By Harold Liversage, regional land advisor, and Steven Jonckheere, land and natural resources associate for IFAD in East and Southern Africa
Over 40% of the Mozambican population lives in the coastal zone and are reliant on this zone for their livelihoods. Artisanal fishing is central to the livelihoods of most poor rural coastal communities. Most of these communities are small, isolated, poor and semi-subsistence in nature and generally combine fishing and fish marketing with subsistence agriculture. Some are seasonal, but the majority are permanent communities. Artisanal fishers include both those who mainly fish for subsistence purposes and those who link to markets. Men are mainly involved in fishing and women in gathering molluscs and bivalves but also in crop, mainly subsistence, farming. Both may be involved in the sale of fish but women tend to acquire fish for home consumption. They also provide important support services to fishers.
Overlapping interests and resource uses are often a major source of conflict along the Mozambican coastline. Competition for water, land and other resources used by artisanal fishing communities comes from migrating artisanal fishers, industrial and semi industrial fisheries, mining, gas and oil exploitation, tourism, conservation, large-scale commercial farming and forestry. While various policies and legislation provide for the recognition of artisanal fishing resource rights, in practice recognition is relatively weak. Different issues occur in the north, centre and south of the country.
The majority of conflicts between the artisanal and industrial and semi-industrial fishers are due to the competition for the same fishing grounds or common resources. The three and one mile exclusion zones for industrial and semi-industrial fishers are often not respected and enforcement is not always done effectively. The presence ...
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