“Nobody can say Seychelles’ fisheries are too difficult to understand”
Victoria – 9 August 2022. Today, the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) met with Minister of Fisheries and Blue Economy, Mr. Jean-François Ferrari, to present a newly-designed copy of the Seychelles’ 2020 FiTI Report. Over the recent months, the FiTI International Secretariat has been working with a designer to produce a FiTI Report template for use by all countries that are part of the initiative. With the template now ready, Seychelles’ 2020 FiTI Report is the first to be updated using this free service.
Seychelles’ 2020 FiTI Report, published on 15 December 2021, includes a range of important data on fish stocks, access agreements and government subsidies. The new report template uses several graphs and tables to visualise key data on these areas of Seychelles’ fisheries management, among others, in an appealing and comprehensible manner. The production of the template forms part of the FiTI’s efforts to support public understanding of how national fisheries are managed.
Fisheries management can be a complex topic often characterised by numerical information sets such as catch, vessel or financial data. It is therefore important to break down such information to allow those with no or little background in the sector to understand and participate in how their government is managing this common resource.
At today’s meeting, Minister Ferrari noted that “these annual FiTI Reports not only provide a highly beneficial tool for us by regularly assessing the public availability, accessibility and completeness of information on core aspects of our fisheries sector, but they also complement our existing sources of information, such as the SFA annual reports. With this newly designed FiTI Report, now nobody can say Seychelles’ fisheries are too difficult to understand. I encourage everyone with a stake in the sustainability of our fisheries to read this report and engage in informed debates based on its contents.”
Sven Biermann, Executive Director of the FiTI International Secretariat, noted that “transparency should not only be seen as the act of providing information in the public domain, but also ensuring that such information allows others to draw reliable conclusions from it and contributes to public debates. We are therefore very happy to roll out this new report template to all countries implementing our internationally-recognised transparency standard. It is very fitting that Seychelles, a leader in global transparency efforts and host to our International Secretariat since 2020, becomes the first country to benefit from this template”.
According to Mr Philippe Michaud, Chair of Seychelles’ FiTI National Multi-Stakeholder Group, “Seychelles’ next FiTI Report – covering calendar year 2021 – is due for publication before the end of this year. We will certainly utilise this new template from the FiTI International Secretariat to ensure that the increased amount of information that is now published online by the government can be easily interpreted and understood.”
The reusable FiTI Report template was financed through PROBLUE, an umbrella 2.0 multi-donor trust fund administered by the World Bank. To access Seychelles’ newly designed 2020 FiTI Report, please visit the website of the Seychelles Fishing Authority.
