Department of Marine and Fisheries Sciences

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Start date: 2010End date: 2019

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    Identifying Ecosystem-Based Alternatives for the Design of a Seaport’s Marine Infrastructure: The Case of Tema Port Expansion in Ghana
    (Sustainability, 2019) Boer, W.P.; Addo, K.A.; Slinger, J.H.; et al.
    Long-term sustainable port development requires accounting for the intrinsic values of ecosystems. However, in practice, ecosystem considerations often only enter the planning and design process of ports when required by an Environmental Impact Assessment. At this late stage, most of the design is already fixed and opportunities to minimize and restore ecosystem impacts are limited. In this paper, we adopt a large-scale, ecosystem perspective on port development with the aim to identify ecosystem-based design alternatives earlier and throughout the planning and design of a port’s marine infrastructure. We present a framework, termed the ‘ecosystem-based port design hierarchy’ (EPDH), to identify ecosystem-based alternatives at four hierarchical design levels: 1) alternatives to port developments, 2) port site selection, 3) port layout design, and 4) design of structures and materials. In applying the EPDH framework retrospectively to a case study of port expansion in Tema, Ghana, we establish that ecosystem considerations played only a limited role in identifying and evaluating alternatives at all four design levels in the case study, with more eco-friendly alternatives in terms of port layouts, structures, and materials are identified using the EPDH framework. This reveals that opportunities for ecosystem-friendly port designs may have been missed and demonstrates the need for and the potential added value of our framework. The framework can assist practitioners in earlier and wider identification of ecosystem-based alternatives for a port’s marine infrastructure in future seaport developments and, hence, represents an important step towards more sustainable port designs.
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    Meeting socioeconomic objectives in Ghana's sardinella fishery
    (Natural Resources in Ghana: Management, Policy and Economics, 2010-01) Bailey, M.; Quaatey, S.; Armah, A.K.; Jacquet, J.; Khan, A.; Alder, J.; Rashid Sumaila, U.
    It is frequently stated that there are explicit tradeoffs between biodiversity conservation and poverty reduction. This Chapter examines these tradeoffs through the interaction between Ghana's artisanal canoe fishery and the offshore trawler fishery. Ghana's marine biodiversity is threatened by a sizeable fishing industry partly because poverty is rife, and also because the coastal population has a high dependence on fish for their food security. The artisanal fishing fleet targets small pelagics, predominantly round sardinella (Sardinella aurita), with their catch used mainly for subsistence. By-catch in the trawler fleet, which includes round sardinella, is mainly consumed in urban areas within the country, while their target species are exported. Current artisanal sardinella catch is insufficient to meet subsistence needs, and therefore domestic reliance on trawlcaught sardinella for food security might be in conflict with the conservation of biodiversity. We develop a bioeconomic model, which illustrates that giving priority to the effective management of the artisanal fishery in Ghana could provide food and job security to the fishers of Ghana, without compromising biodiversity conservation, in contrast to the commercial trawl fishery. It appears that the sardinella fishery may be overcapitalized, as optimization results suggest effort could be cut in half while still providing catch levels of about 300,000 tonnes per year, or four times current artisanal catches. Limiting by-catch and spatial conflicts by the trawl fishery could yield economic benefits from the artisanal sector of over US$200 million over 20 years. © 2010 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved.