Coastal Benefit Sharing

Mussel harvesting Sokhulu, KwaZulu-Natal

The coast of the Western Indian Ocean (WIO) is home to about 36 million people – or 25% of the total population. Coastal resources are vital to local communities and indigenous people, many of whom live in abject poverty. As a result, coastal resources are a key component to the livelihoods of poor coastal communities. Although coastal regions provide invaluable benefits, the extent to which these are shared amongst different stakeholders varies between countries, locations and sectors.

Power imbalances between different stakeholder groups, between producers and retailers, and between developing and industrialized countries, play a major role in determining such discrepancies, combined with a complex array of technological, market and political factors. Thus, understanding economic imbalances between stakeholders, and identifying strategies to more fairly distribute benefits amongst the poor, provides an important avenue to reduce poverty amongst coastal communities. Although equitable benefit sharing is a recurring theme in many sectors (e.g. health, trade, biodiversity conservation, etc), there is no agreed common definition for the term and the formula for equitable benefit sharing. In broad terms it is generally taken to mean the equitable distribution of benefits, based on principles of fairness, justice and ethical considerations.

This project, funded by the Western Indian Ocean Marine Science Association, provides an opportunity to draw on research in coastal communities in South Africa and Mozambique in order to apply the concept of benefit sharing to coastal resources and to elucidate appropriate distribution mechanisms, as well as the obstacles preventing greater benefit distribution. Thus, the primary goal of this research is to contribute towards poverty reduction and sustainable resource use and management by promoting the application of the principle of access and equitable sharing of benefits derived from coastal resources generally, and more specifically, in the Western Indian Ocean region.