shark and the variety of shark that are currently targeted; 4) differences among the four ports along the southern rim of eastern Indonesia from which most of these fishermen sail; 5) the various local networks connected to these different ports and variety of strategies and technologies that have been and are being developed by fishermen from these areas.

Fishing communities are often recognised as being amongst the poorest in developing countries, and interventions targeted at improving resource status seen as central in the fight against poverty. A series of field assessments focusing on vulnerability conducted in two communities in Mali and Nigeria revealed some counterintuitive results. Despite fishing being the primary livelihood, vulnerabilities relating directly to the state of the resource were ranked lower than those relating to basic human needs. Those results challenge the conventional view and suggest that non-sectoral interventions can have more effective impacts on the livelihood of those communities than interventions targeting the resources.

Increasing population, ineffective management, competition among fishing gears over access to resources and proliferation of destructive practices are imposing severe stress on the inland water bodies of Bangladesh. These factors also contribute to the increasing incidence of conflicts among fishery stakeholders. Whenunabated, these conflicts arepotential threats to the livelihoods of millions of the poorest fishing communities that depend on these resources. Effective communication between conflicting parties is perceived as a key for establishing successful negotiations for managing conflicts. On this premise, this paper presents and assesses a Fisheries Conflicts Communication Framework, henceforth called FishCom, a tool for developing plans and strategies for managing fisheries conflicts in the inland fisheries of Bangladesh.

The Water Research Institute (WRI) in Akosombo, Ghana, is working to bring cage aquaculture technology to smallholder farmers. The stocking, feeding and cage-construction technology piloted by WRI is now being widely adopted in the Lower Volta basin in Ghana. The results of WRI research over the period 2005-2009 are presented here as a guide to potential investors.

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There has been a gradual evolution in fisheries management over the past decades from a focus on sustainability of a single species or stock and resources to a focus on marine ecosystems.Among the issues to be addressed for effective implementation of ecosystem based fisheries management(EBFM) are the appropriate governance arrangements and scale for management.Thepurpose of this paper is to examine these issues of governance and scale as related to EBFM in tropical developing countries through ananalysis of approaches being taken in the Philippines to manage fisheries on amulti- jurisdictional level.The management of fisheries and coastal resources in a number of bays and gulfs, which represent marine ecosystems,is presented.The opportunities and constraints to ecosystem based fisheries management in the Philippines are discussed and lessons for broader application of these governance structures in tropical developing country marine ecosystems are presented.

This chapter provides a 'how to' guide for practically applying the integrated approach to a wetland assessment. It separates the assessment activities into three stages (preparation; fi eld assessment and analysis; presentation and engagement) and eleven component steps. It gives recommendations based on experience of using the toolkit in the two case studies presented.

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Identifying locally available ingredients to formulate tilapia feed that is nutritious but cheaper than existing commercial feeds promises productivity, livelihood, health and environmental benefits, especially by enabling local feed manufacturers.

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Inland capture fisheries in India have declined in recent years, leaving thousands of fishers to sink deeper into poverty. Freshwater aquaculture in small water bodies like ponds now contributes 80% of the country¡¯s inland fish production. This manual outlines the use of small reservoir for freshwater aquacultureas a means of providing rural areas with food and livelihoods and protecting aquatic ecosystems, in particular by facilitating the conservation of indigenous fish species.

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This chapter presents livelihood analysis concepts, and provides an operational model for livelihood analysis in the context of wetland systems. It recommends a generic ¡®nested¡¯ sampling approach, and gives guidance on a range of data collection methods.

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Commonly adopted approaches to managing small-scale fisheries (SSFs) in developing countries do not ensure sustainability. Progress is impeded by a gap between innovative SSF research and slower-moving SSF management. The paper aims to bridge the gap by showing that the three primary bases of SSF management--ecosystem, stakeholders¡¯ rights and resilience--are mutually consistent and complementary. It nominates the ecosystem approach as an appropriate starting point because it is established in national and international law and policy. Within this approach, the emerging resilience perspective and associated concepts of adaptive management and institutional learning can move management beyond traditional control and resource-use optimization, which largely ignore the different expectations of stakeholders; the complexity of ecosystem dynamics; and how ecological, social, political and economic subsystems are linked. Integrating a rights-based perspective helps balance the ecological bias of ecosystem-based and resilience approaches. The paper introduces three management implementation frameworks that can lend structure and order to research and management regardless of the management approach chosen. Finally, it outlines possible research approaches to overcome the heretofore limited capacity of fishery research to integrate across ecological, social and economic dimensions and so better serve the management objective of avoiding fishery failure by nurturing and preserving the ecological, social and institutional attributes that enable it to renew and reorganize itself.

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This chapter introduces the integrated approach to wetland assessment. It argues for integration as an essential principle for understanding wetlands and their management and use. It discusses different approaches for integration, and advocates a conceptual and methodological framework for assessing wetlands in a fully integrated manner.

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