According to Elinor Ostrom, who won the Nobel prize for economics in 2009, to avoid a tragedy of the commons requires giving everyone entitled to use them a say in running them; setting clear boundaries to keep out those who are not entitled; appointing monitors who are trusted by users; and having straightforward mechanisms to resolve conflicts.
Sounds perfect for fisheries... unfortunately we have to create and or strengthen all those elements.
The first target should be fishing subsidies. Fishermen, who often occupy an important place in some country’s self-image, have succeeded in persuading governments to spend other people’s money subsidising an industry that loses billions and does huge environmental damage. Rich nations hand the people who are depleting the high seas $35 billion a year in cheap fuel, insurance and so on. The sum is over a third of the value of the catch. That should stop.
Second, there should be a global register of fishing vessels. These have long been exempt from an international scheme that requires passenger and cargo ships to carry a unique ID number. Last December maritime nations lifted the exemption—a good first step. But it is still up to individual countries to require fishing boats flying their flag to sign up to the ID scheme. Governments should make it mandatory, creating a global record of vessels to help crack down on illegal high-seas fishing. Somalis are not the only pirates out there.
Third, there should be more marine reserves. An eighth of the Earth’s land mass enjoys a measure of legal protection (such as national-park status). Less than 1% of the high seas does. Over the past few years countries have started to set up protected marine areas in their own economic zones. Bodies that regulate fishing in the high seas should copy the idea, giving some space for fish stocks and the environment to recover.
But reforming specific policies will not be enough. Countries also need to improve the system of governance. There is a basic law of the sea signed by most nations (though not America, to its discredit). But it contains no mechanisms to enforce its provisions. Instead, dozens of bodies have sprung up to regulate particular activities, such as shipping, fishing and mining, or specific parts of the oceans. The mandates overlap and conflict. Non-members break the rules with impunity. And no one looks after the oceans as a whole.
From and article in The Economist
Relationship between the amount of illegal and un-reported fishing and an average of four World Bank indices of governance (Government Effectiveness, Regulatory Quality, Rule of Law and Control of Corruption)....
Monitoring and surveillance of fisheries is a complex and challenging problem. Traditionally, ships and aircraft have been the mainstay of surveillance efforts, however, the use of satellites and other technologies by fisheries enforcement officials has increased in recent years.
As more technologies are utilized to improve global fisheries monitoring and surveillance methods, it is important to note that no single technology can track and expose all illegal fishing activity. Fisheries monitoring and surveillance systems therefore often require a suite of available technologies.
This graphic identifies several technologies that have emerged to assist authorities worldwide to improve information exchange and enforcement. These technologies fall into two groups:
Data gathered by monitoring technology are captured for recordkeeping and analysis by experts. Those data can be used with inspection and other surveillance data to prosecute fisheries crimes in national and international courts. The data can also provide the basis for risk-analysis reports and are crucial to developing inspection and surveillance strategies.
No technology on its own is a complete solution to the problem. Each must be part of an overall system that includes trained personnel, infrastructure, and the backing of a strong legal regime.
See the original article here
from a article in The Economist
The high seas are not ungoverned. Almost every country has ratified the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which, in the words of Tommy Koh, president of UNCLOS in the 1980s, is “a constitution for the oceans”. It sets rules for everything from military activities and territorial disputes (like those in the South China Sea) to shipping, deep-sea mining and fishing. Although it came into force only in 1994, it embodies centuries-old customary laws, including the freedom of the seas, which says the high seas are open to all. UNCLOS took decades to negotiate and is sacrosanct. Even America, which refuses to sign it, abides by its provisions.
But UNCLOS has significant faults. It is weak on conservation and the environment, since most of it was negotiated in the 1970s when these topics were barely considered. It has no powers to enforce or punish. America’s refusal to sign makes the problem worse: although it behaves in accordance with UNCLOS, it is reluctant to push others to do likewise.
Specialised bodies have been set up to oversee a few parts of the treaty, such as the International Seabed Authority, which regulates mining beneath the high seas. But for the most part UNCLOS relies on member countries and existing organisations for monitoring and enforcement. The result is a baffling tangle of overlapping authorities (see diagram) that is described by the Global Ocean Commission, a new high-level lobby group, as a “co-ordinated catastrophe”.
Individually, some of the institutions work well enough. The International Maritime Organisation, which regulates global shipping, keeps a register of merchant and passenger vessels, which must carry identification numbers. The result is a reasonably law-abiding global industry. It is also responsible for one of the rare success stories of recent decades, the standards applying to routine and accidental discharges of pollution from ships. But even it is flawed. The Institute for Advanced Sustainability Studies, a German think-tank, rates it as the least transparent international organisation. And it is dominated by insiders: contributions, and therefore influence, are weighted by tonnage.
While sometimes unpleasant, never boring... nature at its best and humans at their most vulnerable. (Always loved it!)
based on FFA figures
The FAO Port State Measures Agreement sets minimum standards for port access by foreign flagged fishing vessels and related support vessels.
Port State Measures (PSM) are requirements established or interventions undertaken by port states which a foreign fishing vessel must comply with or is subjected to as a condition for use of ports within the port state. National PSM would typically include requirements related to prior notification of port entry, use of designated ports, restrictions on port entry and landing/transhipment of fish, restrictions on supplies and services, documentation requirements and port inspections, as well as related measures, such as IUU vessel listing, trade-related measures and sanctions.
The PSM hence, is a key tool to support mesures design to fight illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing.
This video illustrates the topic:
More on PSM here
While I truly envy this man... I'm so happy for him.
Fisheries inspectors, investigators and enforcement officers from across the Pacific head home from Suva this weekend, after spending almost a month honing their ‘investigative’ skills to help detect fisheries offences.
The regional fisheries training course is competency based, building the required technical knowledge and expertise for Fisheries Inspectors, Investigators and Enforcement officers enabling them to work more effectively. The three-week study and training schedule helps them boost management of their national marine resources; identify offences in fisheries legislation; grow their understanding of evidence required for criminal prosecutions, and plan more effective investigations.
More here
The European Union has updated its “list of vessels engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing” and 41 tuna vessels have made the cut.
Compiled of 67 fishing boats in total, the list has been published in the Official Journal of the European Union. In terms of tuna vessels, the updated list no longer includes purse seiners, and only longline vessels have been branded as IUU. The reports on the 41 longliners being IUU comes from the 4 major tuna RFMO’s, the IATTC, IOTC, ICCAT and WCPFC.
Most of the national flags on the listed vessels come from countries such as Panama, Honduras and Africa. African flagged ships include vessels from Togo, Morocco, Guinea and South Africa. As for Asian countries, most of the IUU regarded boats are flagged under North Korea, Mongolia, Taiwan and Indonesia.
And that’s not to say that European vessels weren’t included in the compilation. Twelve out of the 41 IUU branded tuna vessels are flagged under a European state. One Portuguese longliner was identified for illegal fishing practices, one French, one flagged under the Isle of Man, two Gibraltarian vessels, three of the United Kingdom and four of Georgia.
Complete list here
The tuna tagging experiments conducted by SPC’s Oceanic Fisheries Programme (OFP) are acknowledged to be among the most comprehensive in the world and have recently achieved yet another milestone.
Tuna are highly-migratory fish, which make it very difficult to assess and monitor the health of their stocks. Approximately 60% of global tuna are caught in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, and most of this catch comes from the waters of SPC-member countries. Tagging experiments are considered to be the only reliable means of obtaining some of the key information (such as movement and growth) required to conduct tuna stock assessments.
After four decades of involvement in Pacific Island tuna fisheries, Dr Antony Lewis recently achieved the mark of 100,000 tuna tagged by an individual, which is a world record unlikely ever to be surpassed. The milestone was achieved during a recent tagging cruise in Papua New Guinea (PNG) waters operating under the Pacific Tuna Tagging Project (PTTP) in collaboration with the PNG National Fisheries Authority.
Pacific Islands Tunanomics workshop
There is a urgent need for Pacific nations to rise above national agendas and act regionally, to respond effectively to the economic crisis in the Pacific’s albacore long line fisheries, warns the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency Director-General James Movick.
To make this happen FFA members look to work cooperatively with the Pacific Island territories who are not members of FFA but who share the same demise.
Full article here
A small video by SPC (Secretariat of the Pacific Community) Oceanic Fisheries Programme
Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities are widely considered a main cause of unsustainable fisheries across the globe. The EU has taken a leading role in the fight against IUU fishing, using both its market and normative power to advance its EU IUU Regulation (no. 1005/2008) and wider fisheries sustainability agenda outside its territory. This paper examines how successful the EU has been in using its market and normative power to influence regulatory strategies and frameworks governing tuna fisheries in the Pacific Islands region of the Western Pacific Ocean. The results indicate that while the market power of the EU remains an influential factor, the diminishing normative power of the EU in WCPO is weakening any attempts to implement its IUU fishing regulation and Pacific Island nations have promoted their own regulatory agenda. We conclude that the changing asymmetries between market and normative power has led to a differentiated geography of regulatory uptake, and while market power will remain a dominant strategy for the EU, normative power, when exercised should focus on cooperation rather than ‘teaching’ the benefits of an EU regulatory approach.
Power Europe: EU and the illegal, unreported and unregulated tuna fisheries regulation in the West and Central Pacific Ocean - Alice M.M. Miller n, Simon R. Bush, Arthur P.J. Mol
Download the article from here
Tuna fishery management options, and the uses of input and output controls.
Laurent Dagorn, a Senior Scientist with the Institut De Recherche Pour Le Développement, discussed the science of FADs.
Subtle differences on words make big conceptual differences
Professor Scott Barrett discusses property rights and the challenges that sometimes prevent nations from agreeing upon them.