Last month Ghana created its first marine protected area (MPA), setting aside parts of the ocean off its coast to safeguard marine life.
It covers roughly 700 sq km around the Greater Three Points area – or approximately 0.3% of Ghana’s ocean. The declaration of this MPA comes after years of warnings that Ghana’s fisheries are under huge pressure and need help to recover.
The global pledge to protect at least 30% of the world’s lands and oceans by 2030 – the 30×30 goal – contrasts sharply with the scale of Ghana’s first MPA. And while its creation has been hailed by politicians and experts, it nearly did not happen after major cuts to support from the US undermined years of planning. Indeed, progress on the ocean side of 30×30 has been slow in many nations, and a particular struggle for some African countries.
Dialogue Earth spoke to Socrates Segbor, country director at Global Fisheries and Resilience Action. Based in Ghana, the NGO works on sustainability issues and has been heavily involved in the country’s marine protection plans. The organisation has also worked on Ghana’s closed seasons for fishing, and trained thousands of fishers and industry workers. He talked to us about the significance of Ghana’s first MPA.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Dialogue Earth: What do you think the MPA means for people in Ghana?
Socrates Segbor: In the four coastal regions of Ghana, the fish is a way of life. The fish is not just food. It is not just income generation. It is part of their culture. Without fish, whole communities are dry.
Particularly for the Greater Three Point area, where we have the MPA, fish are a major part of their whole life. The MPA, to them, is a significant, tangible step they are taking to contribute to the management of the fish stocks, biodiversity and other related benefits of a marine protected area. After some years, they should be catching more fish, making more money.
What would you say to fishers whose activities will be restricted by the MPA?
There is still that – for lack of a better word – uneasiness on exactly how it will affect livelihoods. That is what has informed our current approach. We are not implementing a park; we are not implementing a total no-take zone, where you have the entire 700 square kilometres become a no-go area. Because, of course, that is the livelihood of the fishers.
It is going to be a multiple-use approach, with [coastal communities] identifying some core areas within that big space they would want to declare as a no-take zone. That made it easier for them to embrace the whole concept.
They also see the collapse of the fish stock, and that there is a need to do something to help reverse that trend. That gives us hope that compliance will be high.
USAID funding has largely disappeared, alongside cuts to other, similar funds directed towards the Global South. What has been the impact?
Major impact. Around 2015-2016, the USAID programme identified the near collapse of Ghana’s fishery stock, and a plethora of management measures that were needed to halt the decline: we have a closed season as part of those; we have regulation of fishing gear.
There were major reforms that the USAID programme was implementing, including what we call electronic vessel monitoring on the distant-water fleet [foreign-owned vessels fishing in Ghana’s waters, often blamed for overfishing]. That ensures we’re able to see what is happening on these vessels and then enforce the laws accordingly.
Then the funding suddenly disappeared and that particular activity has not seen the light of day. But it has huge potential to help Ghana effectively manage the fisheries.
The MPA was another component for which the funding was really going to push all the activities, and probably we would have even achieved the MPA earlier than we did [with the USAID funding]. Had it not been for other philanthropic groups coming in to fill in the gap, we wouldn’t have had our MPA, because of the cost that goes into establishing these structures.
Many MPAs are just paper parks with no real protection. How will Ghana avoid that?
This is a very important aspect of all the discussions we have.
There are already pilots on community-level enforcement, where these communities are going to actively participate in the enforcement of the MPA area – what we call “landing beach enforcement committees”. At the national scale, the Fisheries Enforcement Unit is expected to work with these landing beach enforcement committees.
Now that we have the MPA announced and fully accepted, the next step is the development of the management plan, which will include action on sanctions, enforcement, and data collection and monitoring.
These structures will ensure that the MPA is not just on paper, but it’s actually being implemented.
This MPA is a comparatively small portion of Ghana’s ocean – do you the 30×30 goal is achievable for your country?
Achieving 30×30 is not possible. Everyone realises that is not achievable. Does that mean that we’re settling only for the first MPA? No.
In 2018, Ghana had already undertaken an assessment and developed a strategy that identified about 20 areas as potential sites for MPAs, and amongst them was the Greater Three Points area. This is going to be a network of MPAs that Ghana will implement in the coming years.
Considering the threats of climate change, overfishing and pollution, how do you feel about the future of Ghana’s ocean?
I feel positive. Climate change will be around for some time. Pollution is also, of course, huge. We have fishers sometimes going to sea and landing plastics instead of landing fish. And then, in Ghana, we have this issue of what we call galamsey [illegal gold mining].
But when it comes to the resources, the data shows that if we manage the human aspects of the fishery and reduce a little bit of the pressure on the fish, there is a likelihood that they will rebound.
I’m still very positive that, yes, our actions will yield the result that we expect.
