News
Europe Controls Illegal Fishing: Article by Heike Baumuller ‘Caught with the Catch’
Illegal fishing continues seriously to undermine the sustainability of the worlds fisheries and cause huge financial losses of some $10-23.5 billion annually. Illegal activities are especially prevalent in nations with weak government, making developing countries particularly vulnerable.
European fisheries are not immune. An assessment of five large marine ecosystems around Europe predicts that by 2020, over $14.5 billion in catches, $11.6 billion in stock value and 27,000 jobs could be lost if nothing is done to deal with the problem. European fishing interests are also threatened on the high seas and in other countries waters where illegal fishing affects the catches of the continents distant water fleets.
To deal with this, a new European Union (EU) regulation comes into force in January aimed at combating illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing in European waters and beyond. It is one of the most ambitious pieces of EU legislation to promote improvements in environmental management outside the Union.
The regulation aims to ensure that anyone who wishes to land or export fish and fish products to the EU can only do so if the country under whose flag the fish was caught can show that it has laws and regulations to conserve and manage its marine resources, and that these are enforced. The EU can blacklist vessels that are found to have been fishing illegally and countries that fail to take action to prevent, deter and eliminate illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.
CERTIFIED CATCH
One of the central elements of the regulation is a requirement for any imports of fish products into the EU to be accompanied by a catch certificate. The certificate is provided by the flag state of the fishing vessel to certify that catches have been made legally in accordance with regulations and international conservation and management measures.
The European Commission will only accept certificates of a given flag state once that country has confirmed that it has in place national arrangements for the implementation, control and enforcement of laws, regulations and conservation and management measures. Certificates will need to be passed along the entire supply chain, including processors that import and then re-export fish to the EU.
If a vessel is found to be engaged in illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, the Commission can add it to a list of such boats. Among the punitive measures, listed boats will not be allowed to fish in European waters, enter the port of an EU member state, and import to or export from the Union.
A country can also be listed by decision of the European Council if it has failed to implement adequate measures to deal with recurrent illegal fishing by vessels flying its flag, fishing in its waters or using its ports, as well as to prevent market access for illegally caught fishery products.
Actions against such so-called non-cooperating third countries include prohibiting imports of fish products from vessels flying their flag and a freeze on negotiating new fisheries partnership agreements with the EU to grant European fleets access to a listed countrys waters, as well as possible termination of existing agreements. In addition, the EU can implement short-term emergency measures if actions by a third country undermine conservation and management by a regional fisheries management organisation.
CONCERNS SURFACE
Concerns have started to surface, in particular among developing countries and major processors, about their ability to comply with the regulations in time. Many exporters to the EU will be required to revise their regulations and strengthen monitoring, control and traceability.
Those involved in small-scale fishing are likely to face particular challenges because of their large numbers, geographic range and informal operations. The regulations themselves include few references to difficulties developing countries may have with the new arrangements, other than taking them into account when deciding on non-cooperating states.
The Commission is finalising implementation guidelines which are likely to include some special provisions, such as a simplified catch certificate for small-scale fisheries, but it is still unclear what support will be available to help them deal with the new situation.
Other sectors, such as timber, chemicals, genetically modified organisms and wildlife trade, are already covered by European legislation with implications for environmental management elsewhere. However, few are quite as sweeping as the new fishing regulations are intended to be.
For instance, while Community rules on trade in illegal timber also require timber imported into the EU to be licensed for legality of production, this only applies to countries with voluntary partnership agreements with the Union so far Ghana and the Republic of Congo while no licenses are required for those that have not done so.
In the case of fisheries, the wide scope of the regulation is at least partly because of the particular characteristics of this sector: the impact of illegal activities on the availability of the resource overall, given that fish are a mobile and generally shared resource; the limitations of national measures to deal with the impact; and how these factors in turn affect European fleets fishing interests at home and abroad.
Fish caught by one vessel will affect the supply for all others, both immediately and in the long term because of the impact on reproduction rates. Fishing on the high seas is largely a free-for-all, unless a species is covered by a regional fisheries management organisation and even then management tends to be weak while many national fisheries are poorly managed. Even if fishing efforts are regulated in one country, illegal fishing in another will still affect transboundary stocks.
Viewed from this perspective, the regulation is effectively a response to the failure of the international community to regulate this shared resource. It does so by dealing with the supply by directly targeting vessels, promoting internationally agreed conservation measures, improving the management of national and regional fisheries.
On the demand side, the regulation attempts to close the market to illegally caught fish, both in the EU and in processing countries through which illegal catches might be channelled.
International environmental crime, including the illegal trade in natural resources such as fish, is a serious and growing problem. The new EU regulation is an ambitious attempt to address this challenge. How it is implemented, and to what extent it is effective, will be a matter of considerable interest.
The World Today published the current article by Heike Baumuller, who is a senior research fellow for energy, environment and resource governance at Chatham House, in October 2009.
This article can be viewed at: www.theworldtoday.org