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FAO, Rome

After Bangkok

Dear Rolf Willmann  

First I will thank you and FAO for the small-scale fisher’s conference in Bangkok. After the conference I went to Cambodia to study small-scale fisheries in Sihanukville district and there I met fishermen who still carry out a free fishing.

Now I am back in Denmark and have started my collection and evaluation after Bangkok. I have some articles to be written for the Danish media (so far I have published two and two others are about to be finished). I also set up a blog during the conference http://ssfbangkok.blogspot.com/ and also www.levendehav.dk give information from this conference.

If you have the time please help me with some questions, if not maybe you can guide me to someone in your systems/network that can help me. In order to understand my questions, you should know that I am a green participant in the contexts of international conference. Although I have worked as a grassroots NGO in the fisheries and marine environment in almost 20 years I have never participated in major international conferences.

My questions is about the conference budgets; about ICSF, WFFP and FAO, and last but not least about my growing wonder after the conference that so many participants where more active in there individually projects. Instead being active in the plenary sessions and working groups, this people spent time on nurturing their own projects.
 

Budget: I tried to find the conference budget on FAO homepage without success, can you give me some budget figures and why should the conference take place in luxury? I ask because I understand that the project sponsored 120 participants. Did FAO and the projects sponsors cover these 120 participants for their travel and accommodation? Many of them stayed in the The Grand Ayudhaya Hotel Bangkok where the price for one night is $ 170 each. Some stayed at Sofitel Centara Grand Bangkok was about $ 500 a night. Where the 120 participants, in particular, appointed by ICSF and WFFP? And what is the relationship between FAO and the two organizations? And the pre-conference - was it funded by FAO and the conference sponsors? I will of course so far as is humanly possible, seek information in ICSF and WFFP but it is not as simple as it sounds. Through my years in the NGO service, I have often seen that the major NGOs take over the agenda and we small NGO’s often are left behind. So it’s also important for us in Living Sea to seek a better balance between the different NGO stakeholders.

Way in you point overview so few active and former fishers came to Bangkok?

From my perspective I see that organizations such as ex. ICSF and WFFP simply take over the role "to speak on behalf of ex. number of fishermen from around the world " – is it sustainably?

I know that neither FAO nor organizations like ICSF, WFFP, LLH etc. can secure the future for the small-scale fishers; it’s on the shoulder of the active fishers themselves. So in my opinion they must be mobilized and they must be very visible even outside their local area. 

In Living Sea we never compromise on this point – we the people from outside involved in the small-scale fishers live and future have on overall responsibility and it’s to create the needed tools for to help the active fishers. So if Bangkok conference reflects the situation in FAO, NGO etc. I have no doubt anymore – we have to enter a new course.

I will also inform you about our partners in Kazakhstan in the Aral Sea, partners who are very active fishermen, who have fought their way up from nothing to now having an organization of fishermen in a democratic structure in general, a project which deserves the utmost attention because here it is fishermen even as the agenda. (I could use a lot of time to unfold, but it will be for another time).

They made their registration to the conference in due time and with the desire to have their trip sponsored. They never got any reply to their request. I saw that one of them was enrolled, but he did not, of course, because it has the "Aral Tenizi" no funds.

Project people: As I wrote a part of my blog several time I became more and more angry over all the project people who spent their time on projects they had started in on new they would like to create with partners from south.

I tried to have a discussion with them about it but was rejected. On the whole, I think there was too much sounded from this people like: "we have heard before." In my understanding: We don’t need to listen to all this or to work in the working groups – we have heard it many time, we know the problems.

This whole area of the professional and NGO project people I have unfolded in a major article which I also hope to be translated into English because it is definitely an area that deserves attention.

I think this is fundamental critic. This people came to Bangkok stayed in luxury and told me “we have heard it before – many times”. Is it normal in a UN, FAO context that you mostly work together with the same people? And again is it in realty a family of small-scale “crusader” I visit in Bangkok? Of course there where participants for the first time, but I understood that we were under some kind of control from this “family”. 

Living Sea work with projects and we can document results but our projects cannot give any answer to the overall question of this conference. And I’m 100 % sure that neither can the people who work professionally in the fields of "development" working on projects around the world. So in my opinion this big group of participants used this conference for nursing their own projects.

I know that the future for the small-scale fishers is in the hand of the fishers. The fishers have to mobilized, have to have tools, resolution appendix or their own Code of Conducts etc. and it’s our duty us working in the small-scale fishers problems to do our best to create this possibilities for the fishers. And this is a collective work. We have to writhe article; to send press announcements to be active, to listen to the fishers again even we have heard before.

I had a suspicion before Bangkok that this is the picture of the UN, FAO, WTO etc. conference “we have heard it before, people”. But until Bangkok it was only a suspicion, and I had much else to do than to run after such suspicions.

Now, I have experienced it and I think we who are fighting the good case have to accept that its deeply problematic for a more sustainable development of the hole sector we call small-scale.

I have a seat in the EU LDRAC EXCOM and therefore have to travel to Madrid nearly every month to discuss with the EU fishing industry on the responsibility for the world where the poor fishers

are threatening from this industry. It is the “bad gay” but at least I understand them. They will, with all available means continue their businesses and others can take care of the small-scale fishers. But we “the good gays” are more complex and difficult to understand.  

After Bangkok it’s more a waste of my time to travel to Madrid for fighting the industry.

I’m fishermen in my soul not born to be fishermen but I became a fishermen of my free choice and after 1990 it’s became my life to fight for this sector we call small-scale. I can´t and will not accept that anyone use this sector for their own purpose, therefore after Bangkok I will launch a debate and discussion with the headline “When we forget what we are fighting for”.

I hope you can help me with some answer to my questions and I apologies for this long mail but its part of my evaluation.

Best regards

Kurt Bertelsen Christensen

Living Sea, Denmark

November 2008