Integrated Lake Management

Lessons

Financing priority fisheries programmes of the PEAP: For the first time, fisheries are recognised in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan (PEAP) for Uganda. This is the culmination of a key area of ILM advocacy and is intended to increase central government resource allocations to the fisheries sector.
Donor support needed for sectoral transition: The opportunity to make significant and sustained contributions to poverty reduction and economic growth through improved lake management in Uganda is greater than ever before. Now is the time for central government and its partners in development to seize the opportunity and support national government and civil society and local government partnerships in establishing the new fisheries co-management approach in Uganda.
Fiscal reforms needed based on the "user pays" principle: Lake resources are common property shared resources, and therefore it is fair that resource users who profit from these resources should pay to have access to them and benefit from them. The payments they make should be reinvested in management of resources as well as contributing to wider development of the country.

Issue of multiple fisheries taxation: The fisheries sector has numerous forms of taxation that are used as fisheries management tools and to raise revenue for local governments. In recent years more revenue has been generated from fisheries taxes and part of this needs to be re-invested into fisheries management by, for example, supporting LMOs.
Damage caused by fisheries tendering: The tendering of the collection of landing fees from fishing boats landing and fish marketed at landings is particularly draining on the sector, as substantial amounts of money are collected, yet little finds its way to local government and none is invested in fisheries management. Fisheries tendering is one of the key areas in need of radical fiscal reform.
Landing Site User Fee: DFR plans to introduce a Landing Site User Fee to replace fisheries tendering to ensure more of the money collected goes to fisheries management through BMUs, whilst local governments will receive the same or more funds than obtained through tendering.

Funding Lake Management Organisations and Plans: LMOs require funding by all their members. Fisheries taxation generates substantial local government revenue yet very little is reinvested in the sector. Local governments have provided some funds for the LMOs but they must do more to reach their promised financial commitments. Newly formed BMUs are beginning to provide funds to support LMOs. Some components of lake management plans are being financed through local government development plans but more effective lobbying is needed by LMOs to increase this support.
Funding from central government: Formal recognition of the role of LMOs and BMUs in fisheries and lake management and in poverty reduction, particularly in the Poverty Eradication Action Plan, should lead to increased allocation of resources from central government, but this requires constant lobbying from leaders within the sector.
External funding: Both LMOs and BMUs require assistance in becoming more firmly established and in implementing activities that are currently inadequately funded through existing local government funding opportunities.

Funding the Uganda Fisheries Authority: The UFA, as a largely autonomous body, will provide better focused and more efficient service delivery to the sector. The costs of this service delivery will be raised from the within the sector itself in the medium term but external support is required to establish UFA and allow it to develop capacity in the short term.