News and Events

Seminar

Introduction to The WorldFish Center and a taste of its research-in-development projects

David Mills, Natural Resource Management, The WorldFish Center and Kirsten Abernethy, Policy, Economics and Social Science, The WorldFish Center

Where: Townsville: Sir George Fisher Research Building Conference Room 114 (B32 upstairs)

When: 4.00pm, Tuesday 31 January 2012. To be followed by drinks and nibbles

Overview:

The WorldFish Center, one of 15 members of the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) consortium, is an international, non-profit research organization dedicated to reducing poverty and hunger by improving fisheries and aquaculture. WorldFish has a varied research-in-development mandate, which includes programmes on climate change, improved value chains, gender and equality, nutrition and health, sustainable aquaculture, and policies and practice for resilience. James Cook University has a Memorandum of Understanding with the WorldFish Center, and Dr David Mills is a visiting scholar at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies. To introduce The WorldFish Center to JCU scientists and vice versa, and to open opportunities for collaboration between the two organisations we are holding a joint seminar and networking event. Please come along.  

Presentation 1: Navigating the minefield to coastal fisheries reform in Ghana

Abstract:  Ghana’s coastal fisheries provide direct and indirect employment for an estimated 10% of the population, and are critical for food security. Yet they are in bad shape and are highly politicised; it is speculated that the last presidential election was won on the back of a promise to maintain fuel subsidies to small-scale fishers. More a minefield than a maze, mapping the pathway to coastal fisheries reform in Ghana is providing the WorldFish team and partners with more than the normal set of fisheries reform challenges! I will outline some of the diagnosis and capacity building efforts completed in Ghana over the last few years including efforts to work with the fisheries administration to make sense of existing fisheries data. Options for moving forwards must consider and playoff between politics, human needs and biological reality, yet lead to radical trajectory shifts in the short to medium term.

Biography:  Starting his research career as crustacean ecologist at the Tasmanian Aquaculture and Fisheries Institute, in 2006 David took a leap into the world of fisheries and development. Based at WorldFish Center headquarters in Penang, Malaysia from 2006 until early 2011, he worked on diverse projects relating to fisheries governance, information systems, fisheries and food security, and aquaculture development. He has worked on projects in Indonesia, Vietnam, Philippines, Senegal, Nigeria, Ghana, Solomon Islands and Timor Leste. David is a visiting scholar at the ARC Centre, and is keen to discuss possibilities for collaboration between WorldFish and JCU researchers.

Presentation 2: Adapting to climate change in the Solomon Islands: the community view

Abstract:  It is well established that climate change poses an immediate and serious threat to the well being of Pacific Islands people. Climate change will drive ecosystem changes that are likely to force people to move from their home, and is predicted to reduce the productivity of the sea and land resources that the people of the Pacific depend on for their livelihood and culture.  In the Solomon Islands, the opportunities for the government and organisations to attract adaptation funding is increasing, with much of the focus on working at the community level.  The WorldFish Center – Solomon Islands has been working in remote coastal communities undertaking research and management activities for many years and is actively engaged with the government in providing marine environment management advice.  Climate change is an urgent concern at higher governance levels, yet there are very little data at a relevant scale to communities to answer the question “what does climate change mean for my village?”  I will present the view of communities in the Western Province, their perception of climate change in the context of other social, economic and environmental drivers of change, discuss the challenges of moving forward with the climate change adaptation agenda at the community level, particularly the disconnect between decision-makers at different scales.

Biography:  Kirsten’s interest and experience is in understanding how marine resource users make decisions, the social and economic incentives for sustainable practices and management, and adapting to change. Her research has so far been at the individual and community level, but through her post-doc at the WorldFish Center, she is increasingly engaged at the policy level as well. Kirsten’s recent work at WorldFish looks at climate change in remote coastal communities in the Pacific, primarily in the Solomon Islands. She moved to WorldFish one year ago from the UK where she was conducting research in a completely different context – her PhD at the University of East Anglia and a post doc at CEFAS involved interviewing and going fishing with trawlers in small Cornish communities to understand fisher decision making in the context of different drivers of change.