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At its March meeting in Cambodia, the 23rd NACA Governing Council endorsed a proposal to add Gender Issues in Aquaculture as a cross-cutting theme for the NACA Work Plan. This means that gender issues will now be incorporated as a regular component of all the thematic work programmes.

The Gender Issues theme will be developed under the mentorship of Dr Meryl Williams, former Director General of the WorldFish Center and Chair of the Organising Committee of the Asian Fisheries Society 3rd Global Symposium on Gender in Aquaculture and Fisheries, held in April 2011, Shanghai. NACA would like to thank Dr Williams for developing the proposal and for agreeing to provide mentorship to the organisation in this regard. The proposal prepared by Dr Williams follows below. – Ed.

Purpose

The purpose of this briefing note is to recommend that the work program of the Network of Aquaculture Centers in Asia (NACA) commits to incorporating gender dimensions. It argues that considering women and men within a gender framework fits well with the Vision of NACA, that many NACA member states and key agencies in the Network are beginning to pay greater attention to women and gender and thus NACA has the requirement to address gender in its work programme and operations, and the opportunity to lead and work with member governments to address gender in the burgeoning aquaculture sector.

At its recent meeting in Cambodia, the 23rd Governing Council endorsed some significant changes to the NACA Work Plan. One of the key changes is the formation of the Sustainable Farming Systems Programme, which will incorporate the former Inland Aquaculture and Coastal Aquaculture Programmes. One of the key issues the new programme will address is sustainable intensification, seeking to increase the productivity of farming systems through gains in efficiency, rather than only through additional resource inputs. As the global population continues to grow, feeding the world without further degrading the environment is a key challenge that must be met.

We are pleased to announce that the Sustainable Farming Systems Programme will be mentored by Prof. Peter Edwards, who will already be well known to many people in the network. Prof. Edwards is an Emeritus Professor at the Asian Institute of Technology, where he founded the aquaculture programme and he has 36 years of experience in aquaculture education, research and development in the Asian region. He will also be familiar to readers of Aquaculture Asia Magazine, for which he has written a regular column on rural aquaculture for many years.

NACA wishes to welcome Prof. Edwards and looks forward to his assistance with the development of the Sustainable Farming Systems Programme.

The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs through the Norwegian Embassy in Bangkok, provides master’s and Ph.D. degree scholarships for qualified students from the Least Developed Countries in Asia to study at Asian Institute of Technology (AIT). In 2012, an additional of up-to 40 master’s degree scholarships will also be made available for students from Myanmar.

The main purpose of the scholarships program is to strengthen capacity of institutions in the least developed countries of Asia, particularly of South and Southeast Asia in the fields of study in Rural and Regional Development Planning, Natural Resources Management, Gender and Development Studies, Energy, Agricultural and Systems Engineering, Environmental Management, Water Engineering Management and disaster preparedness and management. Please visit AIT’s website for more information.

The Sultanate of Oman, with a coast line of 2092 km, pristine at that, and a large extent of land area is embarking on an ambitious aquaculture development program, primarily coastal, for food security and generation of employment opportunities as well as earning export income, targeting the adjacent countries in the region. The government has already taken many preliminary steps towards this development strategy and is determined to make it sustainable and environmentally friendly and most of all not repeat the mistakes that had occurred, too often elsewhere.

Among the steps taken to meet its strategic plans it has already identified coastal sites in eight regions, having taken into consideration all relevant climatic, topographical, water quality characteristics and social issues, to be allocated for aquaculture development in each, and made this information available in the Atlas of Suitable Sites for Aquaculture Projects, Sultanate of Oman. In addition, the government has custom built a state of the art Aquaculture Center, which will coordinate the envisaged activities and act as the main research provider, including demonstration units, and proceeded to formulate guidelines for prospective investors to bit for the proposed sites, spelt out in the Investment Guidelines. The aquaculture centre has proceeded to prepare and distribute information profile booklets on species suitable for the designated areas.

As a prelude the Sultanate of Oman convened the first ever conference on aquaculture, “International Conference on Sustainable Aquaculture Development in the Sultanate of Oman- Investment Opportunities”, which brought together specialists in various sectors from all over the globe (Australia, Italy-FAO, Norway, US, UK, New Zealand, Vietnam etc.), prospective local and foreign investors on 10/11th of December in Muscat. The aquaculture development strategy was floated at this Conference. The Conference was presided by His Excellency the Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries Wealth, Dr Fuad Jaffer Al-Sajwani, and the government’s commitment to the proposed development was most evident by the fact that his Excellency was in attendance throughout the two days of the conference and led the final discussions sessions. The keynote speaker at the conference was the former Director General of NACA, Professor Sena S De Silva, who spoke on “Current trends in commercial aquaculture in Asia & relevance to emerging aquaculture nations”.

FAO has published technical guidelines on the use of wild fish as feed in aquaculture to support sections of FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) addressing responsible fisheries management and aquaculture development. The objective of these guidelines is to assist those concerned to ensure both aquaculture growth and equitable and sustained use of available fish stocks. The guidelines are available for free download.

The guidelines cover a number of issues relevant to the use of wild fish in feeds in aquaculture, ranging from ecosystem and environmental impacts, ethical issues and responsible use of fish as feed, aquaculture technology and development, and statistics and information needs for management. However, issues relating fisheries management are not covered, as these have been considered within separate sets of guidelines related to fisheries management and there exist several sets of technical guidelines on the sustainable management of fisheries and several continuing initiatives to improve sustainable management of fisheries which inter alia would also apply to feed-fish fisheries.

These guidelines are intended to be flexible and capable of evolving as circumstances change or as new information becomes available. Please feel free to send your comments/observations to Mohammad.Hasan ‘at’ fao.org for consideration in preparation of the next edition.

FAO. Aquaculture development. 5. Use of wild fish as feed in aquaculture. FAO Technical Guidelines for Responsible Fisheries. No. 5, Suppl. 5. Rome, FAO. 2011. 79p.