The EDF11 funded TRUEFISH project is a five-year development project coordinated jointly by the Lake Victoria Fisheries Organisation (LVFO), Landell Mills, WorldFish and the Food and Agriculture Organisation of the United Nations (FAO). The overall objective is to contribute to the development of a competitive, gender-equitable and sustainable commercial aquaculture sector to support economic development and sustainable management of natural resources in the Lake Victoria Basin. Sustainable development of cage aquaculture in a water body such as Lake Victoria requires careful spatial planning and management strategies to ensure that aquaculture is sited in correct and appropriate locations for optimisation of environment and production sustainability, and for consideration of other users of the water body. Such spatial planning should be accomplished across whole-lake, national and local scales, and be agreed and implemented by local and national authorities and user groups.
The results and outcomes presented here will show how the development of new spatial management plans in Lake Victoria are underpinned through GIS-based site selection models for aquaculture, considering environment, production, social, and space-conflicts issues, to designate two strategic aquaculture zones for each country area within Lake Victoria. Each zone was assessed for its aquaculture carrying capacity using established modelling approaches, based on water volume exchange and the predicted effects of nutrients from all sources on the environment (OECD, 1982). An Aquaculture Management Area (AMA) was designated for each zone. Placement, layout and size of cage farms within the AMA were modelled using the dispersion footprint and impacts of released wastes. This is integrated with a defined environmental monitoring and measurement plan to ensure environmental compliance of cage farms in the future; Figure 1.
The outcomes from this study, along with aquaculture situation analyses for each country, were used for the development of an Adaptive Management Plan for aquaculture development in Lake Victoria and a Regulatory and Institutional Framework for strategic aquaculture zoning and spatial management within each national area for the Lake. Each will be presented here for consideration and discussion, along with an East African Community dissemination plan for wider communication and stakeholder engagement.