Improving resilience and adaptive capacity of fisheries-dependent communities in Solomon Islands

• Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources, Solomon Islands
• Foundation of the Peoples of the South Pacific International, Fiji

More than 70% of people in the Melanesian countries of the Pacific derive their basic needs from subsistence fishing and agriculture. Managing the pressures on coastal reef fisheries is a challenge for local communities, who have relatively few tools and traditions to reconcile the limited resources with the increasing demand for them. In parts of Solomon Islands, customary rights to marine resources are well defined and traditional institutions continue to influence small-scale fisheries management. Within this environment the potential for successful uptake of enhanced community-based management of traditionally owned small-scale fisheries is high. However a broader management framework that meets the needs of other environments must be more flexible, and the WorldFish Center aims to develop and test a generic adaptive management framework and a set of diagnostic tools that feeds directly into its application. The tools and the management framework will form the basis of community-based management plans that will assist communities to address threats from within the domain of the fishery (fish stock, habitat, fishers economic viability) while reducing their vulnerability to external threats (such as ecosystem change, trends in world markets, fuel costs). A sustainably managed marine environment will contribute to a resilient ecosystem, and this increased resilience should further help the communities to better adapt to future economic, social and environmental changes.