by Tarik Jasarevic

06 August 2002

BONN: A group of fishermen labour hard to pull their nets out of the shallow waters just off the beach of Dili, capital of East Timor. "After that storm tonight we cannot expect a grand catch, of course," says Francisco Soares as he wades through the water. "But overall we are very content - and Raymundo and Horacio have helped us a great deal to get started again."

The fishermen know the two UN Volunteers, Raymundo Cawaling from the Philippines and Horacio dos Santos Guterres from East Timor since 2001, when the two fishing experts organized a large-scale distribution of nets and other fishing equipment from various donor countries.

For generations, the coastal communities have relied on a wide range of fish - large tuna, flying fish, coral reef fish and deepwater snappers which abound along the 600 kilometres of East Timor's coastline - for their livelihoods. The Department of Fisheries and the Marine Environment (DFME) in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries estimates that for over half the 20,000 fishermen of East Timor, fishing is the main source of food and income.

Ninety per cent of the East Timorese coastal fleet, fishing gear and on-shore infrastructure was destroyed during the violent fighting that broke out between opponents and supporters of independence after an overwhelming majority of East Timorese had voted for sovereignty in the UN-organized Popular Consultation Ballot held on 30 August 1999. Thousands of people fled the territory.

Richard Mounsey from Australia was appointed head of the DFME in late 1999. "We started from zero," he says. "Our first job was to get a small team together." He approached the UN Volunteers support unit in Dili, which helped him to find the experts he needed: a boat builder, a mechanic, a database specialist, a master fisherman and an aquaculturalist, who specializes in raising fish in captivity for commercial purposes.

"We were hunting for money to achieve our main goal - helping the East Timorese to sustain themselves, thus restoring fishermen's pride," he recalls. "They did not want rice brought by helicopters, they wanted their gear back to go out and fish."

During the emergency relief phase, the team of UN Volunteers focused on finding and distributing fishing nets and boat engines. This helped to increase the amount of fishing to 60 per cent of what it had been in 1997 - 1,600 tons per year.

Richard Mounsey and team also conducted workshops on boat building and trained 18 East Timorese to work as fisheries officers in the Ministry of Agriculture and Fisheries.

Fish for health - aquaculture helps to combat malaria
In addition to its activities in the area of maritime fishing, the DFME began to reconstruct inland hatcheries and encouraged freshwater fish production.

This is where Raymundo's and Horacio's expertise as aquaculture experts came in handy. "An aquaculture is not only an income-generating activity, but it also provides local communities with protein-rich nutrition," Raymundo explains. "By encouraging rice farmers to raise fish we optimize the use of land and water." The two UN Volunteers raised more than 5,000 common carp fingerlings in three rebuilt hatcheries and then distributed the young fish to rice cultivators in all 13 administrative districts of East Timor. They also conducted training on best practices for fish farming.

Breeding fish in rice fields is an excellent business idea and helps people to stay healthy, too. In addition to the nutritional value-added, a recent study carried out by the World Health Organization (WHO) concludes that the DFME-approach of making rice paddies a habitat for common carp also prevents rice fields from becoming malaria breeding grounds.

Malaria is endemic in all regions of East Timor. It poses a major health threat to the population of 850,000. Some 130,000 cases are treated in health posts and hospitals each year. "During the rainy season the rice field water is the favorite breeding environment for the malaria mosquito," says Horacio, the East Timorese UN Volunteer.

He has also contributed to a recent WHO proposal, which calls for more cooperation between UN agencies active in the health and agriculture sectors under the auspices of DFME to further develop integrated farming methods that help to contain malaria. "My only worry is funding," says Horacio. "It all depends whether we will be able to raise the same amounts we used to before independence."

His volunteer colleague Raymundo is satisfied with his achievements. "We made three government-run fish hatcheries operational again and created an excellent relationship with the rice farming communities. And we managed to get the message across to the people that fish farming in the rice field is an excellent tool for sustainable development."

Further steps to achieve sustainability
Despite the progress made, much remains to be done. Currently there are only 20 members of staff working in the DFME - that is only 15 per cent of the people employed before 1999, when East Timor was administered by Indonesia. The small équipe of national staff and international advisers who currently run the DFME have a huge task ahead of them: to develop and adopt adequate legislation on fisheries and marine resources, to protect and sustain marine resources in a way that takes into account the needs of local communities.

As an independent state, East Timor's legal fishing grounds have increased from a three-mile strip around its coastline to a much larger area expanding some 150 miles to the south and up to 15 miles to the north. DFME chief Richard Mounsey expects that foreign companies will soon try to exploit this new fishing opportunity. "The challenge ahead for the fishing authorities here in East Timor will be to stick to the current policy of building a profitable private sector and not try to earn on the short-term profit offered by the "vultures" of the fishery world," he says. Other serious threats to a healthy marine environment are the over-exploitation of fishing grounds along the coast and environmentally damaging fishing methods such as bombing, poisoning and the cutting mangrove trees.

*Tarik Jasarevic was a UNV Public Information Officer in East Timor from March 2001 to June 2002.