Fishers have been impacted by poor fishing practices, negligent management of fisheries and frequent hurricanes, exacerbated by two years of pandemic-related restrictions. Now it is feared that WTO proposals on subsidies are skewed to benefit the large fishing nations. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

By Zadie Neufville
Kingston, Jul 28 2022 (IPS)

In the 21 years it took the World Trade Organisation (WTO) to agree on a historic deal on fishing subsidies, the lives of fisherfolk in Rocky Point, Clarendon, have seen many ups and downs.

The largest fishing village on Jamaica’s south coast has been battered by nature and economic challenges which have left their mark. The fishing beach signs of frequent run-ins with Mother Nature and economic battles have sent many to ‘greener pastures’.

Rocky Point sits at the edge of the Portland Bight protected area outside the special fisheries management area (a protected zone). It is the country’s largest fishing village which, in its heyday, attracted fishers from up and down the coast. But while the town has grown, taking in surrounding cane fields and wetlands, the trade that built it, fishers say, is dying. In communities like these, subsidies take on a whole new meaning.

Fishermen Face Hardships

Fifty-year-old fisherman Bradley Bent has been supplementing his income as a boat repairman. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

Decades of poor fishing practices, negligent fisheries management and frequent hurricanes, exacerbated by two years of pandemic-related restrictions, have taken their toll. These days, 50-year-old fisherman Bradley Bent has been supplementing his income as a boat repairman. These other skills he honed as a fisherman for more than three decades are helping him through the tough times.

Bent was hunched over, patching his boat with fibreglass under the searing heat of the morning sun. Around him, a group of repair men applied fresh paint to upturned boats. The faint sea breeze is putrid with the smell of chemicals, and the air pulses with the sounds of the buzzing generator and sanders as the men smooth the hull of a nearby boat.

COVID-19 restrictions grounded or reduced the sizes of most fishing crews and slashed their incomes by restricting them to shorter, less profitable distances in a bay virtually depleted of fish. Nowadays, fishermen are gone for days at a time but can’t afford to cover the cost of fuel or pay their bills.

Fishing is no longer an everyday affair at what was once the pride of south coast fishing, where fishermen could pull nets close to breaking with many of 11 species in the island’s waters, including parrotfish, snapper, wench-man, grunt, jack, turbot and butterfish, and seasonal hauls of wahoo, grouper and tuna.

Rocky Point fishers like Bent must now travel up to 70 miles up the coast or to the offshore fishing colony of Pedro Cays to find fish. In the last two years, things have gotten much worse. Some fishermen have left the business, forced out by the rising cost of fuel, equipment and the effort it takes to scrape by. Others, like George Henry, a fidgety forty-something, make do with menial jobs like gutting and scaling fish to make ends meet.

On the beaches around the Kingston Harbour – not so long ago, fertile grounds for shad, sprat, whiting and crabs – fishing is an exercise in futility, said Gladston White. The Jamaican fisherman is chairman of the Caribbean Network of Fisherfolk Organisations (CFNO), an organisation of fishers representing member states of the Caribbean Community (CARICOM).

George Henry has to make do with menial jobs like gutting and scaling fish to make ends meet. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

Fish provide almost half of the world’s 7.75 billion people with about 20 percent of their average daily intake of animal protein and up to 50 percent in some developing and least developed countries (FAO 2020). Providing an estimated 59.51 million jobs worldwide while earning the region small countries, including CARICOM, 60 percent of the 164 billion US dollars in exports.

In theory, fishing should be held in check by its very environment: low fish stocks should mean fishing takes more time and costs more money, but this is not the case in depleted areas where food security depends on a good catch, and there is no other source of income.

Financial Assistance for Fishers

According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries, the fishing community suffered significant losses during the COVID-19 lockdown. Government estimates indicate that the sector lost up to 23.1 million US dollars in earnings in 2020 alone.

So, when the government announced relief for fishers in November 2020, many in the fishing community were overjoyed. Unfortunately, only 4,740 of the 26,000 on the Fishermen’s register, or just over 11 percent of the estimated 40,000 people who identify as fishers, received assistance.

The grant would cover their National Fisheries Authority (NFA) registration and ID cards, roughly 100 US dollars in vouchers to buy mesh for fish pots across the 137 fishing communities. An additional allocation of 200 US dollars each went to members of Parliament whose constituencies include fishing communities. The subsidies were to be paid to those fishermen who had been grounded for two months during COVID-19 lockdowns. These pay-outs or assistance are, in the general scheme of things, subsidies and are among those which the WTO and agencies like the FAO seek to ban.

According to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), fishing subsidies in 39 countries averaged 12 billion US dollars annually between 2012 and 2014. While there was a 20 percent reduction between 2015 and 2018, since 2016, the trend has continued to increase.

In its 2020 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture, the FAO identified subsidies as a contributing factor to overfishing, IUU fishing, and the decline of regional fish stocks.

The World Bank’s The Sunken Billions Revisited reported in 2017: “The proportion of fisheries that are fully fished, overfished, depleted, or recovering from overfishing increased from just over 60 percent in the mid-1970s to about 75 percent in 2005 and to almost 90 percent in 2013”.

According to the FAO, subsidies in large fishing nations like the USA, European Union, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, Russia, and China, contribute most to the over-exploitation of marine fish stocks.

WTO Proposed Ban On Subsidies

For the most part, Caribbean Community (CARICOM) governments, including Jamaica, believe the “WTO proposals are skewed to benefit the large fishing nations”, while those proposed for small, vulnerable economies were inadequate to address their interests.

In his presentation to Ministers attending the 12th Ministerial Conference (MC12) in Geneva (June 12 to 17, 2022), Prime Minister of Antigua and Barbuda Gaston Brown noted that most of the estimated USD 22 billion that is spent collectively on subsidies that incentivise unsustainable fishing practices each year, comes from the world’s largest economies.

Speaking on behalf of CARICOM, he pointed out that six of the Caribbean’s smallest countries collectively provide roughly “USD 9.7 million in subsidies that are considered harmful or less than one percent of the global total.”

Subsidies for Caribbean fishers are few and far between. In times of crisis, the government steps in to provide much-needed help for the artisans – usually small-scale professional fishers- who account for more than 90 percent of the industry.

Henry was one of those who did not receive a COVID-19 relief grant, and he is bitter. “I have to be doing this because only their friends get the help,” he said, angrily pointing to the bucket of fish he was paid to clean.

On the other hand, Ricky*(last name withheld on request), is grateful for the benefit but says it did not go far enough to offset the losses, especially with the double-whammy from the sargassum seaweed overwhelming their beach.

“The last time we got help, it was 15,000 US dollars, and not everyone got it,” he said adding: “We need help with the seaweed so we can continue to go to sea”, pointing to the huge pile of rotting seaweed covering beach and foreshore (area between the high and low tide marks).

Bent said the equipment cost is far too high for fishers to afford, given their declining incomes. Mesh costs between 100 and 300 US dollars, depending on the gauge (wire size) and does not include the cost of sticks, rope, and binding wire. Engines cost anywhere from 1000 US dollars (150,000 Jamaican dollars) or more, the men say.

The Jamaican government also gives tax exemptions for fishing equipment such as engines, boats and other gear to help ease the burden of a constantly shifting exchange rate. The men also purchase fuel at cost from the NFA, the agency responsible for regulating the island’s fisheries.

Estimates are that the fishing sector lost up to 23.1 million US dollars in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

Donations categorised as Subsidies 

In the Caribbean, donor agencies like the Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), United Nations Development Programme and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) occasionally offer funding support to develop fisheries management plans and infrastructure.

Other assistance comes from donor agencies through Environmental NGOs like the Caribbean Coastal Area Management Foundation (C-CAM), a local development organisation operating in and managing one of Jamaica’s largest protected areas on behalf of the government. This ‘assistance’ too would come under the scrutiny of the WTO.

Executive Director Ingrid Parchment explained that CCAM also manages three marine protected areas across the parishes of St Catherine and Clarendon. In the last 10 to 15 years, she said, subsidies have come in the form of help with gear in the aftermath of natural disasters like hurricanes, beach improvement projects and gear distribution.

In the Caribbean, 142,000 mostly rural dwellers are directly and indirectly dependent on fishing. The sector reportedly earns 150 million US dollars and saves the region at least three times that sum. Fisheries account for up to 8 percent of gross domestic product in some CARICOM member countries. Belize at 3.9 percent and Guyana at 8.1 percent, according to data from the Caribbean Regional Fisheries Management (CRFM) Secretariat, the CARICOM body responsible for coordinating regional fisheries.

In Belize, for instance, CRFM reports that the fishing industry is primarily artisanal and directly supports the livelihood of more than 15,000 Belizeans.

Meanwhile, the Jamaican fishing industry provides direct and indirect employment to some 40,000 fishers folk. The sector also contributes to the livelihoods of more than 200,000, the Caribbean Regional Track of the Pilot Programme for Climate Resilience (PCCR) project reported in 2015.

The PCCR report noted that at the end of 2015, 23,631 registered fisher folk and 7,133 registered boats were operating from 187 fishing beaches and two cays located at the Pedro Bank. While fin fish makes up the bulk of marine capture, the export earnings are primarily from the lobster and Queen Conch fisheries.

Small Countries Support Fair and Effective Bans

Some ministers negotiating the deal felt the working draft would leave developing and least developed nations bearing the brunt of cuts to the livelihoods of their small-scale fisherfolk and create loopholes for richer countries to continue subsidising the most harmful fishing activities.

Speaking on behalf of the CARICOM and primarily the Eastern Caribbean nations, ahead of the agreement, Prime Minister Brown argued: “the most beneficial deal would be one that requires large fishing nations to prioritise focus on improving the health and population of the target species that are most impacted by subsidies,” rather than permitting larger nations to go farther to catch more fish.

The FAO has reported that fish stocks are at risk of collapsing in many parts of the world due to overexploitation. The organisation’s data shows that about 34% of global stocks are overfished, compared with 10% in 1974, an indicator that stocks are being exploited faster than the fish population can replenish itself.

In 2005 the WTO initiated a call for the prohibition of subsidies and a mandate for eliminating harmful subsidies to be included in Goal 14 of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aims to address ‘Life Below Water’ through the sustainable management and protection of marine and freshwater resources.

In its December 20, 2021 briefing, the WTO said that a reduction in fishing capacity and effort would contribute to the recovery of stocks. The organisations have also argued that subsidies that “directly increase fishing capacity and may lead to overfishing are estimated at about 22 billion US dollars worldwide.”

If nothing else, the June 17 agreement addresses the SDG 14.6 targets, specifically, the elimination of fisheries subsidies.

“The package of agreements you have reached will make a difference to the lives of people around the world. The outcomes demonstrate that the WTO is, in fact, capable of responding to the emergencies of our time,” said WTO Director-General Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala said, in announcing the historic new deal on fisheries subsidies on June 17, 2022.

While not as ambitious as initially planned, it means that for the first time, a WTO agreement has been established to address environmental issues. The new multilateral treaty includes a set of rules prohibiting subsidies to fishers engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, catching overfished stocks and fishing on the high seas outside the control of regional fisheries management authorities.

The agreement includes provisions (Articles 3, 4 and 5) to withhold subsidies from fishing vessels and operators that have engaged in IUU fishing from subsidies, eliminate subsidies in areas where the stocks are overfished and for fishing and fishing-related activities in areas that are outside the control of regional fishing authorities as there are no conservation rules governing these areas. Article 4, however, allows for subsidies to help rebuild overfished stocks.

The agreement also includes oversight of vessels fishing inside foreign waters and for fishing of stocks for which information is limited. In addition, members are required to notify the WTO about the subsidies they provide.

And in response to those members who asked for help, said WTO Director-General, Article 7 includes the creation of “a funding mechanism to provide targeted technical assistance and capacity building to help developing and least-developed country members implement the Agreement.”

On June 17, Chile’s Ambassador Santiago Wills, chairman of the WTO fisheries negotiation committee, noted:

“We have an agreement to eliminate subsidies that contribute to illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and to prohibit subsidies that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing, with appropriate and effective special and differential treatment.”

They believe the new WTO deal does not accommodate the special and differential treatment for less-developed nations that SDG 14.6 mandates.

The former head of now-defunct Jamaica’s Fisheries Division in the Ministry of Agriculture, Andre Kong, opposes the removal of subsidies as proposed by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) because “it does not take into account the realities in countries such as ours,” he said.

In its December 20, 2021 briefing, the WTO said that a reduction in fishing capacity and effort would contribute to the recovery of stocks. The organisations have also argued that subsidies that “directly increase fishing capacity and may lead to overfishing are estimated at about 22 billion US dollars worldwide.”

In Jamaica, the government teamed up with fishing communities to establish sanctuaries or no-take areas to replenish fish stocks, a combined 9,020 hectares across 18 fish sanctuaries and no-take areas, with another four under assessment. Other measures include a new Fisheries Act, legal and management frameworks and regulations to improve policing.

In the Caribbean, 142,000 mostly rural dwellers are directly and indirectly dependent on fishing. Credit: Zadie Neufville/IPS

Across the Caribbean and Latin America, authorities are coordinating through the CRFM, the Organisation of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector of the Central American Isthmus (OSPESCA) and others to implement environmental, livelihood projects and social programmes that aim to support the vulnerable populations that depend on fishing. In Clarendon and St Catherine, Parchment and her C-CAM Foundation continue to roll out donor-funded projects to ease the way for stakeholders.

Once negotiations are complete, countries like Jamaica will have up to two years to minimise the impact of their sector. Caribbean nations and their counterparts in Africa and the Pacific are looking to eliminate fuel and vessel construction subsidies that make distant-water fleets viable and support IUU fishing. So far, the deal has targeted high-seas fishing, which falls outside national jurisdictions.

Ministers from “African, Caribbean and Pacific countries kept their promise to continue negations for a “fair and effective WTO agreement” that would help to minimise the effects of harmful subsidies.

“Year after year, giant, foreign-flagged vessels encroach on Caribbean waters, competing with our local fishing fleets. In 2018, the most recent year for which data are available, six unique foreign distant-water fishing vessels were observed in OECS waters, propped up by over 99 million US dollars in state-sponsored subsidies,” the Prime Minister said.

The six are Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States (OECS) – Antigua and Barbuda, Dominica, Grenada, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines.

In Jamaica, the Ministry of Agriculture estimates that intercepted IUU vessels account for only 14 percent of the IUU fishing. Between January 2011 and March 2019, ten foreign vessels were caught fishing illegally in Jamaican waters.

So even as the world celebrates the WTO deal on subsidies, the spectre of unfinished business hangs over the Caribbean. Governments have said that they will “keep negotiating”, but as long as the trade of high-value protected species like conch remains critical to the livelihoods of regional fishers, uncertainty persists.

This story was produced with the support of Internews’ Earth Journalism Network (EJN)

Read more about this topic here.  (link to booklet)

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Salvadoran fisherman Nicolás Ayala, 63, walks to his boat at the San Luis La Herradura pier, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador, to begin a 24-hour fishing stint offshore. He said that due to the lack of a breakwater at the mouth, where the sea meets the estuary, boats have capsized and some of his colleagues have drowned, leaving their families unprotected because they have no kind of insurance. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

By Edgardo Ayala
SAN LUIS LA HERRADURA, El Salvador , Jun 17 2022 (IPS)

At the pier, Salvadoran fisherman Nicolás Ayala checked the pocket of his pants to make sure he was carrying the hypertension pills he must take when he is at sea on a 24-hour shift. He smiled because he hadn’t forgotten them.

At the age of 63, “we are just aches and pains now,” he told IPS, while showing other pills he carried with him to relieve a toothache and other ailments.

Ayala lives in San Luis La Herradura, a small town located on the coastal strip of the department of La Paz, in south-central El Salvador, on the banks of the Estero de Jaltepeque estuary, which leads to the Pacific Ocean.

Waves of vulnerability

“I am worried that I will suffer a health mishap and I won’t be able to continue working and I will be left on the street, ruined,” he added, noting that, as an artisanal fisherman, he does not have any type of coverage for illness or work-related accidents.

This should not be the case, and they should be covered, as it is one of the highest risk jobs in the world, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

But that is the reality of the thousands of people dedicated to small-scale fishing in El Salvador and the rest of Central America on the two coasts of the isthmus, an activity that is vital for the food security of a large part of the 43 million inhabitants of this region, many of whom suffer serious social deprivation.

Like other sectors of the population, artisanal fishers work in almost absolute vulnerability, without any social measures to protect them or provide adequate coverage from the accidents or illnesses they face on a daily basis, and with only precarious health systems to rely on.

Ayala said that since there is no breakwater at the mouth, the point where the estuary lined by mangroves meets the sea, the waves become dangerous and sometimes overturn small motorboats.

And even if the fishermen know how to swim, they can drown anyway, because their boats fall on them or they get entangled in the nets. Two or three people a year die this way, he added.

“We have nothing, no accident insurance or anything, here only God can bless us, if we drown. If they find our bodies, that’s good, if not, well, the crabs can eat us,” he said, only half jokingly.

According to a FAO report from January 2021, in El Salvador in 2018 the fishing sector employed about 30,730 people, with a total fleet of 13,764 boats, 55 of which were used by the industrial sector and the rest by artisanal fishers, 50 percent of whose boats were motorized.

Fishers weigh part of the day’s catch, after fishing near the Estero de Jaltepeque estuary, on the Pacific coast of El Salvador. Most small-scale fishers in Central America do not earn enough and have to work harder and harder to support their families. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Social security for all

FAO urged the countries of Central America to begin efforts to incorporate artisanal fisheries into national social security policies, during the Mesoamerican Forum on Social Protection in Artisanal Fisheries and Small-scale Aquaculture, held in May in Panama City.

The UN agency pointed out that worldwide, small-scale fishers account for half of the world’s fisheries production and employ 90 percent of the sector’s workforce, half of whom are women.

More than 50 million families in the world depend on small-scale fishing, according to FAO data.

In the case of Central America, the regional director of the Organization of the Fisheries and Aquaculture Sector of the Central American Isthmus (OSPESCA), José Infante, commented that all of the countries have been developing social protection systems for their populations, but that not all sectors have the same access to them, which increases inequality and vulnerability for those who are excluded.

“The artisanal fishing sector is the perfect example of this,” said the OSPESCA director.

These workers, like so many others without coverage, worry about reaching old age and no longer having the energy to go to sea on a daily basis, or suffering a work-related accident that leaves them unable to work.

A Salvadoran fisherman shows some of the shrimp and other kinds of seafood he caught off the Pacific coast of El Salvador. FAO urges governments in Central America to promote social protection for small-scale fishing workers, given their vulnerability and the important role they play in food security in the region. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

The uncertain future

“It will be a very difficult situation; If we don’t have a pension tomorrow we’re going to have a tough time,” Nicaraguan fisherwoman Arelis Flores, 23, mother of one, told IPS.

She is president of the Abraham Moreno cooperative in the Venecia Community, a village of fishers and farmers where 400 families live, located in the municipality of El Viejo, on the Pacific coast of the department of Chinandega in western Nicaragua.

“Around here only teachers retire (with pensions),” Flores said in a telephone interview, adding that her community is made up of poor families with very low levels of schooling.

Fishing in their village consists mainly of breeding red snapper (Lutjanus guttatus) in aquatic cages made with nets in the mangroves.

For his part, Salvadoran fisherman José Santos Martínez, also a resident of San Luis La Herradura, told IPS that artisanal fishers are about to finalize a proposal to present to the country’s authorities, demanding social coverage, in order to reduce their vulnerability.

Martínez is the president of the Salvadoran Confederation of Small-Scale Fishing, Aquaculture and Small-Scale Livestock Farming, the first of its kind in the country, which brings together three federations with a total membership of 3,500 men and women.

“If we are sick we can go to a national hospital, like every citizen, but we have no injury or sick leave coverage for the days we have to stay at home recovering,” said Martínez, 57.

By contrast, those who have a formal sector job, working for a private or state-owned company, are covered by the Salvadoran Social Security Institute (ISSS).

The ISSS, although it has many needs, is considered to provide better service than the national public hospital network, which covers everyone in this country of 6.7 million inhabitants.

Martínez said that achieving something similar for the artisanal sector would be a great step forward, given the accidents and illnesses suffered by fishers in their line of work.

Salvadoran fishers can join the ISSS as self-employed workers, but those interviewed told IPS that they could not afford the 40 dollars a month that the coverage costs.

Martínez said that, in his case, he suffers from intense back pain because of the impact from the constant bouncing of the boat over the waves.

“Because of that, I hardly go out fishing anymore,” he said.

He added: “Illnesses become more complicated, and in the end we die, we have no pension, no decent insurance, our families are completely unprotected.”

Martínez said the government should create a mechanism that offers coverage, but the problem is how to pay for it.

However, different proposals can be analyzed, he said. As an example, he pointed out that for decades artisanal fishers have paid a road tax charged to motorists of 0.20 cents of a dollar per gallon of fuel purchased, even though they are clearly not using the fuel to drive on the country’s roads.

“We have paid millions of dollars to the State, without receiving anything in return. Well, part of that money could be returned to us in the medical coverage we need,” he argued.

This charge of 0.20 cents per gallon of gasoline was recently eliminated, since it made no sense to charge small-scale fishers for using the roads.

Gregorio Torres, president of the La Paz Federation of Fishing Production and Services Cooperatives, which brings together 900 fishers from this department in central El Salvador, complained that small-scale fishers are unprotected against illnesses and accidents at work, and need government support to obtain this type of coverage. CREDIT: Edgardo Ayala/IPS

Decent work

His colleague, Gregorio Torres, said that the artisanal fishing sector is key, as it provides fresh products to the country’s markets and helps boost food security, but workers have been unprotected, without pensions or accident insurance.

“We don’t have any of that, and it would be a good idea to push that FAO idea forward,” he commented, referring to the proposal to include them in the social security system.

Torres is president of the La Paz Federation of Fishing Production and Services Cooperatives, which brings together 900 fishers.

Public policy expert Nayda Acevedo told IPS that social security strategies are government tools to minimize the impact of inequalities on vulnerable populations.

In the case of Salvadoran artisanal fishers, the government should focus on promoting “decent work” in that sector, so that the seasonality and irregularity of their incomes can be overcome, she said.

And within the range of social security policies, the State could focus on the most urgent ones, such as medical coverage, she added.

In the meantime, fisherman Nicolás Ayala, at the San Luis La Herradura pier, climbed into his boat, revved up his 60-horsepower engine and headed out to sea, through the estuary.

“As long as I don’t die today, that’s good enough,” he said with his characteristic dark humor and a wry smile, as he motored off in his boat.

A woman uses a three-stone fire. The method consumes a lot of mangrove wood, which is impacting the livelihoods of the local community. By growing fast-growing trees, the pressure on the mangrove is lessened. Credit: Joyce Chimbi/IPS

By Joyce Chimbi
Nairobi, Kenya, Apr 20 2022 (IPS)

Despite an abundance of fisheries reserves along Kwale County’s lush coastline located on the south coast of Kenya, fishers can no longer cast a net just past the coral reef and expect an abundant crab or prawn harvest.

Fishing is the community bedrock accounting for at least 80 percent of the economy, and Mwanamvua Kassim Zara, a local fish trader, tells IPS fish stock has declined significantly.

Fish prices are at an all-time high, especially for Dagaa, a tiny silverfish and a household staple food in Vanga Bay Village. Vanga bay is one of 40 boat landing sites in the coastal Kwale County.

“I buy a bucket of fish from the fishermen at 40 to 45 dollars, up from 20 to 25 dollars. The high prices are then transferred to our customers who buy one kilogram of boiled, dried, and salted fish at 3 dollars up from 2 (dollars),” she says.

Experts say these are effects of climate change driven and accelerated by human activity, and the community is feeling the heat.

“The community’s attempts to diversify into maize and rice farming have been unsuccessful because of very high tides from the Indian Ocean and consequent flooding of adjacent paths and rice farms. Another effect of climate change,” says Richard Mwangi from Kenya Forest Services.

More than twenty years ago, this was not the case. The community’s first line of defence against Indian Ocean related catastrophes was intact due to an expansive Vanga Forest spanning over 4,428 hectares, approximately 10,900 acres.

Since then, approximately 18 hectares of mangroves have been lost every year for over 25 years due to over-harvesting of mangroves for fuel and cheap building material, according to the Kenya Forest Service.

“Despite a decline in fish population and scarcity in certain fish species, Vanga is still reliant on fishing, and small-scale fish traders solely use wood fuel to boil dagaa for sale. At least 87 percent of households in this community rely on mangrove wood for energy,” Mwangi tells IPS.

Destruction of the forest has significantly compromised Vanga Bay’s Ocean ecosystems, says Professor Jacinta Kimiti of South Eastern Kenya University’s School of Environment, Water & Natural Resources.

“Coastal ecosystems are extremely important in capturing carbon emissions and supporting livelihoods such as fishing and tourism. Importantly, mangrove forests are a breeding area for fish,” she says.

Left vulnerable and exposed to a myriad of climate change-related challenges, the community is taking the pressure off the mangrove forest by planting at least two hectares of fast-growing tree species to meet the community’s domestic energy needs. These five acres of woodlots will be used by three adjacent villages, Vanga, Jimbo and Kiwegu.

Zara says the community is open to more effective fish preparation technologies to protect mangroves because current methods rely on open three-stone fires that consume a lot of mangrove wood. She indicates that a well-wisher recently donated a large energy-saving stove for communal use.

Mwangi says wood fuel is similarly central to domestic life in Africa, especially in sub-Saharan Africa. He stresses that, as the Vanga community has discovered, current wood energy systems are not sustainable and are a major threat to livelihoods.

According to the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), more than 63 percent of people in Africa have no alternative to wood, relying on wood fuel as their primary energy source. Approximately 90 percent of wood extraction in Africa is used for fuel.

The International Energy Agency’s regional energy outlook warns that wood fuel will remain central to Africa’s future as the primary energy source because cleaner alternatives or sustainable fuels remain out of reach.

Dr Julius Ecuru, Manager at BioInnovate Africa at the International Centre of Insect Physiology and Ecology (ICIPE), tells IPS that sustainable fuel is fuel obtained from biologically based feedstock such as wood, crops like sorghum and sugar cane, or algae, as well as other agricultural waste.

“We can use this feedstock also to produce fuel that has the same chemical composition and quality as the fossil fuel used in jet engines or aeroplanes. If used in this way for jet engines, we refer to it as sustainable aviation fuel. With respect to cooking fuel for household use, sustainable fuels can be prepared or blended in specific ways, but this is yet to gain traction,” he explains.

“Meanwhile, regarding natural wood or wood fuel, households and communities can be encouraged to plant fast-growing or maturing trees, like the Grevilia tree, which has multiple uses. Its regularly pruned branches can, for example, be used as firewood. It also has good soil conserving properties.”

Research by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) finds that, like the Vanga Forest, Miombo Woodland, an African dryland forest ecosystem, is similarly at risk of over-harvesting and destruction of livelihoods.

The forest covers an estimated 2.7 million square kilometres in the south-central part of the continent. It is Africa’s most extensive tropical woodland, forming a broad ecoregion belt across countries such as Angola, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia, and Zimbabwe.

FAO says the magnificent ecoregion belt provides an important source of resilience for an estimated 100 million rural poor and 50 million urban community.

Experts such as Mwangi warn the woodlands are under threat from conversion into smallholder agriculture, livestock keeping, charcoal production and logging.

He stresses that urbanization will only increase the threat due to an over-reliance on charcoal as the primary energy source for urban households.

The Agency finds that cleaner alternatives such as solar or wind energy are not yet viable because most households and governments “cannot afford the price per kilowatt-hour or the hefty cost of the required infrastructure.”

Mwangi urges communities to work with the government to protect and conserve forests and notes that the Vanga community is, for instance, partnering with the Kenya Forest Services through Kenya’s Forest Conservation and Management Act of 2016.

The Act promotes community participation and aims to halt further degradation and consequent destruction of livelihoods.

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