Improving governance of tenure in fisheries sector in Ghana using the Voluntary Guidelines on the Responsible Governance of Tenure of Land, Fisheries and Forests and small-scale fisheries guidelines

Book excerpt: Small-scale fishers and their communities highly depend on secure access to fisheries resources and to the beaches that allow fishers to access the fishing grounds, to land their catches, and store and maintain their boats, gear and equipment. Landing sites are also often a place that women use for fish processing and marketing activities. These tenure rights for fishing grounds and landing sites are of crucial importance for the livelihoods of small-scale fishers and for food and nutrition security for fishing communities, and for the coastal population in most countries. Most of the landing sites for small-scale fisheries in Ghana are under increasing demand to use the beaches for other purposes, such as tourism, urban and commercial activities. Small-scale fishers also have major challenges pertaining to their exclusive use of the Inshore Exclusive Zone (IEZ), reserved for the small-scale fishing for small pelagic fish. In recent years there are major conflicts with industrial fleet that are trans-shipping (by)-catches of small pelagic fish to canoes at sea, which are subsequently landed unrecorded in Ghana. In addition, the industrial trawlers are regularly fishing illegally within the IEZ for small pelagic fish. Through the European Union Land Governance Programme support has been provided to develop the capacities of small-scale coastal fishing communities to secure their tenure rights, secure the fish landing and processing sites and reduce the incidence of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. Capacities of clam fishery producers was also developed. The aim was to secure and sustain the livelihoods of the small-scale fishers.