DEVELOPMENT: Will New Convention Protect the Pacific’s Tuna?

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Analysis - By Kalinga Seneviratne

SYDNEY, Jun 15 2004 (IPS) - A new convention that regulates the fishing of tuna promises a degree of hope for small island nations of the Pacific, whose economic survival depends on marine resources. But there is scepticism on whether it has enough teeth to prevent the depletion of the fish stocks by foreign fishermen.

The international agreement, officially called the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention, comes into effect on Jun. 19 and will assist Pacific countries to control the overfishing of tuna in their seas by mainly Asian fishermen.

For countries like Fiji, French Polynesia, Samoa, Tonga, New Caledonia and the Cook Islands, the tuna fishing industry is main driving force behind their economies.

In 2002, the latest year for which statistics are available, the total catch of tuna from Western and Central Pacific countries was 1.98 million tonnes. It was the second highest annual catch since the record of 2.03 billion tonnes in 1998.

But local fleets have only managed to land about 200,000 tonnes, while the rest has gone to foreign fishing vessels getting access to this marine resource by paying licensing fees.

The international environmental group Greenpeace, in a February report entitled ‘Development Without Destruction: Towards Sustainable Pacific Fisheries’ pointed out that over 60 percent of the world’s canned tuna and 30 percent of Japan’s ‘sashimi’ comes from the Pacific.

The Pacific tuna industry is worth a conservative estimate of 2 billion U.S. dollars, but Pacific island nations receive less than 4 percent of revenues – which amounts to only 79 million U.S. dollars.

And that 79 million U.S. dollars has to be shared between 14 small countries.

It comes as no surprise that local fishermen in the Pacific island nations are in the doldrums, economically – prompting direct government intervention to protect their livelihoods.

This month, Fiji’s Fisheries Director Maciu Lagibalavu was suspended by the Public Service Commission on charges of taking bribes from Chinese companies in exchange for issuing offshore exclusive economic zone (EEZ) fishing licences.

The Cook Islands’ government, in a bid to cut surveillance costs, said last week that all tuna fishing vessels would have to carry electronic locating devices or risk losing their licenses.

Meanwhile, the Samoan government this week appointed a committee to study the impact on local fishermen of dwindling catches with a view of suspending interest payments on their loans.

In February Fiji’s Prime Minister Laisenia Qarase, when opening the Pacific Island Regional Oceans Forum, made a call for arms to protect the country’s fisheries resources from ”those intent on poaching and plundering” them.

The Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Convention provides the mechanism for effective protection of tuna stocks in the region by ensuring that they are not depleted by unsustainable fishing practices.

The convention is also designed to bring together into a single management regime coastal states – which have tuna resources within their EEZs – and the distant fishing nations.

But according to Greenpeace, the convention, in its present form, has limitations.

”The convention is good in theory, but only Pacific island countries have ratified it,” Pio Manoa, Greenpeace’s ocean campaigner told IPS.

”Other countries who are fishing in the Pacific such as Korea, Japan and few others have indicated their intentions to join the convention but haven’t done so yet,” Manoa pointed out.

The Greenpeace activist said the testing time, for the convention, would be the implementation stage – where countries would have to come good on their promises to sign it.

Many Asian countries like Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and China – where fish is the staple diet – are facing dwindling stocks in their seas due to overfishing.

Because of this, these Asian fishermen – often with large high- tech fishing vessels – have moved into the Pacific in a large way buying licences to fish in the waters of the small nations whose EEZs are much larger than their land mass.

More than a thousand, mainly Asian, fishing boats have been licensed by the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), through which governments of the Pacific islands regulate fishing in the region.

But in Fiji, there has been a long drawn out confrontation between the head of the Fiji Tuna Boat Association Graham Southwick and the government over the licensing of foreign vessels.

This has led to the sacking of the country’s fisheries director this month.

Southwick claimed that corruption in the granting of licenses to mainly Asian fishing vessels has led to overfishing in Fijian waters and forced many local fishing companies into bankruptcy.

Recently the Fijian government tightened licensing requirements and in April the government’s Licensing Committee rejected more than 60 of the 84 licence applications from Chinese companies.

But the inherent problem among the Pacific Islander fishermen is the lack of finances to invest in larger fishing vessels, in order to increase their catch.

This has resulted in many of them leasing foreign boats and relying on access licensing fees from these vessels.

”The convention recognises the needs of developing states and this provision (access licensing fees) must be tested out,” Greenpeace’s Manoa told IPS.

There is also the problem that governments of the Pacific islands are failing to see the benefits of protecting inshore fishermen who do not fish tuna.

”True, these (tuna) fisheries are worth billions of dollars, and handle over a million tonnes of fish, but only a fraction of this remains in the region,” pointed out Hugh Govan, of the Institute of Applied Sciences at the University of the South Pacific.

”The benefits that inshore fisheries provide to the region’s communities in terms of food and income are considerably larger,” he wrote recently in the ‘Pacific Island Business’ magazine.