EDFish

Managing Spain’s small-scale fisheries with limited data? ¡Sí se puede!

Credit: Pam Ruiter

Credit: Pam Ruiter

For the last three years, Environmental Defense Fund Europe has been working in partnership with World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Spain through a nation-wide project focusing on the sustainability of small-scale coastal fisheries. Small-scale fishing is the lifeblood of many coastal Spanish communities. In order to preserve this way of life it is critical to understand how these fisheries are doing biologically. As in small-scale fisheries worldwide, many Spanish coastal fisheries have limited information available to work with, and a stronger link between science and management could be made. Read More »

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Spanish and Portuguese stakeholders meet to create shared vision for a sustainable octopus fishery

Photo: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia

Photo: Pseudopanax at English Wikipedia

By: Raul Garcia Rodriguez, WWF Spain, and Pam Ruiter, EDF EU Oceans

Raul Garcia is WWF Spain’s Fisheries Officer and Pam Ruiter is a Project Manager for EDF’s EU Oceans team based in Spain, where EDF and WWF are collaborating on a project working with coastal fisheries.

Shared by fishermen from Spain and Portugal, the octopus fishery in the waters off the coast of the Iberian Peninsula is economically important and complex. In late January, we attended the International Forum on Octopus Management in the Iberian Peninsula held in Santiago de Compostela, Spain to discuss management challenges in the fishery.

The forum was organised by WWF Spain, WWF UK and the EU GAP2 project, and included a group of 70 stakeholders including members of the fishing sector, management and civil society from across Spain, as well as representatives from Portugal. Read More »

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NGOs should focus on helping fishermen implement policies

It’s no secret that working directly with fishermen to implement fishery management solutions is the most effective way to support positive change. Recently, we have begun engaging in conversations with fishermen, fishery stakeholders and MEPs on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy in Europe. EDF was recently acknowledged in an article in Under Current News for being a leading NGO in European fisheries reform—due in large part to our collaborative approach with fishermen.  Britt Groosman, our EU Program Director, was quoted extensively in this article.

“’EDF has found that the most successful way of working towards fishery management is by consulting fishermen in a participatory process,’ Britt Groosman, program director for EDF in the EU, told Undercurrent. ‘The way to find that out is to talk to all the stakeholders and see what everyone’s concerns are, to try and find a way to get environmental improvement with the buy-in of all the stakeholders involved. Because the more you impose your will on people the more you’ll end up with control issues. People don’t like being told what to do and they’ll try to get around rules. The fishermen are the people who implement the policy on the water, and have the real influence,’ she said.”

Read the full article to learn more about  how we find solutions, at home and abroad, no matter how challenging the problems. Read the full article here.

 

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