Good Management Practice in Sustainable Fisheries: Building Institutional Capacity, the Case of Mauritania (Draft)

The purpose of this series of Policy Briefs is to ensure effective dissemination of information collected and generated as a result of the World Bank-funded Study of Good Management Practice in Sustainable Fisheries, the ACP Fish II Feasibility Study (EC), and a Workshop on Fiscal Reform in Fisheries (DFID and GTZ). This Policy Brief #5 addresses building institutional capacity. Appropriate institutional capacity to implement management is critical to success. In addition to the institutions themselves, such capacity encompasses a wide range of elements: staff skill, budget levels, range of experience, vision, fiscal instruments and so on(1). The development of a fishery management approach and the institutions involved can be a long process. Generally developing countries are not very far into this process and need to develop appropriate institutional arrangements and support (e.g. research) so that fishery management units can be identified and plans developed. Alongside institutions we need to also consider an appropriate information system to guide managers and to enable the assessment of management performance