A team of regional officials, including nearly 20 participating Fisheries Administrations and Organisations (FAO) in the Caribbean, will meet in the capital for a week of events that will review the progress of the African, Caribbean and Pacific (ACP) Fish II Programme and chart a future course that will build on the successes to date.
Since the programme’s inception in June 2009, Caribbean countries have benefited from close to €3 million allocated for 32 national and regional, fisheries and aquaculture projects.
According to officials, to date, 18 of these projects have been completed, while the remaining 14 projects are at various levels of development or close to being completed.
The first of this week’s three events will be the fourth and final ACP Fish II Programme Regional Monitoring Workshop to be held at Atlantis from Monday to Wednesday.
At this workshop, the Caribbean projects implemented under ACP Fish II will be reviewed. There will also be an assessment of the outcomes and impacts of the implemented projects, after which a discussion on the way forward will ensue.
This workshop will be followed by the Sixth Meeting of the Steering Committee of the ACP Fish II Programme on Thursday.
The Steering Committee will conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the programme’s performance, as well as achieved outputs. Furthermore, projects targeting the Caribbean states and regional fisheries bodies will be reviewed and lessons learned will be discussed.
The week of activities culminates on Friday with a roundtable discussion to be hosted by the CARICOM Secretariat. During the event, permanent members of the Steering Committee and other local stakeholders will deliberate on the current situation facing fisheries in the programme regions and propose how the ACP Secretariat can provide support to address priority areas requiring assistance.
The ACP Fish II Programme draws to a close in November, after 4.5 years of operational activities.
It encompasses over 180 projects under the five components of the programme, covering fisheries policy formulation and management planning, enforcement, research, business support and private sector investment and knowledge sharing on management and trade.
