Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project (MACEMP)

The ocean bordering the East coast of Africa is one of the last areas where fishing activities are largely unregulated. Even though Tanzania, like its neighbors to the north and south, have declared a 200 mile Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ: Law of the Sea), it lacks the institutional and financial capability to exercise their jurisdiction. While fish species living in a narrow coastal strip are harvested, the potentially valuable offshore species are left to foreign fishing fleets that rarely, if ever, pay reasonable ”resource rents” for exploitation of the fishery, tend to land fish outside East Africa, and do not assist in management of the resource by sharing data with Tanzanian authorities.

The Project seeks to improve the regulatory and institutional framework for management of marine resources- particularly establishing the links between the marine environment and the fishery resource and what are expected to be conservative estimates of sustainable commercial exploitation of marine fishery resources. It also aims to fill gaps in the data describing the fishery in Tanzanian marine waters and the coastal and offshore environment upon which the fishery depends.

The objective is to enhance the contribution of these resources to economic growth and reduction of poverty, and to develop the scientific understanding of the status of the resources and major threats to them. Core Project activities will be designed to assist the Government in implementation of the national coastal environmental management strategy, the National Fisheries Master Plan, and the Fisheries Act.

Specifically, the project would:

• a) establish and/or strengthen institutions charged with management of marine resources in the near- and off-shore and EEZ, both in Zanzibar and in the mainland, and assure their performance according to designated standards;
• b) support activities appropriately undertaken by the public sector to stimulate increased private investment into marine and coastal areas; and
• c) identify and support scientific and technical research that contributes to improved regulation, management, development, and protection of marine and coastal resources.

The MACEMP will also include data collection (oceanographic and fisheries) that complement other programs operating in the marine environment, particularly those currently funded by the European Union (fisheries), USAID, IUCN and WWF (coastal zone management).

• Indumathie V. Hewawasam
  Senior Environmental Specialist, Africa Region, International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (WB), Coastal and Marine Specialist for Africa
• Nicodemus Odhiambo Marcus
  Development Communication Specialist, Marine and Coastal Environment Management Project (MACEMP),

There are currently no items in this folder.

• Project Documents
  • MACEMP-Project Concept Paper
  • MACEMP-Project brief
  • MACEMP-Project summary