The United States, the EU, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Colombia earlier this month pledged to scale up efforts to counteract overcapacity of fishing fleets.
We note that when overcapacity contributes to overfishing, it constitutes a serious threat to the conservation and sustainable exploitation of living marine resources in the world’s oceans, read the joint statement, inked by the six nations at an international conference on sustainable fisheries and management fisheries organised by Greece, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.
The signatories stressed the importance of international cooperation in this area, including using instruments adopted at the global level such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Efforts made by Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) to provide binding frameworks for managing fishing capacity in a sustainable way were also recognised.
More action was called for, however, with the joint declaration suggesting policy instruments such as proper monitoring of stocks and capacity, limiting number of licenses, vessel tonnage, and eliminating fisheries subsidies that exacerbate overcapacity and overfishing.
The heightened international political commitment from these leading fisheries nations was welcomed as a useful step forward by some observers.
This joint declaration constitutes the strongest call in years to put an end to overfishing in the world’s oceans by sustainably managing the fleet and eliminating subsidies that promote overcapacity, said Xavier Pastor, Executive Director of Oceana Europe.
While also hailing the move as critical and long overdue, environmental group Greenpeace stressed that still further efforts were needed.
EU countries should start by scrapping the largest and most destructive industrial fishing vessels, initiating a shift towards small-scale low-impact fishing, which is more environmentally sustainable, creates jobs and supports local communities, the group said in a statement.
Coordinating international and national agendas
In a joint Huffington Post article penned ahead of the meeting in Thessaloniki, Greece, Maria Damanaki, EU maritime affairs and fisheries commissioner, Pascal Lamy, former director general of the WTO, and Trevor Manuel, minister and head of South Africa’s National Planning Commission, had pressed for a strong coordinated response to tackle stretched fisheries.
Above all, we need a coherent and global approach to ocean governance and management that also encompasses development and trade policy, the article read. It is high time the world addressed excessive global fishing power, the blog post continued. For its part, the EU concluded a reform of its Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
Pointing to the FAO’s 2012 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture report – which indicates that about 90 percent of global fishing takes place in the exclusive economic zones of coastal states -other analysts cautioned that attention to national agendas, as well as international cooperation, would be equally as important.
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