Yemaya, No. 30, March 2009

Asia / India: Women in Seafood Processing; Asia / India- Getting on the Bus; Asia / Sri Lanka - Marching for Justice; Asia / Vietnam - Setting the Agenda; Policy / India - Policy but no Practice; Yemaya Recommends - Pacific Voices: Equity and Sustainability in Pacific Island Fisheries; Milestones - Ecuador's new food sovereignty law aims to strengthen the constitutional right to food; What's New, Webby? - Womenspeak; Profile - Marie Ademar; Yemaya Mama ...tries to crack the Code.

Adaptation of coastal communities in the Philippines to the impacts climate change

The Quedan and Rural Credit Guarantee Corporation (Quedancor) of the Philippine Department of Agriculture has the critical responsibility of providing and improving credit assistance to fishers, it also has the task of helping its beneficiaries meet the repayment obligations of their loans. One reason for defaults can be attributed to the devastating impact of natural calamities. Schemes in place are still insufficient to help safeguard lending programs and operations from non-repayment of loans due to production losses and damages to personal properties.(PDF contains 5 pages) Natural calamities include the uncertainties and vagaries of weather and climate that bring about typhoons, floods, and drought; earthquakes; volcanic eruption as well as pests and diseases that affect the productivity of fisheries. When natural calamities occur, small fishers are unable to pay their loans from Quedancor, moreover they have difficulty renewing their loan applications from Quedancor or accessing credit from other sources. Failure to access credit could disable them to continue venture on fishing activities and could eventually jeopardize the welfare of their entire household. The inability of creditors to pay their loans and meet their obligations also impair, to a large extent, the financial operation and viability of the lending institutions. Risk management schemes currently employed include price stabilization measures, targeted relief` to typhoons and drought victims, and crop insurance systems, to name a few. Some of these schemes are becoming very expensive to implement. Moreover, they fail to enable fishers regain sufficient resources so that they may continue production.

The role of specially designated wildlife sites in freshwater conservation - an English perspective

The value of specially designated sites in conserving biodiversity has been a hotly debated issue for many years. The debate has recently been given fresh impetus by the creation of Natural England, the new Government Agency responsible for the protection and enhancement of the natural environment in England, and the challenges facing the management of designated sites resulting from the increasingly tangible effects of climate change. In the freshwater environment, the role of designated sites is very much under the spotlight because of the implementation of the European 'Water Framework' Directive, which aspires to holistic, ecologically-based management of aquatic habitats.This paper explores the underlying premises of, and rationale for, special site designations for wildlife, and provides a frank account of the inevitable clash of management philosophies that designated sites create in the freshwater environment, drawing on experiences of managing designated freshwater sites in England over the past decade. A positive role is outlined for designated sites in freshwater conservation, which addresses these management conflicts in a way that not only meets Government obligations towards these sites but also paves the way for enlightened, progressive management of the wider freshwater resource. As part of this account, attempts are made to clarify the relationship between key biodiversity-related policy drivers in the freshwater environment, and to explain how the spectre of climate change can be addressed within designated site management. The importance of strategic freshwater science, collaboratively designed and funded, in maximising the value of the designated freshwater site network to the wider freshwater habitat resource, is stressed.