Authority ensuring Bougainville manage marine resources

AS part of the National Fisheries Authority’s (NFA) support towards the Autonomous Bougainville Government (ABG), a two-day workshop was held to build its capacity to manage its marine resources.
NFA executive manager Joshua Ryan said under a memorandum of understanding (MoU) between NFA and ABG signed in 2014 to transfer powers to ABG, there were certain things that NFA had to provide to support in building capacity in managing their fisheries and marine resources.
“As part of the transfer of all those functional responsibilities, they have to set up a Bougainville Fisheries Management Authority (BFMA),” Ryan said.
“Once they have a structure in place, they can execute the type of functions that PNG NFA is executing right now.
“But to go with that, they have to have a Bougainville fisheries management legislation to empower them to enforce those functional responsibilities.
“Right now, the concentration is within the coastal fisheries.
“That is, from the shore to three nautical miles out because in terms of the bigger law, with benefit sharing, that has not been transferred to them yet.”
Ryan said the workshop, which started on Monday and ended yesterday, was basically to understand the roles and functions that NFA performed and to give them (ABG) an idea on how to function as a management authority.
He said NFA’s support would be on-going.
“We have supported them since 2014. We have so far, (since 2014) given them about K25 million to build their capacity.
How they use that money is up to them. “From us at NFA, we want them to build that management authority.”
NFA managing director John Kasu said the authority would closely work with the ABG in building that management authority and the workshop was part of that.