SEAFDEC Southeast Asian Fisheries Development Center
A joint report written by SEAFDEC and FAO has just been published presenting the results of
the project on identifying and assessing research and datasets related to SDG Indicator 14.4.1 –
Fish stocks sustainability: “Proportion of fish stocks within biologically sustainable levels.” FAO
and SEAFDEC worked with 15 representatives from four Southeast Asian countries, namely:
Cambodia, Indonesia, Philippines, and Viet Nam to analyze knowledge strengths and gaps in the
region and provide recommendations to improve the accessibility of research and data.
As a result of this work, 1,047 resources were recorded on OpenASFA which are freely
searchable under the collection: Support to SDG 14.4.1 (Southeast Asia). OpenASFA is a system
for creating, storing, and publishing abstracts and bibliographic references. The analysis revealed
that about 28 % of the resources had been previously unavailable online. It was also found that
the top ten most recorded taxonomic terms aggregated 63 % of all references which implies that
the resources concentrated on a relatively small number of species of commercial interest. The
recommendations of the project include enhancing the collaboration with universities in the
region to increase the number of dissertations and theses recorded in OpenASFA, producing best
practice guidelines on data sharing and management, digitizing print-only materials, and
sustaining the collections and analyses of research on stock assessments in the region, among
others.
The full report entitled “Identifying research and data related to Sustainable Development Goal
(SDG) Indicator 14.4.1: case studies from Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines and Viet Nam”
is available here. FAO and SEAFDEC look forward to building on this work to ensure that the
research and data to support the sustainable management of fish stocks are available to all. For
further information about this project, please contact Tamsin Vicary (Tamsin.Vicary@fao.org).