Tegucigalpa, Francisco Morazán, January, 29: A new report reveals that a GOAL blue economy project is benefitting hundreds of artisanal fishermen and associated businesses along the Honduran North coast.

An interim report launched today (Wednesday) shows that fishing businesses increased their sales by 70% in the last year thanks to the GOAL MiPesca -“Resilience of the Blue Economy of the Coastal Ecosystem of Northern Honduras” project, co-financed by The Nordic Development Fund (NDF) and The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB Lab).

The report was unveiled at an event “Promoting the Resilience of the Blue Economy: a systemic vision of sustainable and inclusive small-scale fisheries ” at which the “Resilience Approach for Social Systems (R4S)”, developed by GOAL, was also launched. The R4S allows for analysis of resilience of critical socio-economic systems, and proposes recommendations for their strengthening in order to build more inclusive and resilient societies.

Currently, the GOAL MiPesca Program works with several companies, associations and fishing collection centres, representing more than 3,600 artisanal fishermen from the Atlantic coast of Honduras.

As part of the program, 17 companies with seed capital exceeding 1.7 million lempiras (EUR 62,200 approximately) from the IDB | LAB increased their sales by 70% in the last year.

Another of project achievements referred to in the report was the establishment, along with the Forest Conservation Institute (ICF), of sampling of the mangrove ecosystem throughout the country for carbon. This allowed for first national inventory of mangrove and stock of blue carbon. The full report on the carbon collection will be published soon.

Mangrove forests are recognized worldwide as highly productive systems, capable of absorbing carbon from the atmosphere and conserving it for centuries. At the plot level, mangroves can contain approximately the same amount of carbon per unit area as humid tropical forests, due to their high photosynthetic capacity, low decomposition rates and high carbon accumulation rates in sediments.

The mangroves of Honduras are no exception, providing a complex landscape of coasts, lagoons and swamps, which are distributed along the entire continental coastline to the north, to the south, as well as to their islands.

Recognizing the importance of these ecosystems for Honduras and the Isthmus, since 2017, the ICF initiated a monitoring effort by establishing 56 Sampling Units as part of the National Forest Inventory, with technical support from the United States Forest Service, the SilvaCarbon Program and the financial support of the IDB-Mangrove Projects; IUCN’S “Improvement of Coastal Basin and Livelihoods” From the Basin to the Coast” project, MiAmbiente’s REDD projects and GOAL’s MiPesca Project.

“For the first time the country has official data on the total area of mangrove forest coverage and knowing the results of Carbon Stock retained in our mangrove forests allows the country to access the voluntary market for purchase and sale of carbon credits,” said Sayri Molina, General Coordinator of the MiPesca Project, who also explains that these data will allow coastal communities to provide ecosystem services and work on the restoration of coastal-marine ecosystems.

The event concluded with the launch of the “Resilience Approach for Social Systems (R4S)”, developed by GOAL, which allows to analyse the state of resilience of critical socio-economic systems and proposes recommendations for their strengthening, in order to build more inclusive and resilient societies. In this regard, GOAL developed and presented the results of the case study on the application of the R4S Approach in the Small-Scale Fishery System on the North Coast of Honduras. The findings are expected to contribute to raising awareness about the obstacles that limit the sustainable development of small-scale fisheries and possible solutions.
This event was held in Tegucigalpa on January 29, 2020 and among the attendees were governmental organizations, fishing companies, academy representatives, civil society and donors.

For more information on the R4S visit the website:
Resilience for Social System

About MiPesca:
MiPesca is an initiative that has been established with the Government of Honduras, Supermarket Chains, Exporters, Associations and Community Companies of mostly Garífunas and Miskito fishermen. Co-financed by the Nordic Development Fund (NDF) and the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB | LAB), MiPesca is implemented by the Irish international NGO GOAL, in the departments of Cortés, Atlántida, Colón and Gracias a Dios. This project seeks to contribute to the improvement of the competitiveness of artisanal fishing companies and organizations that ensures a sustainable and responsible economic insertion to the environment while preserving the mangrove ecosystem on which their economy depends as well as increasing their resilience to climate change.

About GOAL:
Founded in 1977, GOAL is an international humanitarian and development agency, committed to working with communities to achieve a sustainable and innovative early response to crises and lasting solutions to poverty and vulnerability. GOAL has worked in more than 60 countries and responded to almost all major humanitarian disasters. We are currently operating in 13 countries worldwide.

For more information visit:
http://www.goalglobal.ie

GOAL Malawi presents the ARC-D toolkit at the 2018 National Disaster Risk Management Platform Symposium

The symposium was organized by the Department of Disaster Management Affairs (DoDMA) in collaboration with other partners involved in DRM at national and local levels.

[Lilongwe, Malawi, October 2018]— Two members from GOAL Malawi participated during 2018 annual DRM symposium which was organized to provide an opportunity for different stakeholders to showcase their different roles in building integrated resilience and strengthening policy dialogue. The forum also provided participants with opportunities for knowledge sharing and experience exchange that would eventually set new strategies that directly reduce disaster economic loss, resulting into an urban resilient Malawi. The NPDRM symposium is an inclusive conference that covers a wide range of topics pertinent to reducing direct disaster economic loss.

Figure 1. Part of the audience during GOAL’s Presentation, Pic Louis Toby Solomon, Emergency and Resilience Coordinator.

The conference was attended by scientists, policy makers, private sector, academia, non-governmental organizations, and the donor community under the theme “Building integrated resilience and strengthening policy dialogue”. The forum was organized in a way that there were several subthemes and GOAL Malawi made a presentation on the ARC-D toolkit under the subtheme: “Measuring disaster risks, and investments impacts and economic losses resulting from disasters”. Vincent Dzikupi, MEAL officer based in Chikwawa, Malawi presented the ARC-D toolkit.

GOALs’ Emergency and resilience coordinator also participated in various sessions such as; Institutional Strengthening for Disaster Risk Reduction, Communication management and Coordination systems, Financing and measuring impact of investment for DRR but also Research and Practice in Urban Disaster Risk Management (DRM) and Resilience amongst others. There was an outstanding reception from the audience regarding the ARC-D toolkit and some donors, such as (DFID, expressed interest and promised to contact GOAL to seek the best way this could be scaled up within their programming. Furthermore, the department of disaster management affairs also assured GOAL that it will form a task force at national level to promote resilience measuring toolkits and GOAL would be main contact throughout this process. GOAL is also bringing together various NGOs and government departments to form a community of practice (CoPs), which aims to promote resilience measuring toolkits. This is a follow up activity to the trainings that GOAL facilitated in Malawi through a team from Honduras.

Figure 2. Vincent Dzikupi, MEAL Officer presenting Toolkit while audience listens, Photograph by Louis Solomon, E and R Coordinator.

GOAL´s Resilience boilerplate:

Established in 1977, GOAL is an international humanitarian and development agency, committed to working with communities to achieve sustainable and innovative early response in crises, and lasting solutions to poverty and vulnerability. GOAL has worked in over 60 countries and responded to almost every major humanitarian disaster. We are currently operational in 13 countries globally.