Medidas de Gestao das Pescarias Marinhas e Aquicultura 2019 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 | Page 111

THE STATE OF WORLD FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE 2018
heretofore been unavailable. Since the 1970s FAO
has supported the efforts of national institutions
to improve data collection systems through field
projects, training activities and translation of
accumulated scientific and field experience into
g uidelines and software (e.g. Bazigos, 1974;
Caddy and Bazigos, 1985; FAO, 1999a;
Stamatopoulos, 2002). Projects have introduced
sampling schemes based on statistical analysis,
coverage of fisheries subsectors not sampled
before and standardization of sampling at
landing sites. A new training course on fisheries
statistics has been delivered in over a dozen
countries, 13 in collaboration with RFBs 14 and with
financial support from the World Bank (de Graaf
et al., 2014).
While these data sharing agreements may
represent additional challenges for the
institutions, they will add immense value in
terms of improved data qualit y.
Improvements are also pursued through CWP’s
reg ular review of policy and research
requirements, undertaken cooperatively among
its member organizations, to ensure the relevance
of fisheries statistics in terms of scope, coverage
and level of detail. In the mid-2000s, at the
request of the UN General Assembly in relation
to implementation of the United Nations Fish
Stocks Agreement, CWP recommended action to
enable separate reporting of catches within and
outside EEZs at the global level. Several RFBs
revised statistical geographic divisions
accordingly, but unfortunately progress has been
only partial because of a perceived lack of
countr y commitment to transparency in this
regard (UN, 2016). More recently, FAO (2016b)
has drawn CWP’s attention to small-scale
fisheries and their distinction from large-scale
fisheries, an issue of increasing international
interest (Pauly and Zeller, 2016), strongly relevant
to the 2030 Agenda and its focus on people,
coastal communities and livelihoods. FAO
recently proposed a statistical definition of small-
scale food producers (Khalil et al., 2017), which
could ser ve as a model for categorizing small-
scale fisheries in global fisher y statistics.
To reconcile limited budgets and the pressure to
collect an increasing range of data (FAO, 2018b),
it has become crucial to promote non-
government data collection and management
systems. It has also become important to
rationalize scattered data collection efforts, as
existing data are often poorly integrated in
national systems, remaining buried in computer
spreadsheets or paper files and thus unavailable
for analysis or reporting (Gutierrez, 2017; FAO,
2018b). On both issues, innovative information
technolog y can significantly enhance progress:
At the local level smartphones and tablets
already contribute to improved data collection
from beaches (de Graaf, Stamatopoulos and
Jarrett, 2017) and on board vessels, and they also
offer opportunities for co-managed data
collection with non-State actors such as fishers
or recreational fisher y organizations (Caribbean
ICT Research Programme, 2014; ABALOBI,
2017). To integrate and curate scattered data
files, FAO is developing a global software
framework built on cloud technolog y, geared to
supporting national initiatives for integrated
fisher y statistics and management information
systems. 15 Web-based inventories of stocks and
fisheries, as used by the Fisheries and Resources
Supporting data collection, availability
and use
Enhancing the data supply chain is a prerequisite
for improvement in the overall quality of FAO’s
unique and valuable fishery statistics database and
for provision of better information that can support
management and policy decisions at the national,
regional and global levels (FAO, 2002; Ababouch et
al., 2016). To build sustainable long-term data
collection capacity, action must be taken at each of
these levels, in collaboration with national
institutions, RFBs, international organizations,
funding institutions and research partners.
13  Benin, Burundi, Cameroon, Comoros, the Congo, Democratic
Republic of the Congo, Côte d’Ivoire, Ghana, Madagascar, Myanmar,
Nigeria, Sao Tome and Principe, Togo and United Republic of
Tanzania.
At the national level, and particularly in
countries where capacit y is weak, challenges
related to data availabilit y should be tackled both
by improving data collection systems and by
bringing to light knowledge and data that have
14  COREP, FCWC, Southwest Indian Ocean Fishery Commission
(SWIOFC).
15  In the Bahamas, Trinidad and Tobago, Oman and the Islamic
Republic of Iran.
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