The Economic Community of West
African States (ECOWAS) is assisting Nigeria to monitor her territorial waters
through the Earth Observation Data (EOD), NaijaAgroNet reports.
The Permanent Secretary to the
Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (FMARD), Architect Sonny Echono
disclosed that the monitoring would include the marine waters, provision of security
for fishing vessels and their operators and also to ensure the protection of
the environment in the coastal waters of Nigeria and West Africa.
Earth
observation data is the information about planet Earth's physical, chemical and
biological systems via remote sensing technologies supplemented by earth surveying techniques, NaijaAgroNet learnt.
Echono,
NaijaAgroNet gathered, stated this
while addressing stakeholders recently in Abuja at the opening ceremony of
the 2nd Regional Steering Committee Meeting of ECOWAS on Monitoring for
Environment and Security in Africa (MESA) with the Theme “Enhancing the Use of
Earth Observation to support Fisheries Management and Safety at Sea in Western
Africa”
Represented by the Ministry’s Director
of Fisheries, Aderemi Abioye, Echono said
“The partnership through ECOWAS was to build platforms for
collaborations and partnerships with other African countries in the West
African regions to harmonize our regulations and monitor the operations of
fishing vessels across the region,” NaijaAgroNet reports.
He
added that as part of efforts to meet the nation’s fish demands “the federal
ministry of agriculture is promoting aqua -culture, accommodating new
investment in fish production, encouraging and empowering artisanal fishermen
to be able to produce fish from rivers, lagoons lakes and all inland
waters in the country”
Another keynote, NaijaAgroNet
learnt, came from the Provost, University of Ghana Prof. Ebenezer Owusu who
said “the goal of the workshop is to help curb illegal unregulated and
unreported fishing activities using satellite imagery as global losses due to
IUU or pirate fishing which are estimated to be between USD $10b, about
N199billion and US $23.5b about N4.67trillion annually.
”
“West Africa waters
are estimated to have the highest levels of IUU fishing in the World,
representing up to 37 per cent of the regions catch. Adding that in addition to
economic losses pirate fishing in West Africa severely compromises the food
security and livelihoods of coastal communities,” he said
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