By Estrella Gutiérrez
CARACAS, Sep 1 1997 (IPS)

Latin American tuna fishing countries are drawing up a binding multilateral instrument in order to avoid protectionist measures that hide behind “an ecological mask,” like the U.S. ban on yellowfin tuna caught in the eastern Pacific.

Fishing authorities from Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, Mexico and Venezuela held a first meeting towards that end in Caracas, to be followed by a Sep. 14-15 gathering in Ensenada, Mexico, Venezuelan official Carlos Jimenez told IPS.

The meetings aim to ensure that the binding instrument reflects Latin America’s interests when the 12 members of the Intergovernmental Commission of Tropical Tuna (ICTT) gather in La Jolla, California on Sep. 29.

Latin American countries that fish the valuable yellowfin tuna in the waters of the eastern Pacific were penalised in 1990 for trapping dolphins in their nets – schools of dolphins and tuna swim together in that region – with a total embargo by the United States.

In July, the U.S. Congress decided to lift the ban by February or March 1998.

But several conditions were set. Tropical tuna will only be able to be sold with the “dolphin-safe” label as of mid-1999, and CIAT members must sign a binding instrument guaranteeing that the killing of dolphins will continue to be avoided.

Mexico’s Deputy Minister of Fishing, Carlos Camacho, told IPS after the Caracas meeting that ended last Friday that the ecological argument under which the ban was imposed was “a mask” which hid the real reasons, which he described as “totally commercial and protectionist.”

He pointed out that CIAT had certified that devices used by the tuna fleets in the region had already virtually eliminated the killing of dolphins in the capture of tuna by 1993.

Indeed, an October 1995 CIAT meeting in Panama formally decided that the prohibition was to be lifted. But pressure from U.S. tuna producers got the move postponed until 1998.

Jimenez, the director of the Venezuelan Autonomous Service of Fishing and Aquaculture Resources, said the participants in the Caracas meeting agreed that such an instrument would be beneficial to Latin American countries “because it will set multilateral rules that will ward off new unilateral actions like the embargo.”

Mexico, Venezuela and Panama have been hardest hit by the ban. (Panama’s absence at the Caracas meeting was only due to the naming of new fishing authorities, said Camacho and Jimenez.)

Camacho called Latin America’s response to the ban “a model at the global level” because it is based on the idea that conservation not only means fishing “at the maximum sustainable level,” but also protecting biodiversity.

“We have taken a series of measures that provide an example applicable at the global level as to how problems between trade and environment can be resolved, which should be applied to all kinds of fishing everywhere,” he stressed.

Among those measures figures a voluntary responsible fishing code accepted by all countries in the sphere of the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), Camacho pointed out.

The Mexican official added that a 1992 meeting of CIAT members in La Jolla, California set up a programme for preventing the inadvertent capture of dolphins which was adopted with unusual speed by Latin American countries.

He underlined that responsible fishing must not be limited to avoiding the killing of dolphins or other mammals, but must be based rather on “the preservation of the ecosystem as a whole, which is what we have achieved.”

In spite of “all the economic and social damage” caused by the embargo, “we have come out of the process strengthened,”‘ said Camacho, who added that the Latin American countries are now seeking “to maintain unity and furnish the productive and commercial process with stability” through a joint position at this month’s La Jolla meeting.

Camacho said the behaviour of U.S. authorities throughout the embargo has demonstrated “just how fraudulent their arguments were, and to what extent the reasons underlying the measure were protectionist, not environmental.”

He pointed out that the measure represented “a double injustice” – not only did it close the doors to the world’s biggest market for tuna, it also prevented European processers from buying yellowfin tuna fished in the eastern Pacific, because the final product was prohibited in the United States.

The United States consumes 600 million crates of tuna annually.

When the ban was imposed, Mexico – with the region’s largest tuna fishing fleet – exported 80 percent of its more than 80,000 tonnes of yellowfin tuna to Europe.

The prohibition led to the loss of 6,000 jobs in Mexico and 80 to 100 million dollars in annual sales, while part of the tuna fishing fleet had to be sold and several companies went under. Special investments now have to be made in order to turn around the de-capitalisation of the sector.

Jimenez pointed out that Venezuela has the region’s second largest tuna fishing fleet, which exported 90,000 tonnes of tuna before the embargo, 70 percent to the United States.

Local production was cut in half by the prohibition, the tuna fishing fleet shrank from 32 to eight boats, 6,000 direct jobs were lost in one of the country’s most depressed areas, and only the opening of the South American markets was able to partially alleviate the socioeconomic impact.

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