The issues of artisanal fisheries and aquaculture in sustainable food systems in Southeast Asia

The expansion of intensive agriculture, livestock industry, and fisheries in pursuit of economic efficiency has further increased global greenhouse gas emissions, and has had a negative impact on the global food supply system, such as increased scale of natural disasters and erosion of coastal areas due to climate change. Therefore, we are conducting research and development of community-based artisanal aquaculture that maintains the ecosystem in collaboration with universities and research institutes in the Philippines, Myanmar, Thailand and Malaysia. According to previous study in the Philippines, fishers in the research site were aware that their fishing grounds and fisheries resources had been deteriorating since the 1980s, therefore almost all fishers indicated the need for fishery management to be introduced in the site. However, most fishers indicated that they would not implement fisheries management until the main target fish stock was reduced to about half of its current level. Even though almost all of fishing households were getting poor and fishing was still their main source of income, they insisted on postponing the implementation of fisheries management. A bottom-up fisheries management cannot be introduced without the agreement of almost all fishers. Therefore, implementation of fisheries management in the area was very difficult. This was due to the fact that the fishing regulations associated with fisheries management had avoided catch reduction, and the majority of fishermen believed that fishery resources would someday recover without the need to implement fisheries management by themselves. These results led to the need for measures that will enable fisheries management with catch restriction to be implemented while generating alternative income. In addition, previous study showed that marine protected areas were effective in the Philippines. Thus, it is highly recommended that measures should be taken to generate new income through oyster farming and to simultaneously make marine protected areas where ordinal fishing gears cannot be laid down by implementing oyster aquaculture facilities.