Coastal Villages Fund Sponsors New Report to Reopen Question of Fish Allocations Among CDQ Groups
SEAFOODNEWS.COM [SeafoodNews] April 20, 2018
Coastal Villages Region Fund has commissioned and released a report examining economic need among the areas served by each of the six Western Alaska Community Development Quota (CDQ) groups. Coastal Villages is sharing the report with attendees at the Arctic Encounter Symposium in Seattle on April 19-20 and will follow up with a series of community meetings across Western Alaska over the coming months.
The CDQ program was created in 1992 to alleviate poverty and to support economic development in Alaska Native communities along the coast of the Bering Sea. It allocates 10% of federal groundfish fisheries to 65 communities served by six designated CDQ groups that provide their residents a means to invest in the fisheries.
CVRF says that the way the program’s benefits are distributed does not reflect the communities’ relative populations or need, but rather the political influence they wielded in the 1990s.
“Coastal Villages has known for years that the program’s benefits flow disproportionately to the two CDQ groups serving the Aleutian and Pribilof Islands...
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