19 December 2003, Bangkok, Thailand Millions of poor
families in Asia depend on the bounty of small-scale fish farms,
lakes, inland waterways and the ocean for their survival.
In some countries here such as Bangladesh, Cambodia, Indonesia,
Japan, the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, the Republic
of Korea and the Philippines close to 50 percent of people's
animal protein intake comes from fish consumption. Overall, the
region accounts for around two-thirds of the world's total consumption
of fish, FAO studies show.
In fact, for many poor Asian communities aquatic resources represent
a crucial rural safety net that not only bolsters household food
security but also gives families a way to earn extra cash selling
on local markets, says Simon Funge-Smith, FAO regional aquaculture
officer for Asia and the Pacific.
A hidden bounty
But though small-scale artisanal fishing and fish farming are crucial
to so many of Asia's poor, national policies and development strategies
don't always reflect this reality.
"Unfortunately, the benefits of these sectors are often hidden
from view, overlooked by agricultural economists or overshadowed
by export-focused policies," Funge-Smith explains.
Another challenge facing poor fisherfolk in Asia -- as well as the
government institutions mandated to help them -- is the lack of
information about small-scale aquaculture and fishing techniques
that have been employed successfully by poor communities elsewhere.
"Information sharing among the countries and communities in
the region is vital for empowering people and to learn from each
other, not only the success stories, but also the costly failures,"
Rohana Subasinghe, a senior fisheries officer at FAO. "The
more we communicate, the more we learn."
To help poor Asian families dependent on aquatic resources learn
how to sustainably tap those resources to earn more money and produce
more food, the Network of Aquaculture Centres in Asia-Pacific (NACA)
joined with FAO, the United Kingdom's Department
for International Development, and Voluntary
Service Overseas to establish the Support to Regional Aquatic
Resources Management (STREAM) Initiative.
The basic idea: provide empowering support to poor people whose
livelihoods depend on fishing, aquaculture or harvesting of aquatic
resources while helping them to become actively involved in policy-making
related to these resources.
"STREAM is a network aimed at capacity building and information
sharing," explains Subasinghe. "We're trying to arrive
at a better understanding of how poor people in Asia rely on fishing
and fish farming, identify ways we can help them do more, spread
understanding of these issues throughout the region, and finally
help these communities have a voice in shaping the policies that
At the same time, he says, STREAM documents what it learns about
the livelihoods of the poor and what capacity-building strategies
have proved successful in helping them capture or farm more fish
and passes that information on to national agencies and policy-makers.
"In this way, STREAM is a response to Chapter 26 of Agenda
21 of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development,
which calls on the international community to help empower indigenous
people and their communities' to participate in the national formulation
of policies, laws and programmes relating to resource management
and development that may affect them," adds Graham Haylor,
the project's director.
Key STREAM activities include:
convening regional and national meetings and workshops that
provide communities, policy-makers and resource managers with opportunities
to learn, teach, network and share information across sectoral and
producing national aquatic resource inventories that take
stock of local aquatic resources, document how the poor utilize
them and assess the policy frameworks that affect their ability
to do so;
disseminating information via a multilanguage learning journal
and an extensive online library and database collection;
monitoring different management approaches and engaging with
policymakers to shape development strategies that help the poor
make the most of aquatic resources.
Casting a wide net
Currently, STREAM has offices in Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia,
the Lao Peoples Democratic Republic, Nepal, the Philippines
and Viet Nam. They are woven together into a large network via a
coordinated Internet communication strategy, gatherings and workshops,
regular conference calls and the publication of learning materials
in different languages and dialects.
On the ground, national coordinating teams manage country offices,
working in close cooperation with partners ranging from government
agencies to academic centres to non-profit organizations and community
The communication that occurs is really quite extraordinary,"
says Haylor. "STREAM is sharing learning across 14 different
languages through a communications process that allows a farmers
story spoken in chotanagpuri (an Indian tribal language) to be recorded
in Hindi, translated into English, then into local languages in
many other Asia Pacific countries, and then read by service providers
and farmers all across the region."
Since its inception in December 2001, STREAM has chalked up a number
In India, for example, the initiative helped give poor people from
tribal communities a voice shaping that country's current five-year
In Cambodia, STREAM support paved the way for local communities
to assume an active role in co-managing inland fisheries there.
In Viet Nam, STREAM collaborated with the Ministry of Fisheries
Viet Nam to create a Sustainable Aquaculture for Poverty Alleviation
programme, which, instead of taking a top-down approach, addresses
the needs of fishers and farmers from the perspective of their own
And across the region, national fisheries departments and agencies
are using the STREAM network to coordinate activities and pool resources,
share information and experiences, and acquire new knowledge and
Information Officer, FAO
+39 06 570 53168