LPA Fishing Co-operatives

Creating a resilient co-management fisheries model is the name of the game.  The first step to this is empowering local fishing communities to organise and regulate themselves.  With the new registration of island inhabitants and fishing boats almost completed we are presented with an opportunity to implement a resilient system that is able to overcome the challenges that Beach Management Units succumbed to.  In the pursuit of making the LPA an example of sustainable fisheries management it will be the first site on Lake Victoria for fishing co-operatives to be implemented and trialled in a controlled setting.

The LPA, as a protected area, offers an arena in which we can trial a new approach to co-managing fisheries on Lake Victoria. Taking queues from traditional fishing cultures, we want to promote stewardship of each community's local fisheries by preventing transitory fishing. To do this we need to move away from the current system of open access fishing to area access. A change such as this requires huge steps in national fisheries policy and fisherman accountability. New government initiatives requiring fishermen to register themselves and their boats are bridging this gap.

At the core of the LPA's revolutionary approach to fisheries management are fishing co-operatives. Designed as a model that empowers low income fishermen to join together in order to manage their own fishery for both profitability and sustainability, co-operatives are self regulating, managed by an internal committee and have a support network of local councils and local law enforcement. New members are only accepted into the group once they have registered their boat to the landing site from which the co-operative operates. They will also need to receive a recommendation from the community and local council.

Co-operatives are encouraged to pool a portion of their profits to assist members in difficult moments, for activities such as boat and equipment repairs. On Bulago we are experimenting with extending some benefits to the community by allocating some of the money in the co-operative pool to village and island initiatives put forward by the Local Council.

The community on Bulago Island has already welcomed the idea of being the first to form a fishing co-operative. They will be allocated a network of fishing “zones” within the LPA. These zones will represent areas of lake in which they will be the only fishermen allowed to fish within therefore removing competitive fishing and allowing a community to manage their own fisher on a micro scale. The designation of these zones will be decided through a process of negotiation between co-operative fishermen and research conducted by NaFIRRI, to ensure vital fish breeding grounds are preserved while fishermen are able to catch enough fish to prosper.

The Bulago Island fishing co-operative, with the support of the UPDF, will be encouraged to report any unauthorised fishing vessels entering the LPA, while also aiding with gathering various data points for long term research that will allow us to track the success of the reserve and the LPA project. This data will also be vital in informing the co-operative how to best manage their fishing grounds to ensure they remain busy with fish and profitable for the whole community.

Once fisheries stakeholders on all levels are confident of the all-round benefits of this fisheries management model it is Kuokoa's hope, with the governments blessing, that this approach be extended to surrounding fishing communities in a second round of testing on a much larger scale.