Book Description

The Bangkok FAO Technical Consultation on Policies for Sustainable Shrimp Culture recommended that FAO specifically request governments of countries engaged in shrimp culture to report on progress in implementing the code of conduct for responsible fisheries in relation to shrimp culture activities to the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) at its next and subsequent sessions. This publication contains the findings of the ad hoc expert meeting in pursuance of this recommendation. The meeting prioritized and prepared a recommended short-list of the criteria and indicators of sustainable shrimp fisheries which should form the basis for regular reporting by countries to COFI. The meeting stressed that these criteria and indicators related to the national level and did not encompass farm-level and local-level indicators. It noted that the regular collation of these indicators would greatly benefit the planning and management of shrimp culture development in the countries. The meeting concluded that it would be premature at this stage to request governments to report actual data on those indicators to the next session of COFI, in February 1999. Instead, the meeting elaborated a questionnaire to allow governments to review and comment on the recommended indicators and on their present and future ability to acquire the related data and information. Moreover, the meeting decided that in this questionnaire, governments should be given the opportunity to indicate the nature of assistance deemed desirable to adopt a comprehensive statistical system for their shrimp culture sub-sectors in view of the inadequacies of many existing systems and the high socio-economic importance and specific management and development requirements of shrimp culture.--Publisher's description.