Fishing about and about fishing

THIS TIME - LET’S DO IT RIGHT

 

This time I found it impossible to write about any other topic. Less than a

month passed since the words “Tropical storms bring some of the world’s

worst disasters” were printed here in the December issue of World Fishing,

describing America’s recent hurricane series. The Nature’s Terror, which

stroke with the 9.0 deg. Richter-scale earthquake and the consequent

tsunamis that ripped into beaches and raped coastal areas from Sumatra to

East Africa, made other topic immaterial.

The enormity of the calamity is hard to perceive. The mega-waves swamped

over thousands of kilometers of wide coastal stretches of the northern

Sumatra, southern Thailand, the whole of Sri Lanka’s eastern coastline, the

three southeastern states of India and low-lying islands of the Maldives,

Andaman, and Nicobar archipelagoes. They submerged villages, towns, ports

and vast swathes of countryside, spreading death, misery and despair from

Indonesia all the way to East Africa’s coasts and islands.

As in the case of tropical storms, the share of fisherfolk in the total loss of

life and property was by far larger than their proportion in these countries’

populations. The survivors had to face not only massive death but also

destruction of their homes, and loss of fishing boats, engines and fishing

gear, their only means of making a living. Among the 11 countries affected,

fisherfolk of Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Maldives, India, and Thailand were the

hardest hit. Many thousands of their fishing craft were lost, along with

equipment and beach installations.

Calls for help. First urgent calls for help came from those who’ve been on

the spot and already have started to help the survivors. Herman Kumara, the

Convener of the National Fisheries Solidarity of Sri Lanka (NAFSO), e-mailed

his correspondents worldwide, while his team was working its way through

the desolation: “Please help us urgently”.

Pretty soon governments and NGOs from all over the world started collecting

contributions and sending out assistance missions, while some people

started thinking of things that must be done so that the survivors could keep

going on in a world, which for them would never be the same.

"These communities have lost all their productive assets," said Fernanda

Guerrieri, Chief of FAO's Emergency Operations Service. "Obviously the most

pressing needs are for medical supplies, clean water, food, shelter and

sanitation, but the affected communities need to restart productive

activities as soon as possible so that they can feed themselves and to avoid

mass migration of the displaced to already overpopulated cities."

Prof. John Kurien of India, a life-long fisherfolk’s activist wrote in the

SAMUDRA News Alert that, apart from bringing the fishing communities back

into a functioning condition, future programs should provide them with safer

housing farther off the beaches that in the Bay of Bengal are prone to natural

disasters, install modern warning and rescue systems, and rehabilitate

coastal vegetation for natural protection of the beaches and beyond.

The Tamil Nadu government wants to keep 85,000 survivors close to their

respective fishing villages, and to help them with fishing equipment and

housing. The government wants to accommodate them within a month in

150 “sheds”, with toilets and community kitchens near by. This would

enable them to stay at their home sites and start fishing. Houses will be

repaired and new houses constructed. The budget, about US$ 4,350,000, or

US$51 per survivor, doesn’t seem over-ambitious.

The terror is now over, most of the dead have been buried or cremated, and

what remains is the misery and destitution of the survivors, many of them

fishing people without homes, boats and gear. Whole technical and

commercial superstructures have been destroyed. In some areas, along with

fisherfolk, the catastrophe killed also their clients and consumers.

Let’s do it right. No doubt, massive international aid will start coming in.

High priority should be given to the recovery of the production capacity of

the coastal fishing people who lost the bulk of their kattumarams (sailing or

outboard-powered log-rafts), regular and outrigger-canoes, other traditional

small wooden craft and also small, motorized fibre-glass fishing boats and

launches. This is the sort of equipment that would serve best the surviving

coastal fishing people. It can be inexpensively locally produced or repaired. It

shouldn’t be replaced with expensive fishing boats of foreign construction

not tested for local conditions and with which local fishermen are not

familiar.

A decades-old malady has been plaguing international and bi-lateral technical

assistance. Donor countries have been converting a share of their aid

obligations into equipment of their own making. In this way, all sorts of

expensive “western” technology, inappropriate for local peoples and

conditions, were being sent to developing countries. This has been very

convenient for the donors, not many of which have followed the example of

Denmark, which made it a matter of principle not to use its own products in

its foreign assistance schemes. As a rule, such technical assistance was often

coming at the expense of money that could’ve been spent more productively

directly at the aid’s destinations.

To avoid “white elephant”-type projects and be truly useful, the financial

assistance should be aimed at local production infrastructure, local raw

material, local boat and equipment makers, and nationally produced

machinery for which technical support and ample spare parts supply are

locally available.

On the other hand, also larger fishing vessels were damaged, sunk, or otherwise

destroyed. Such, could probably be replaced by vessels of similar size and

technology level originating from capacity reduction schemes in northern fishing

countries. I’m aware of the rules and the lobbies that stand in the way of such

procedure. Nonetheless, the enormity of the damage and the urgency of the

needs should take precedence over routine thinking.

Fast and highly professional assessment of the needs should be performed. FAO

Fisheries together with the fishery departments of the concerned countries and

such regional international institutions as SEAFDEC seem to be best equipped to

produce results that would be recognized and accepted by the various donors.