Community Based Resource Management in Solomon Islands: Provincial snapshots 2022

This report assesses the coverage of CBRM for coastal areas in each of the 9 provinces of Solomon Islands. It provides a snapshot of known gaps and needs to guide prioritisation for future planning of management support

Nourishing island food systems in Solomon Islands: Operational Plan 2023

The WorldFish program in Solomon Islands is organized around four main research pathways (see figure). The first three are the agreed-upon impact areas of WorldFish, which aligns toward our adopted goal from the Solomon Islands National Fisheries Policy 2019–2029 of the Ministry of Fisheries and Marine Resources (MFMR). The fourth research pathway places a deliberate emphasis on integrated planning and partnerships. Although WorldFish in Solomon Islands has many partners, we particularly integrate our research with MFMR to support national strategies toward its policy goal

National assessment and planning for improved fish handling in Solomon Islands

The report summarizes the discussions and interviews with provincial fisheries officers (PFOs) at the annual PFO conference in Honiara, November 23, 2022.The report also identifies the next steps needed to build a program on fish handling based on input from participants at the Fish Innovation project reflection workshop in Nusatupe, May 16–19, 2023

Assessing the value of approaches for Community Based Marine Resource Management (CBMRM) in Solomon Islands

In the field of environmental management, considerable attention has been given to developing tools to harness people and their skills and capacity to effectively govern natural resources. Because of the importance of people’s capacity to influence the natural state of the environment and resources therein, researchers and practitioners have been trying to identify which mechanism could offer sound resource management at various levels. This research primarily investigated cases of successful and unsuccessful Community Based Marine Resource Management (CBMRM), particularly the ‘ways of working’ used by external partners that may influence the social behaviour of people in the community. Hence the approach was to particularly explore the ways in which community empowerment may be effective in the process of marine resource management. This has been achieved through studying three CBMRM communities in the Lau Lagoon, North Malaita, Solomon Islands. The study was centred around the CBMRM programmes focusing on three aspects: social constraints that rural Solomon Islands communities faced; intervention pathways that supported fisheries; and characteristics of places and interventions that appear to influence the probability of successful CBMRM engagements

Livelihoods and fisheries governance in a contemporary Pacific Island setting

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Inshore marine resources play an important role in the livelihoods of Pacific Island coastal communities. However, such reliance can be detrimental to inshore marine ecosystems. Understanding the livelihoods of coastal communities is important for devising relevant and effective fisheries management strategies. Semi-structured household interviews were conducted with householders in Langalanga Lagoon, Solomon Islands, to understand household livelihoods and resource governance in fishing-dependent communities. Households were engaged in a diverse range of livelihoods. Fishing, shell money production and gardening were the most important livelihoods. Proximity to an urban centre influenced how households accessed some livelihoods. Perceptions of management rules varied and different reasons were cited for why rules were broken, the most common reason being to meet livelihood needs. Current models of inshore small-scale fisheries management that are based on the notion of community-based resource management may not work in locations where customary management systems are weak and livelihoods are heavily reliant on marine resources. An important step for fisheries management in such locations should include elucidating community priorities through participatory development planning, taking into consideration livelihoods as well as governance and development aspirations

Patterns of catch and trophic signatures illustrate diverse management requirements of coastal fisheries in Solomon Islands

Coastal fisheries are a critical component of Pacific island food systems; they power village economies and provide nutritious aquatic foods. Many coastal women and men actively fishing in this region rely on multi-species fisheries, which given their extraordinary diversity are notoriously difficult to both characterize, and to manage. Understanding patterns of fishing, diversity of target species and drivers of these patterns can help define requirements for sustainable management and enhanced livelihoods. Here we use a 12-month data set of 8535 fishing trips undertaken by fishers across Malaita province, Solomon Islands, to create fisheries signatures for 13 communities based on the combination of two metrics; catch per unit effort (CPUE) and catch trophic levels. These signatures are in turn used as a framework for guiding suitable management recommendations in the context of community-based resource management. While a key proximate driver of these patterns was fishing gear (e.g. angling, nets or spearguns), market surveys and qualitative environmental information suggest that community fishing characteristics are coupled to local environmental features more than the market value of specific species they target. Our results demonstrate that even within a single island not all small-scale fisheries are equal, and effective management solutions ultimately depend on catering to the specific environmental characteristics around individual communities

Patterns of catch and trophic signatures illustrate diverse management requirements of coastal fisheries at island scale in Solomon Islands

Coastal fisheries are a critical component of Pacific island food systems; they power village economies and provide nutritious aquatic foods. Many coastal women and men actively fishing in this region rely on multi-species fisheries, which given their extraordinary diversity are notoriously difficult to both characterize, and to manage. Understanding patterns of fishing, diversity of target species and drivers of these patterns can help define requirements for sustainable management and enhanced livelihoods. Here we use a 12-month data set of 8535 fishing trips undertaken by fishers across Malaita province, Solomon Islands, to create fisheries signatures for 13 communities based on the combination of two metrics; catch per unit effort (CPUE) and catch trophic levels. These signatures are in turn used as a framework for guiding suitable management recommendations in the context of community-based resource management. While a key proximate driver of these patterns was fishing gear (e.g. angling, nets or spearguns), market surveys and qualitative environmental information suggest that community fishing characteristics are coupled to local environmental features more than the market value of specific species they target. Our results demonstrate that even within a single island not all small-scale fisheries are equal, and effective management solutions ultimately depend on catering to the specific environmental characteristics around individual communities

Distribution of livelihood activities across family members.

<p>Multinomial logistic regression plot of the probability of involvement in the six most common livelihood activities, and all other livelihood activities combined, as a function of household members and proximity to Auki.</p

Map of Langalanga Lagoon, Solomon Islands.

<p>(A) Solomon Islands are located in the Western Pacific. (B) Langalanga lagoon is situated on the west coast of Malaita Province. (C) Many communities in the lagoon live on the high-water mark on artificial islands. (D) The lagoon extends south of the provincial capital Auki; twelve communities were included in the study.</p