Message from Meryl J. Williams
Director General, The WorldFish Center

This Project is made possible by the core resources of your organizations and ours and a partial grant from the Asian Development Bank to WorldFish Center. The Project is a collaboration among responsible fisheries agencies and universities in nine Asian countries. We are very pleased for the support from the partner countries and the ADB.

The vision of WorldFish Center is to enhance the well-being of present and future generations of poor people in the developing world through improved production, management and conservation of living aquatic resources. We understand that the mandates of your organizations also cover similar concerns. Therefore, it is extremely important for us to be able to understand how fish supply and market forces will play their role in increasing and sustaining the fish and seafood supply, and, in particular, its relationship to the growth of population and income and other national changes. Research is needed to formulate more efficient and effective policies for meeting the animal protein and nutritional demand for both current and future generations, in particular for those who are poor.

The growing importance of fish as a source of food, nutrition, income, employment and foreign exchange can hardly be exaggerated for Asian countries. Asia leads the world in production, consumption and trade in fisheries. Fish is an integral part of the food and agriculture sector. Despite being a staple of the diet and one of the cheapest sources of animal protein, fish remains outside the existing agricultural models that assess and predict the global and regional food and agriculture situations. We are presently cooperating with the International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI) and Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) on the integration of fish into global food models. The Project for which we have assembled here today is a very timely intervention in the current transition in global trade, environment and food supply situation.

Overexploitation and depletion of marine and freshwater resources have led to the near collapse to many capture fisheries. On the other hand, development and innovation in both resource management and fish farming techniques have generated tremendous optimism for those who continue to depend on fisheries and aquaculture, albeit with some real warning signs on the environment front. Farmers, fishers and poor consumers are looking for technologies, management options and policy interventions by which they can increase and sustain their production and consumption as well as earn more income and improve their economic and social status. It is our responsibility as part of the national, regional and international research and development community to make an effective contribution for the poor people whose food needs and livelihood need the application of R & D effort in this area.

Poverty is a major impediment to progress in most of Asian countries despite significant economic developments over the last several decades. The challenge in front of us is to use fisheries research and development as a tool to successfully eradicate poverty. This cannot be done if one works in isolation and looks only for technological solutions. Fisheries scientists and policy researchers have to work together with other sectoral agencies, in areas of integrated development of resource and livelihood, in the areas of policy and institutional changes and reforms at all levels: local, national, regional and global. Otherwise, our efforts will be too little and too short to make a difference. For example, we need to understand how liberalization of trade and globalization will affect fisheries and the rural poor or how demographic changes due to internal migration into the coastal zone will change resource management regimes. A large part of the outcome will depend on the policy and institutional regime that will be in place both nationally and globally, such as that constructed through the World Trade Organization or WTO processes. ICLARM therefore considers investment in policy research as no less important than investment in biophysical research and our program of activities has been growing in this area. The policy research efforts of the Center are well integrated with those of other programs.

The Project will be discussing not only the likely scenarios in supply and demand for fish. Most importantly it is also about strategies with regard to choices and options that are available to the hundreds of millions of poor households in Asia as producers and consumers of fish. I hope the Project will come up with a useful framework for information collection, analysis and synthesis to provide developing member countries with concrete plans for undertaking poverty focused policy and institutional reforms and technological development in the fisheries sector. I would also like to emphasize the need to disseminate the results in the most effective ways possible and this means using not only the conventional publications and reports. Your conclusions and recommendations must reach the policymakers and decision-makers and if they are to be taken seriously. We are making dissemination a serious part of all our work within the Center. The countries you represent are clearly doing the same, and, to show this, a variety of line agencies have been involved during the formulation of the project, in addition to the research agencies.

This is a partnership project. In fact, all of our projects are implemented in partnership with colleagues and institutions. I am very pleased to see the strengthened partner countries and relevant collaborating agencies participation in this Project.

I want to thank you for your contributions in the Project and for the establishment of the Project's webpage. Many of you have been our partners and each other's partners in previous projects. You have set good examples of research partnership and it is a pleasure to see you back. We look forward to building further good will in a cooperative spirit in the coming days in this Project too.

Thank you.

Dr. Meryl J. Williams
Director General
The WorldFish Center