Sustainable Fishing for Food Security and Resilient Communities in the Philippines
To update an old development adage, rather than teaching a person to fish, the USAID/Philippines Ecosystems Improved for Sustainable Fisheries (ECOFISH) project sought to teach fishing communities how much to fish, where to fish and how to monitor fish in order to manage their wild fish resources sustainably as a smart development and adaptation strategy.
Improving the ability of fishers and communities to fish more sustainably not only increases food security and incomes, but also enhances ecological and community resilience in climate-sensitive coastal areas. The key ingredients include a good dose of participatory governance along with building the capacity and willingness of management institutions and fishers to work with nature to conserve critical fish habitat and fish sustainably. Conservation of marine biodiversity and ecosystems can also provide climate co-benefits by increasing coastal resilience to climate variability via an ecosystem-based approach to adaptation.
