Sustainable Fishing Industry

Sustainable fisheries is only possible with full-hearted support from the fisheries communities, government, NGO's and fish processing, trading organizations.
Programs and workshops have to be set up to make them aware of the problem and have to provide a basis for lesson-learning and policy-development in the application of the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (CCRF) of FAO to poverty-reduction objectives.

The primary beneficiaries will be the resource-users in artisanal fisheries communities, particularly the poorer groups of fisherfolks, their associations, and processors.
The secondary beneficiaries will include the Fisheries Departments, plus other related governmental departments, NGOs and others who have overall responsibility for proper management of the fisheries sector.

Sustainability at local level will be enhanced with local communities participating in the planning and management of aquatic resources. With this active participation of the stakeholders themselves, their interest and ability to contribute to effective management of fish resources will increase and thus help ensure the sustainability of their livelihoods.
However this will fail if there is no incentive for the fishing communities. Rainbow has the solution to this problem, whereas it combines the creation of a strong fishing organization with a higher income for their fishermen.

Ghana

Rainbow Sustainable Solutions is the initiator and coordinator of the project “Establishment of a sustainable fishing industry in Ghana”, a project sponsored by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands and partners from Ghana, Philippines and the Netherlands.

This comprehensive project consisted of the following components:

A shipyard for the manufacturing of fiber-glass deep-sea fishing boats and coastal fishing boats to replace the dug-out canoe.
Tuna fishing for the fresh tuna market in Europe. This involves only line fishing on large tuna, a selective way of fishing entirely done by Ghanaian fishermen.
The set-up of a credit facility to enable fishermen to acquire new boats. Under condition that they are member of an accredited fishing association and after finalizing successfully several workshops.
The strengthening of fishing associations, financially and through improvement of their management skills

Training and technical assistance on tuna fishing was provided by the Bureau of Fisheries and Aquatic Resources from the Philippines (BFAR), while the T&TA for the shipyard was the responsibility of our Philippine partner, Stoneworks Engineering. The Royal Institute of the Tropics (KIT) based in Amsterdam, the Netherlands was the leading party with regard to the last three components.

Somalia

In Puntland, the northern state of Somalia a similar project is carried out in cooperation with partners from Sri Lanka, Somalia and the Netherlands. One of the partners is Nedsom Foundation, a Dutch – Somalian organization based in the Hague, the Netherlands. The project is sponsored by a number of Dutch organizations as reaction on the tsunami in December 2004.

Since then much was accomplished by our team. A shipyard has been set-up near Bosaso, the main harbor at the Gulf of Aden and a tuna canning factory is operational since 2010. In addition the shipyard supplied the first boat, a trimarine equipped with three sails and a 120 HP engine to the factory.