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High Seas Task Force: Best Practice through International Cooperation
By Simon Upton, Chair, Round Table on Sustainable Development and Director of the High Seas Task Force
The High Seas Task Force broke new ground by bringing together like-minded Ministers and interested stakeholders to address illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing.
What was the rationale for setting up a Task Force?
In the wake of the Johannesburg World Summit in 2002, many people were wondering how to make sense of the vast agenda that the world community had assembled. There was a weariness with unwieldy, drawn out global processes. But the global nature of so many problems meant that merely national or even regional-level initiatives would fall short.
The Round Table on Sustainable Development at the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) decided to see if it would be possible to choose a single issue from this lengthy list and move at the pace of the most motivated countries. Illegal fishing on the high seas was chosen because it was genuinely global (it relates to the global ocean commons which is beyond the control of any single party). It is an issue that cuts across far more fields than any single global agency or negotiating forum.
The result was the decision by a small number of countries, who did not claim to be representative in any way, declaring their determination to tackle the issue to the extent they were able to even if others didn’t share their sense of urgency.
How did Task Force members decide to go about their task?
From the outset, the Task Force was, as stated in its long title, ministerially led. In other words, Task Force membership was initiated by Ministers themselves, not their bureaucracies. It was Ministers who had to front up. This proved to be both a strength and a weakness. There was a loss of continuity caused by a revolving door membership which saw, over the two and a half year life of the initiative, every Minister replaced except Chile’s Felipe Sandoval and Namibia’s Abraham Iyambo. New Zealand went through three Ministers during the life of the Task Force! None of this was avoidable, elections happen and so do cabinet re-shuffles.
In the secretariat’s view, if the exercise were ever repeated, Ministers should nominate a well informed senior adviser to take responsibility for ensuring national-level responsiveness. Relying on the standing bureaucracy is insufficient. The five original participants (Canada joined later) decided to invite some other stakeholders to join them on the basis that governments aren’t the sole source of wisdom on an issue as complex and multifaceted as this. They were successful in attracting NGO support in the form of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) International. Both organisations had to contribute their chief executives to the Task Force to match the ministerial-level representation by countries. They also attracted the active support of the Earth Institute at Columbia University. Attempts to engage the private sector were almost wholly unsuccessful. Companies like Unilever that have had a lot to say about sustainably sourced products declined to engage. This was one of the most significant defects in the Task Force’s composition.
Every Task Force member had to contribute money (or push someone else to do so). The most generous country contributor was Australia by far. Notwithstanding that, in the end about half the necessary funds had to be raised from philanthropic sources, most notably the Packard Foundation and the Oak Foundation. The money raised funded a secretariat of just three people for a little over two years. It was agreed at the outset that the secretariat would have a short shelf-life. There would be no empire building and the staff would work towards the disbandment of the secretariat within a month of their final report.
Task Force members agreed that the analysis the secretariat undertook should lead to a series of practical measures that could be undertaken immediately by the membership regardless of whether the wider global community wanted to act. They didn’t want those measures to undermine ongoing multilateral processes in places like the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), and the United Nations (UN). Rather, they wanted to lead the way in the hope that others might follow thereby giving some impetus to otherwise slow processes.
Most importantly, the members wanted to put themselves in a very clear advocacy position at the end of the process. They wanted to be able to ask non-member countries two simple questions:
(1) Do you agree with our analysis? If you don’t, specify what’s wrong with it.
(2) If you can’t fault our analysis, what stops you from joining us in taking the action we are committed to taking?
The Task Force secretariat was required to see its entire analysis in the light of those demands. The aim was to avoid yet another lengthy, learned analysis of the problem with no discernible impact on its resolution.
Did the Task Force deliver on its stated ambitions?
In terms of generating a first class, multidimensional analysis of the problem, the Task Force certainly delivered. Closing the Net is, for the time being, the most comprehensive analysis of the illegal fishing phenomenon. It brings together in one place a complete analysis of the economic, trade, environmental, developmental, criminal, legal and enforcement aspects of the problem. Under the current global architecture, these aspects are dealt with to a greater and, sadly, all-too-often lesser extent by a myriad of international and regional agencies. In theory they work together closely. The practice is another matter. In terms of developing a suite of practical measures that can be implemented without waiting for the rest of the world, the Task Force managed to settle on a short list of activities that could provide the basis for immediate action. While some were, in effect, simply common positions to advocate in global forums, at least two were ‘concrete’ in the sense that they were designed to deal directly to illegal operations. These were:
A proposal to resource properly the International Monitoring and Control Surveillance Network then hosted by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) in the United States of America. This network is supposed to be a hub for enforcement agencies in more than 40 member countries. Up until now only the United States of America has ever contributed any real resources and there have been no dedicated full-time staff. If there is ever to be a ‘Fishing Interpol’ it will require more than voluntary part-time efforts. The Task Force agreed that real resources should be found to give the network wings.
A proposal to establish an inventory of fishing vessels on the high seas drawing on the large number of publicly available databases that are currently completely fragmented and difficult to access for forensic purposes.
In addition, the Task Force decided to force the pace on debating how Regional Fisheries Management Organisations should perform. It established an expert panel to develop a ‘model’ for such an organisation which could then become a standard against which regional organisations could benchmark themselves.
Will it make a difference?
This is the only question that really matters. The answer is that time will tell. A report like Closing the Net probably has a shelf-life of 12 months to 18 months at the most. It will be up to the Ministers who participated (and, let’s hope, their predecessors) to use their offices to promote their conclusions and encourage wider participation. They will also need to find more resources if their initiatives are to bear fruit. Countries spend, collectively, billions on patrolling their own watery domains. But fish and fishermen aren’t confined by boundaries on ocean maps. Being prepared to spend a couple of million per annum on what happens beyond those magic lines is essential if there is to be a genuinely global response to a global problem. Yes, that expenditure is providing a global public good that in theory should be paid for by all countries. But it isn’t and it won’t be any time soon. Countries that want to take the lead will have to put their money where their good intentions are. If they do, they stand a fair chance of influencing the future shape of global high seas management. If they don’t, it will have been just another report.