BY JOHN HOUANIHAU
Sea cucumber is the second most important marine resource in the Pacific, especially for Melanesia said Robert Jimmy, Chief of Party for the OurFish OurFuture Project.
He said that while sea cucumber is a significant resource that supports livelihood across the Pacific it is also faced with a lot of challenges in effectively managing it.
“We feel that it is a complicated resource to manage, so I think approaching it from a sub-regional perspective, I think it is perhaps the way to go because sea cucumber resources feature very strongly under the current Melanesian Spearhead Group Indo-Fisheries Roadmap.
“The issue of compliance is another area that is of concern, and the different prices and how much each community and each country gets out of sea cucumber resources varies between the Melanesian countries.
“So, we are looking at a common approach to try and get that dialogue happening and get countries to start sharing information to collectively manage this resource,’’ Jimmy said in an interview during last week’s Melanesia Sea Cucumber Dialogue aimed to help guide the policy directions to better manage sea cucumbers in the Pacific Island countries.
He said that it also requires countries to consult with their governments to get political support.
“It is quite an area that covers a wide range of communities, involvement, and engagements, and an area that is also politically sensitive. Because we feel, at the end of the day, that the communities need to get a better benefit out of the resource,’’ he said.
“In terms of moving forward with any incentive, there is a need for political will, and that political will need to be driven by each of the countries, for the technical people to voice that, to take those mechanisms through the national mechanisms, so that at the end of the day it can help provide regional guidance to regional institutions that would help provide technical support to the countries.
“We have the population, we have the resources, it is the Pacific’s most diverse region, and looking at the way forward for Sea cucumber, we need to address it on a sub-regional level, so that we can perhaps share information and share approaches into how best we could better safeguard these resources for the benefit of our communities,’’ said the chief.
