Andy Thorpe, Chris Reid, Raymon van Anrooy and Cecile Brugere / Natural Resources Forum 29 (2005) 51–69 51 © 2005 United Nations. Published by Blackwell Publishing, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA. Natural Resources Forum 29 (2005) 51–69 Integrating fisheries into the national development plans of Small Island Developing States (SIDS): Ten years on from Barbados Andy Thorpe, Chris Reid, Raymon van Anrooy and Cecile Brugere Abstract The development and effective introduction of strategies designed to ensure the ecologically and economically sustainable utilization of coastal and marine resources is perhaps the major challenge for Small Island Developing States (SIDS). In response, the 1994 Barbados Programme of Action (BPoA) called upon the SIDS to implement appropriate coastal and marine strategies and, crucially, ensure that such strategies were integrated into sustainable national development plans (NDPs). This article examines the extent to which contemporary NDPs and donor support programmes have incorporated the fisheries sector — arguably the most important coastal/marine resource for many SIDS — into such documents. Applying an assessment methodology, originally developed to identify levels of environmental mainstreaming within World Bank country assistance strategies to NDPs and donor support programmes, we are able to identify those SIDS who have most effectively integrated the fisheries sector into such documents. Comparison with data indicating the importance of the sector to the national economy (in terms of generating foreign exchange, employment generation and/or supporting domestic protein consumption levels) enables us to pinpoint those countries with substantial fisheries sectors, but a correspondingly lower than expected degree of sectoral mainstreaming. We suggest that the January 2005 review of the BPoA offers an opportune moment for such countries to redress these omissions. Keywords: SIDS (Small Island Developing States); Fisheries; Poverty reduction strategy papers; National development plans; Country assistance strategies; Country strategy papers. Andy Thorpe and Chris Reid are Principal Lecturers at the Department of Economics, University of Portsmouth (UK), specializing in natural re- source economics and fisheries economics/history respectively. Raymon van Anrooy and Cecile Brugere are Fishery Planning Analysts in the Development Planning Service of the Fisheries Department at FAO Headquarters in Rome. 1 Concessional lending refers to loans granted at below market-related rates. Of the six loan instruments currently deployed by the IMF, for example, just one — the Poverty Reduction and Growth Facility (which funds poverty reduction strategy borrowing) — offers concessional rates (presently 0.5% per annum). concessional lending 1 (and eligibility for HIPC — heavily indebted poor country — debt-relief initiatives) conditional upon countries submitting poverty reduction strategy papers (PRSP) prior to funds being released. Similarly, EU development policy and aid, as advanced in the respective country strategy papers (CSPs), is expected to be complementary to, and based upon, the underlying PRSPs (see, for example, the summaries of the Bolivian and Nicaraguan CSPs). Other bilateral donors are also increas- ingly implementing aid strategies consonant with nation- ally devised poverty reduction strategies: the UK Department for International Development (DfID) is ‘committed to building development partnerships based on a shared agenda set by a credible poverty reduction strategy’ (DfID, 2002:15); the German Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit GmbH (GTZ) ‘in pursuing its commitment to the United Nations goal of halving extreme poverty by 2015, supports 1. Introduction International concern over the widespread nature of food insecurity in the developing world has increasingly mani- fested itself in recent years. The 1996 World Food Summit (WFS) pledged to halve the number of undernourished individuals to around 410 million by 2015, a commitment encapsulated within the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), adopted by Heads of State at the Millennium As- sembly in September 2000 — which also promised a simi- lar reduction in the number of individuals who subsisted on an income of less than US$1 a day (then estimated at 1,134 million, or around 25% of the population of the developing world). These concerns have been reflected in the pro- grammes of multilateral donor institutions, most notably the IMF and World Bank which, since 1999, have made all