Medidas de Gestao das Pescarias Marinhas e Aquicultura 2019 The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2018 | Page 135

THE STATE OF WORLD FISHERIES AND AQUACULTURE 2018
FAO has facilitated dialog ue between the two
sectors to demonstrate the importance of fish
and fish products in food securit y and nutrition
through scientific evidence and policy analysis.
The scientific evidence is assembled in the form
of a dashboard of indicators (based primarily
on data from FAO and the World Bank)
covering availabilit y, accessibilit y and
affordabilit y, including the contribution of fish
to animal protein supply, fisheries as a source
of employment and income, and fish prices
versus those of other animal protein foods
(Kurien and López Ríos, 2013). The FAO
estimates of per capita fish supply depend
heavily on the qualit y of capture and
aquaculture production statistics; thus the
importance of these basic pillars of reliable data
collection cannot be under valued if the data are
to have a proper inf luence on food securit y and
nutrition policy at the national level.
infoods/tables-and-databases/faoinfoods-
databases). Additional data and support would be
welcome so as to include more fish species,
especially species from developing countries and
inland fish, and processed fish products.
FAO and W HO are building a Global Individual
Food Consumption Data Tool (FAO/W HO GIFT)
to better inform agricultural and food policies
and programmes at the global, national and
subnational levels and to make them more
nutrition sensitive (available at w w w.fao.org/
nutrition/assessment/food-consumption-
database). Indicators such as food consumption,
food safet y and nutrition status are derived from
quantitative age- and gender-disaggregated data
on food consumption. Harmonized microdata
from dietar y sur veys are also made available on
the platform. FAO/W HO GIFT makes it possible
to describe dietar y patterns and to assess diet
adequacy. It can, for example, be used to identif y
and quantif y fish and fish products that are
sources of key nutrients in the diet of a
population of interest. The data can also be used
to assess dietar y exposure to food hazards and to
identif y the main food sources of these hazards.
Policy analysis showed that good knowledge of
the fisheries and aquaculture sector, including
reliable statistics and management systems, is a
requisite for its integration in food and nutrition
policy. Where reliable statistics are not available,
targeted studies, such as household consumption
sur veys or value-chain analyses of fish products,
can highlight the importance of fish in diets,
which in turn can inf luence policy-makers to
invest in the fisher y sector. Although experience
to date is limited to a handful of African and
Caribbean countries, policy frameworks have
been successfully modified and data collection
systems improved as a result of better
appreciation of the role of fisheries in meeting
national food securit y and nutrition objectives.
The World Aquaculture Performance Indicators
( WAPI) is a user-friendly tool developed by FAO
to collate data from many sources and generate
easy access to quantitative information on
aquaculture sector performance at the national,
regional and global levels. Two WAPI modules,
one on aquaculture production and the other on
fish consumption, have recently been made
available for public use (Cai, 2017). The WAPI
modules provide a large amount of quantitative
information that can be used to generate
indicators on the contribution of fish to food
securit y and nutrition. A technical paper
prepared as a background document for the two
modules estimates potential future fish demand
and supply gaps for nearly 200 countries or
territories (Cai and Leung, 2017). The short-term,
five-year projections can facilitate policy and
planning as well as sector management at a range
of geographic levels. WAPI modules on other
subjects (e.g. fish trade, human resources and
employment, and GDP) are under preparation.
National household consumption and
expenditure sur veys (HCESs) are potential
alternative sources of fish consumption data for
countries that lack an effective fisher y
monitoring system (Hortle, 2007; Mills et al.,
2011; Funge-Smith, 2016). HCESs may also be
more statistically representative of geographically
dispersed fisher y activities and landings than
periodic monitoring of a limited number of
landing sites or gears (de Graaf et al., 2015;
Funge-Smith, 2016). Such sur veys have indicated,
for example, that inland capture fisher y
production is much higher than officially
reported by many countries (see “Small-scale
To promote the integration of fisheries in
countries’ food and nutrition securit y policies,
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