No. 46 March 2007 - COnnecting REpositories · PDF file · 2016-05-14Small-scale Fisheries” ... rights-based approaches in fisheries should only ... regimes are built on principles

I N T E R N A T I O N A L C O L L E C T I V E I N S U P P O R T O F F I S H W O R K E R S

No. 46

Debate on Rights-based FisheriesMSC Ecolabel CertificationPeru's Fishmeal Industry

Tuna Fishing in the PhilippinesILO Work in Fishing Convention

Fisheries Legal HandbookNews Round-up

March 2007samudraR E P O R TR E P O R TR E P O R TR E P O R TR E P O R T

ISSN 0973-1121

ContentsSAMUDRA Report No. 46 March 2007 TRIANNUAL REPORT OF ICSF

SAMUDRA News Alerts

SAMUDRA News Alerts is a freeservice designed to delivernews reports and analysis onfisheries, aquaculture and re-lated issues, on a daily orweekly digest basis, in plain-text or HTML format.

The service often features ex-clusive,original stories onsmall-scale and artisanalfisheries, particularly in theregions of the South, as wellas issues that deal withwomen in fisheries and safetyat sea. Apart from news andstories on fisheries, the ser-vice also focuses on environ-mental and oceans issues.

Please visi t http: //www.ics f.net to subscr ibe toSAMUDRA News Alerts. TheICSF website has archives ofall past news items as well asall issues of SAMUDRA Reportand several other documentsand resources that might in-terest you. We would also behappy to get feedback andsuggestions on the news ser-vice and the website. You canreach us at [email protected].

COMMENT 1

ANALYSISBeing open, transparent, inclusive 3

PHILIPPINESTonnes of tuna 9

DOCUMENTProtecting small-scale fishworkers 16

DEBATEFulfilled, healthy, secure? 18

DEBATEPrivate rights tragedy 22

DEBATEThe litmus test 30

NOTICEFeast for the eye 33

REVIEWNot quite under control 34

REVIEWA more direct dialogue 39

REVIEWA practical road map 42

PERUGolden goose or albatross? 45

NEWS ROUND-UPSingapore, Indonesia, India, China 50

Comment

Basing it just rightRights-based approaches to development that use human rights—economic, social,cultural, civil and political, as established by international law—as the framework to guidedevelopment agendas, have been increasingly adopted in recent years and particularly inthe last decade, including by the United Nations and its agencies. In essence, it isrecognized that all development initiatives should contribute directly to the realization ofhuman rights.

In this context, the paper prepared by the Secretariat of the Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations (FAO) for the Agenda item on “Social Issues inSmall-scale Fisheries” (COFI/2007/6), stressing a human-rights perspective to foster socialdevelopment and effective resource management, is timely and needs to be welcomed.The paper notes that a rights-based approach to development in fisheries needs to focusas much on promoting human rights, raising living standards and addressing thevulnerability and social exclusion of fishing communities, as on improving management offisheries resources. A narrow focus on the latter may be ineffective if undertaken in isolationfrom the broader social and cultural conditions in fishing communities and societies at large,it stresses.

In a context where fishing communities in some parts of the world, and particularly incountries of the South, are known to live in poverty, with minimal access to basic servicesor representation in decision-making processes, there is no denying the essential logic anddesirability of this approach.

As a possible strategy towards bringing together responsible fisheries and socialdevelopment within a human-rights perspective, the paper proposes, as a principle, theneed to include poverty-reduction criteria as a key component of decisions related toequitable allocation of rights to fish, including in decisions over inclusion and exclusion. Italso points out that, according to the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,fishery-management objectives should have both a social and economic equity component.

Viewed through the lens of equity and poverty reduction, certain fisheries-managementmeasures, such as the creation and effective enforcement of artisanal trawl-free fishingzones — long demanded by artisanal and small-scale fishworkers from countries like Peru,Chile, Thailand, India and Indonesia — would make sense, particularly if accompanied bymeasures like ensuring gear selectivity and use of labour-intensive techniques, amongothers.

The same lens would also demand a reappraisal of rights-based approaches in fisheriesthat have conferred private-property rights to fish resources on individuals, or even groups,to the exclusion of large numbers of other fishers. These could be owner-operators,including part-time and seasonal fishers, both men and women, and others with limitedmeans. Fishworker and fishing community organizations from Chile, South Africa, Canada,Iceland and Australia, among others, have pointed to the tremendous social costs of suchsystems, and how they violate basic human rights.

As Svein Jentoft points out (see pg. 30), rights-based approaches in fisheries should onlybe adopted where it is convincingly demonstrated “...not only in theory but also in practice,and not only on average but for the specific situations in which fishing people findthemselves, that a particular property-rights regime will increase the welfare of those mostin need...”

Fisheries policymakers have the responsibility to ensure that fisheries-managementregimes are built on principles of sustainability, equity, and social and culturalappropriateness, and contribute to the social development of fishing communities. Ignoringthese principles could jeopardize the objectives of fisheries management itself.

COMMENT

SAMUDRA Report No. 46 March 2007 1

Ecolabelling

Being open, transparent, inclusive

Developing-country fisheries, and small-scale ones, in particular, have been marginalized in the Marine Stewardship Council certification system

Protecting consumers from unsafefood, the environment fromoverexploitation of resources and

pollution, and workers and producersfrom unjust labour and trade relations, aregenerally considered, in developmentcircles, as objectives worthy ofintervention whether through regulationor, increasingly, through theestablishment of voluntary standards andcodes of conduct. Yet, abstract principlesare eventually applied in concretesituations and have a variety of effects ondifferently endowed countries, groupsand individuals. What may seem a goodidea to consumer groups or governmentagencies in a Northern setting, may notturn out to be so advantageous toproducers in the South even though theinitial stimulus in the North may havebeen exactly to safeguard these producers.

Food safety, environmental and socialstandards have become key features in thetrade of agro-food products in the last 15years. International organizations,government agencies, industryassociations, and non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) behind theformulation of these standards wereinitially defensive of efforts aimed atcritically examining their effects indifferent settings. Questioning theinherent ‘justness’ of these initiatives wasconsidered reactionary and necessarilyintended to discredit them. Recently, therehas been a more open attitude towardsreaching a better understanding of thecontradictions, limitations anddifferential impact of these standards.From a ‘defensive’ phase, theseorganizations and NGOs have now movedinto a ‘constructive dialogue’ phase,where they are making efforts to be moreinclusive (sometimes for public-relationsreasons), and to reflect upon pastexperiences to improve the content,

monitoring and management of theirstandards. In other words, they are tryingto ‘make their system management-right’.This means that standards developmentprocedures, governance structures,indicators, monitoring, verification andmanagement systems have become muchmore sophisticated than even a decadeago. Where there has been little movementso far has been in acknowledging thatstandards are developed and applied inspecific political economies, withincomplex power relations, and inextremely diverse local conditions andpolitics. In a sense, an increased focus onsystems management brings theseinitiatives even further away from apolitico-economic understanding of theireffects.

The focus of much of the work to makeecolabels ‘better’ is based on the principlesof non-discrimination and equality ofopportunity. In this line of thought,explicitly adopted by the MarineStewardship Council (MSC), if the systemhas been devised openly, is monitoredtransparently, and is administeredproperly, standards simply provide fullerinformation to those involved intransactions. Where clear disadvantagesare highlighted for certain countries,groups or individuals, technical assistanceand capacity-building instruments areprovided, or simply suggested, assolutions.

Smaller playersIt follows that one of the arguments posedby environmental NGOs to defend theirstandards and codes of conduct is thatthey provide a level playing field for allplayers in an industry, and thataffirmative action targeted at smallerplayers would damage their credibility.But, if anything, the Forestry StewardshipCouncil (FSC) special provisions for

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community forestry certificationdemonstrate the contrary.

Facilitating access to special projectsfor smaller fisheries’ certification,improving outreach, and holding

workshops in Africa or South Asia are notsufficient to make artisanal fisheriesbetter equipped to be MSC-certified. Asthe only third-party ecolabel for capturefish, MSC bears responsibility for theinability of developing-country fisheries,in general, and artisanal fisheries in thesecountries, in particular, to be certified.Exceptions are found only in somefisheries of upper-middle-incomecountries—South African hake, MexicanBaja California red rock lobster, andPatagonian scallop are all MSC-certified,while Gulf of California (Mexico) sardineand Chilean hake are currentlyundergoing assessment.

Does this mean that MSC is ‘bad’ andshould be shut down? No. It means thatan organization that portrays itself asopen, transparent and inclusive shouldactually behave so. SAMUDRA Report hashosted a heated debate on the governanceof MSC since its inception, although, forsome reason, the debate has basicallydied out after 2002, with a small reprise in2004. Perhaps this is because most willagree, rightly so, that the governancestructure of MSC, its procedures and itsmarket coverage have improvedsubstantially in the 2000s.

Is this enough? No. The plight of‘sustainable fisheries’ that can not achievecertification in developing countries, andespecially of small-scale fisheries inleast-developed countries, has not beentackled seriously enough. Specialflexibilities in the interpretation ofcertification guidelines are not sufficient.Barriers to achieving MSC certification indeveloping countries range frominstitutional weakness (lack of knowhow)to financial costs. Numerous projects andfunds have been set up by, or with thecontribution of, MSC. This is a welcomedevelopment, but the range of fundingand the scope of activities involved areunlikely to help a substantial number ofthese fisheries to achieve MSC certification.For example, the ‘Sustainable FisheriesFund’ can only make small grants to “helpensure broadbased stakeholder input intofishery assessments . . . It will not be in aposition to support large-scale researchprojects” ("Funding support", SAMUDRAReport No. 32, July 2002).

Three componentsThe costs of MSC certification to the clientindustry can be broken down into threecomponents: (i) pre-assessment; (ii)fishery assessment; and (iii) annual audits.Pre-assessment costs range from a fewthousand dollars to over US$20,000. Directcosts for a full assessment have variedbetween under US$35,000 for a small,simple fishery to almost US$350,000 for alarge, complex fishery. The overall cost of

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4 SAMUDRA Report No. 46 March 2007

obtaining certification depends on thenature of the problems uncovered in theassessment and the corrective actions thathave to be undertaken.

Furthermore, as the last article on MSCthat appeared in SAMUDRA Report("Amend principles, criteria",

SAMUDRA Report No. 38, July 2004)highlights, financial arrangements forcertification are left to private negotiationbetween clients and certification agencies.The same article calls for MSC to channelsuch negotiations, which would allowdiscounts and ‘soft’ payment options forselected fisheries. It also calls for a revisionof principles and criteria, either amendingthem to fit developing-country fisheriesand small-scale fisheries, or devising aseparate set of principles and criteria forthese fisheries. Two years on, these callshave gone unheard.

To its credit, MSC has recognized that itsstandards and certification procedures arenot geared towards the realities ofdeveloping-country fisheries, especiallysmall-scale and data-deficient ones. Aspecial program (MSC Developing WorldFisheries Programme) has been seeking toimprove the awareness of MSC indeveloping countries and to developguidelines for the assessment ofsmall-scale and data-deficient fisheries.

The project aims at developing guidancefor certifiers on the use of ‘unorthodox’information on fisheries, such astraditional ecological knowledge andmanagement systems. It also aims at usinga ‘risk-based’ approach to qualitativelyevaluate fisheries. But the aim of thisproject is not to write a separate standard,but rather to develop ‘operationalinterpretations’ to assess small-scale anddata-deficient fisheries.

There is evidence that MSC was advised ona different approach for implementingspecial systems of compliance andverification to cater to the needs ofdeveloping countries and small-scalefisheries. These suggestions included thedevelopment of specific indicators that areappropriate to developing-countryfisheries, and the use of analysis of hazard(a specific threat to sustainability posed bythe practice) when analysis of risk (thecalculated probability of a practice having

a negative impact) is not possible,practical or is too expensive.

Furthermore, and unfortunately,discriminating in favour of small-scalefisheries seems to go against the‘Guidelines for Ecolabelling of FishProducts’ of the Food and AgricultureOrganization of the United Nations (FAO).These guidelines include the need forindependent auditing, transparency ofstandard setting and accountability, andthe need for standards to be based on‘good science’. They also lay downminimum requirements and criteria forassessing whether a fishery should becertified and an ecolabel awarded,drawing on FAO’s Code of Conduct forResponsible Fisheries. Unfortunately forartisanal fisheries in developing countries,transparency and inclusiveness instandard setting do not workretroactively. Also, instead of calling forspecial standards and verification systemsto be applied in developing countries, theFAO guidelines simply call for ‘financialand technical support’. This needs to bechanged.

Elsewhere, in a paper for the Trade LawCentre for Southern Africa, I haveanalyzed the process of certification ofSouth African hake, based on extensivefieldwork in the country in addition to ageneral assessment of MSC (Ecolabels andFish Trade: Marine Stewardship CouncilCertification and the South African HakeIndustry. http://www.tralac.org/scripts/content.php?id=5212). I highlighted thatecolabeling is not simply about scienceand management, but also about politics.I did not suggest that MSC itself playedpolitics, but that to understand‘real-world’ ecolabeling, one has to look athow certain interest groups usecertification for their own purposes, andnot necessarily for the welfare of fisheriesand the environment. I also highlightedsome problems with MSC’s definition of‘certification unit’, which, to my eyes,needs rethinking. I would like tosummarize some of the findings here.

Evolution processMSC certification of the hake trawlindustry in South Africa was the result ofan evaluation process that lasted almosttwo years, and that started with anapplication prepared by the South African

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Deep-sea Trawling Industry Association(SADSTIA), the body representative ofmost (but not all) hake-trawlingcompanies in the country.

It helps understanding themotivations behind seeking MSCcertification that, within SADSTIA, the

drivers of the initiative were largecompanies that, at that time, had aninterest in defending their quotaallocation from further erosion to thebenefit of other trawling companies andthe longline industry. This threat wasarising from the process of (belatedly)‘transforming’ the post-apartheidhake-trawl industry. The overall cost offishery certification to the industry wasUS$100,000 in direct costs of certification,plus US$100-200,000 to meet conditions inthe mid-term.

The assessment conducted by thecertification body resulted in a relativelyhigh scoring on the first of the threeprinciples of the MSC standard stockmanagement (88 points out of 100; theminimum pass is 80). According toindustry sources, this was expected, asthere has been a relatively long history ofproper monitoring of the resource inSouth Africa. In relation to the secondMSC principle (ecosystem impact), theSouth African hake industry barely madethe grade (80 points). Gaps wereidentified in four areas: (i) by-catchmanagement; (ii) ecosystem relations; (iii)

the impact of trawling on the benthichabitat; and (iv) the impact of trawling onseabird populations. In relation to thethird MSC principle (fishery managementsystem), the industry’s score wasrelatively high (88 points).

In my working paper, I highlighted thatMSC certification of the South African hakeindustry raises at least two problematicissues: (1) the trawling sector has beencertified, but not the longlining sectoreven though they exploit the same stock;and (2) there are questions about whetherthe stock is shared with Namibia, which isnot certified either. I do understand thatthe MSC definition of ‘certification unit’allows for the certification of one part ofan industry but not another, even thoughthey exploit the same stock. But adoptingan unsuitable definition is a technical fixand does not, in itself, ensure‘sustainability’ of a fishery.

Paradoxical situationHake longliners (and handliners) have notbeen certified in South Africa, eitherbecause they lacked a strong associationthat could represent them and guaranteea proper management system or becausethey are one of the potential threats to theincumbent oligopoly. A paradoxicalsituation has thus been created, where thetrawling sector in a fishery is certified as‘sustainable’, while the smaller-scalelongline sector catching the same stock isnot. Yet, the overall stock is deemed to be

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‘sustainably managed’. Furthermore,since the MSC approach is to divide upfisheries into management units, eventhough they may share the same stock, theSouth African hake industry was certifiedwithout its Namibian sister industry, eventhough it is widely believed that theyshare the same stock.

A strict interpretation of sustainablemanagement of stock wouldsuggest that the South African

fishery could only be ‘sustainable’ if bothit and the Namibian fishery were certified,but the latter either did not want, or wasnot invited, to participate in thecertification process. Therefore, thecertification team stated that “althoughmixing [of the South African andNamibian stocks] will inevitably occur,from a fishery-management perspective,the South African hake populations maybe considered as a discrete stock”. Is this‘fishery management perspective’ leadingto better sustainability of the stock (one ofthe main objectives of MSC)? If one believesrecent reports suggesting that the hakestock is in danger, and that catches are athistorically low levels (Southern AfricaFishing Industry News, June 2006, p. 10;Mail & Guardian, 30 June 2006), perhapssome doubts are justifiable. Is SouthAfrican hake going down the same way asNew Zealand hoki did? (Both areMSC-certified.)

In 2005, the South African hake industrywas subjected to the first surveillanceexercise by the certifying team. Thisresulted in a surveillance report releasedin May 2005 that covers progress in all theconditions that were set at the time ofcertification. The overall assessment of themonitoring team was a positive one, andcontinuation of certification wasrecommended, despite some majorproblems (see my working paper fordetails). No MSC-certified fishery has beende-certified so far. Is this an instance of‘path dependency’ or a sign of improvedmanagement?

South African observers of the fishindustry made it clear that with thecurrent rate of loss of scientists andmanagers at Marine and CoastalManagement (MCM), the agency in chargeof fisheries management, there will be nocapacity to properly monitor the use and

possible abuse of quotas. Thirty-fivescientists have left MCM between 1996 and2005. In January 2005, two of the keymanagement figures at MCM resigned.According to an industry source, currentmanagement at the regulatory agencylacks deep understanding of allocationissues. After the 2006 allocation, which,for the first time, assigned quotas for aperiod of 15 years (instead of one year, or,more recently, five years), compliance byindustry to regulation is likely to decrease.A review of allocation should follow everytwo or three years to assess compliancewith the terms of the allocation policy, butthere is no capacity at the regulatoryagency at present to undertake that.

Yet, whatever happens to MSC certificationin South Africa, it is important to highlightthat the drivers of the initiative haveachieved two other objectives anyway.First, the longlining industry has not beenallocated a higher proportion of the haketotal allowable catch (TAC) in 2006. But,even more importantly, the regulatoryagency, in its own policy that guided the15-year allocation of 2006, formallyembraced the argument that fewer playersare better for conservation than a largernumber of players. No new entrants wereassigned quotas, and some of the smallerexisting quotas were not renewed.Although some of the large companieslost a proportion of their quotas (a sizeablevolume for one of the main players), theallocation of long-term rights is likely tocreate a secondary market for quotas. Asa result, an even more concentratedindustry may emerge in the mid-term (fordetails on the 2006 allocation of hakerights in South Africa, see Stefano Ponteand Lance van Sittert, “The Chimera ofRedistribution”, DIIS Working Paper 2006:32; available at: www.diis.dk/sw29692.asp).

Conservation discourseMSC certification, far from being simply aneutral and equal instrument yieldingbetter conservation for humanity, isachieved in the context of global and localcompetition, special-interest battles, andlocal politics. In South Africa, althoughcouched in a discourse of conservation,MSC was one of the instruments used tojustify positions in debates that had racerelations and possible redressing of pastwrongs under apartheid as the main

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issues at stake. It was played as a toolagainst the redistribution of quotas awayfrom main, white-owned, quota holdersto the possible benefit of black-ownedsmaller quota holders and new entrantswithin the deep-sea hake sector. It wasalso used as a tool to avoid redistributionof quota away from the large, mainlywhite-owned, deep-sea trawling sector tothe advantage of the mostly black-ownedlonglining sector. Local politics and thesituated political economy ofconservation do matter for‘sustainability’ certifications.

Developing-country fisheries, andsmall-scale ones, in particular,have been marginalized in the

MSC system. Only three fisheries in SouthAfrica, Argentina and Mexico have beencertified so far. Delivering ‘sustainability’at no additional cost and in large volumesdemands standards that are tough interms of systems compliance, but actuallyquite approachable in terms of thethresholds of sustainability indicators.Entry barriers to ‘sustainability’ entaileconomies of scale and scope that requiremanagerial resources and access tonetworks. Since managerial and systemicobjectives are harder fordeveloping-country actors to match, thiscreates a hidden imbalance in favour ofmore endowed participants.

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This article, by Stefano Ponte([email protected]), Senior Researcherat the Danish Institute forInternational Studies, is based ona working paper published by theTrade Law Centre for SouthernAfrica


Tuna industry

Tonnes of tuna

Tuna fishing is a longstanding livelihood activity among Filipino fishers but, as catches increase, sustainability measures are called for

Situated in a region that boasts greatmarine biodiversity and one of themost abundant tuna resources, it is

not surprising that the Philippines ranked11th in world fisheries production in 2001and was the fourth-largest producer oftuna and tuna-like species in the world in2003, according to the FAO StatisticalDatabase (FAOSTAT) of the Food andAgriculture Organization of the UnitedNations (FAO).

Tuna fishing is a longstanding livelihoodactivity among Filipino fishers, especiallyin the southern Philippine provinces. In2003, the Philippines ranked second intuna production in the western centralPacific region, accounting for 22 per centof the total catch. Although tunaresources are distributed throughoutPhilippine waters, the major productionareas are the (i) Moro Gulf/Celebes Sea,(ii) Sulu Sea and (iii) South China Sea. Inaddition, Filipino fishers are also knownto exploit tuna fishing grounds outside thePhilippines, such as in Indonesia, PapuaNew Guinea and the Solomon Islands.

General Santos City is the country’s tunacapital. Its reputation started to gainprominence in the 1970s due to itsproximity to traditional tuna fishinggrounds. The establishment of processingand canning corporations as well aspost-harvest facilities like ice plantsbacked up the rapidly expanding tunaindustry. The government supported theindustry with the construction of anairport in 1991 and the General SantosCity Fish Port Complex (GSCFPC) in 1998.

The boom in Philippine tuna productionis generally attributed to the successfuluse of the fish-aggregating device (FAD)locally known as payao, which greatlyreduced the time spent for searching andcatching tuna. Production accelerated

rapidly from 2002, primarily from theoutput of the commercial fishers.However, the official estimate of the tunacatch for the previous years does notreflect the productivity of Philippinewaters. This is because producers andcanneries landed their catches in privateports and under-reported the catch toreduce taxes. Also, tuna caught outsidePhilippine waters were being reported ascaught inside the Philippines. More recentdata are expected to be more reliable forfishery-management purposes,particularly with the more extensive useof the GSCFPC.

The major tuna species are skipjack,yellowfin, bigeye, eastern little andfrigate. Oceanic tuna (skipjack, yellowfin,bigeye, northern bluefin and albacore) arepredominant in deep waters beyond thecontinental shelf, and are part of theregional stocks of the western centralPacific Ocean. Skipjack, yellowfin andbigeye tuna spawn extensively inPhilippine waters, with juvenile tunamaking up a high percentage of thestanding biomass of all species. Neritictuna (eastern little, frigate, bullet andlongtail) are abundant in inshore waters.

The major tuna producers in Philippinewaters are handliners and purse-seiners.A moratorium on the issuance ofadditional licences for commercial fishingvessels (purse-seiners, tuna ringnets andlongliners) was passed in 2004 in order toabate overfishing. No other foreign-flagvessel is allowed to fish in Philippinewaters, but foreign vessels have beenregularly apprehended for illegal fishing.

International marketThe primary producer of the high-pricedClass A or sashimi-grade tuna destined forthe international market are thesmall-scale handliners found all over the

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country. The adult yellowfin, skipjackand bigeye tuna are the common speciescaught by handline fishing.

The tuna boom in General SantosCity has attracted poor fishersfrom different provinces in

southern and central Philippines to seektheir fortune in tuna handlining.Depleted waters adjacent to thePhilippines have pushed handliners tofish outside local waters. Handliners arenot required to report where their catchesare caught since they are not part of thebilateral fishing agreements with othercountries. No reliable estimates can bemade regarding catches outside thePhilippines but it is generally acceptedthat more than half of the landed catch oflarge tuna from municipal fishers comefrom beyond Philippine waters.

There are two types of handline fishers,the palaran (catcher of flatfishes) and thepamariles (catcher of yellowfin tuna). Thepalaran handliner is confined to themunicipal waters (that is, within 15 km ofthe shore), while the pamariles fishers canventure to distant waters that are evenbeyond the Philippine exclusiveeconomic zone (EEZ). The palaran uses asimple vessel with outriggers to catch awide variety of fish in the municipalwaters. Due to the small size of the vessel,only a limited amount of ice is carried onboard. This usually results in lower

quality of landed tuna that is not suitablefor the export market.

Among the several issues faced by thepalaran are:

• the declining catch in municipalwaters due to overharvesting,destructive fishing practices (likecyanide and dynamite fishing),water pollution, and thedegradation of coastal ecosystems(mangrove forests, corals,seagrass) due to variousdevelopment initiatives (likefishpond and resort construction);

• theft of engines by ‘seajackers’;and

• lack of capital to invest in moreefficient gear and/or payaos.

The pamariles specifically target adult tunaintended for the export market. Theirfishing craft comprise a mother boat,usually of 15 gross tonnes (GT) size, thatcarries several auxiliary boats on itsoutriggers. The mother boat transports theauxiliary boats to the payaos, where theyscout for tuna. The payaos are usuallyowned by purse-seiners but handlinersare sometimes allowed by thepurse-seiners to harvest fish in their payaosas long as they respect the priority userights of the purse-seiners and do not cut

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Table 1. Estimated Tuna Fleet Structure

Type Tonnage Estimated Number Fishing Grounds

Handline Bancas Up to 60 GT 3,000 Philippines, Indonesia,Palau, high seas,Papua New Guinea

Purse-seiners

1. Small purse-seine <250 GT 110 Philippines, Indonesia

2. Large purse-seineand super-seiners

>250 GT 54 Papua New Guinea, In-donesia, high seas

Tuna Ringnet > 100 GT 100 Mostly Philippinewaters

Long liners

1. Domestic 14 Mostly Philippinewaters

2. Distant-water 25 Pacific, Indian and At-lantic ocean

Source: Barut & Garvilles, 2005


the anchor line. The mother boats areusually equipped with radio sets,compasses and a global positioningsystem (GPS), and can carry up to 6-18tonnes of ice. Depending on the size, thepumpboat can carry a crew of eight to 20.

The favourite fishing grounds of thepamariles are in the Moro Gulf, theMindanao Sea and the waters

surrounding Davao and the islands ofTawi-Tawi. Due to the declining catch, thebigger handline vessels scour theinternational waters (off Indonesia,Australia, Papua New Guinea and Fiji) fortuna, despite the looming threat ofapprehension and detention for poaching.(In 2002, a bilateral fishing agreement forPhilippine fishing vessels to accessIndonesian fishing grounds was reachedwith the Republic of Indonesia, which willlast until 2011.)

The players in the pamariles fisheryinclude fishers, financiers, brokers,boatowners and pumpboat operators. Acommon sharing system between theseplayers is lilima wherein the fisher gets 20per cent of the actual gross sale ofcaptured tuna for every fishingexpedition.

The issues faced by the pamariles include:

• safety at sea;

• threat of arrests by foreignauthorities for poaching;

• rising operating expenses,specifically for fuel;

• stagnation in fish prices;

• entry of cheap imported andsmuggled tuna products thatunfairly compete with the localcatch;

• stiff European Union (EU)standards, which are consideredimpractical for handlinepumpboats and limit their entryinto the EU market;

• absence of representation in theNational Tuna Industry Council;and

• classification of handliners ascommercial fishers, thussubjecting them to higher fees andexcluding them from enjoying theuse rights reserved for traditionalfishers.

Cannery gradeCanners in General Santos largely dependon purse-seine fishers for their raw supplyof tuna. Purse-seining is a fleet-basedoperation that occurs in the open sea forsix months to a year. Sixty per cent of the

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purse-seine catch is cannery-gradequality meant for processing, 35 per centare delivered to the outside domesticmarkets, and the remaining 5 per cent areconsumed locally. It is estimated that thepurse-seine sector provides jobs to at least15,000 people in General Santos City.

As handliners target adultyellowfin in the deeper column ofthe water, the purse-seiners (and

ringnets) gather mainly juvenile tuna(mostly yellowfin and skipjack) thataggregate near the surface of the water.Studies have shown that more than 90 percent of the catch of commercial fishers insouthern Mindanao is under 12 months ofage. This smaller-sized tuna catch isunsuitable for export in thefresh/frozen/chilled form. Tuna thatweigh heavier than 300 grams go to thecanneries, while the rest are sold to thedomestic market.

The issues associated with purse-seinersinclude:

• access to foreign fishing grounds;

• rising operating costs;

• increasing overfishing with theuse of fine-mesh nets; and

• overproduction that threatensresource sustainability anddepresses fish prices.

The total output from 16 tuna canneries in2003 was 10.5 mn cases, equivalent to250,000 tonnes of raw product (mainlyoceanic tuna). Over 90 per cent of suchoutput is destined for the export market.Favourable trade arrangements arepushing tuna canneries to develop newproduct lines (like pouch packs). Outsidethe Philippines, there are two canneries inBitung, Indonesia, and one in Madang,Papua New Guinea, which areFilipino-owned. The canneries inIndonesia process an estimated 20,000tonnes per year, while the canneries inPapua New Guinea process 30,000 tonnesannually.

Close to 8,000 people work in the tunacanning industry of General Santos City.Most cannery workers are hired bycanning firms through workers’co-operatives. The terms of employmentare based on contracts that arecontinuously renewed on the basis ofperformance and the labour needs of thecanning corporations. Workers considerthe canning plants as the best employersin the city in terms of job tenure andremuneration. Nonetheless, the turnoverrate of employees is considerable due tothe tiring and long hours of work.

Some of the issues identified by thestakeholders in the canning industry are:

• high price of raw materials due tothe decline in the purse-seine catch

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and expanded taxes;

• tariff and non-tariff barriers of themajor export markets (EU and theUnited States); and

• weak promotion or branding ofPhilippine products.

The Philippines’ tuna industrycontributes significantly to thecountry’s international trade, both

as an export and import commodity. Thetop export tuna commodity is cannedtuna, which earned US$111.8 mn in 2003.Fresh/chilled and frozen tuna productsreached US$44.7 mn in exports in 2003. Forthese products, the US is the market localexporters prefer over Japan because ofmore stable prices and more lenientstandards.

The major issue affecting the processingsector is the saturation of the US market.After the EU ban on smoked/frozenproducts from Asian countries, the USmarket suddenly became flooded withprocessed imports from the Philippines,Indonesia, Thailand and Vietnam,triggering the drop in prices.

Canned tuna, mainly from Thailand andthe Philippines, used to face a crippling 24per cent tariff in the EU, compared to the 0per cent tariff for products from theAndean countries. Through a longnegotiation process, the EU offered acompromise of 12 per cent tariff on a quotaof 25,000 tonnes, to be shared by SoutheastAsian countries in 2003. This allowed thePhilippine tuna canneries to recover andincrease operations.

In terms of import, fresh/chilled/frozentuna intended for the canneries figureamongst the top three fishery productimports of the Philippines. Localproducers have long protested the entry ofimported tuna because it depresses localprices. However, the strong exportdemand for canned tuna, the relativelylow price of imported tuna and the needfor a stable supply to keep the canneriesoperational at profitable levels led to thecontinued import of tuna. The continuousgrowth of tuna landings, based on officialfigures, suggests that tuna stocks are stillbeing harvested below the maximumsustainable yield (MSY). The 2003 stock

assessment reports of the ScientificCo-ordinating Group of the PreparatoryConference of the Commission for theConservation of Highly Migratory FishStocks in the Western and Central PacificOcean (WCPFC) revealed that tuna stock inthe region have not been fully exploited.Skipjack is not being overfished and thestock is not in an overfished state.Yellowfin tuna are not being overfishedbut the stock is nearing full exploitation,especially in the equatorial region.

Bigeye tuna findings are inconsistent withprevious studies but the conclusion is thatoverfishing is occurring but the stock isnot yet overfished. However, theimminent collapse of Philippine tunafisheries has been predicted because of theincreasing catches and the widespread useof payao.

The Philippines is a signatory to theUnited Nations Agreement on StraddlingFish Stocks and Highly Migratory FishStocks (UNFSA) and is a member of theWCPFC, the Indian Ocean TunaCommission (IOTC) and the InternationalCommission for the Conservation ofAtlantic Tunas (ICCAT).

Faced with a myriad of resource-use,management and trade problems, and theneed to commit to regional managementregimes, the tuna industry in 1999organized itself by creating the SouthCotabato, Sultan Kudarat, Sarangani, andGeneral Santos Federation of FishingAssociations and Allied Industries(SFFAAI). The federation aimed to unitethe diverse sub-sectors of the tunaindustry; serve as a forum to discussproblems and how to resolve them; andrepresent the tuna industry in lobbyingfor policy reforms and other concerns thataffect it. A national confederation soonfollowed.

Fishing agreementsIn 2000, the government created aNational Tuna Industry Council (NTIC) toformulate a strategic action plan for theindustry; review and recommend policiesaffecting bilateral and multilateral fishingagreements, and trade relations;recommend projects and programmes forthe benefit of the industry; co-ordinatewith private and public entities affectedby the action plan; and establish an

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integrative and intersectoral mechanismfor collaboration. The NTIC hasrepresentatives from the different sectorsof the tuna industry. However, thehandliners are in uproar since theirrepresentative is closely associated withpurse-seiners and not the handliners.Among other measures, the NationalTuna Management Plan proposed MSYand TAC for different species based on2002 catch estimates.

The sustainability of tunaproduction continues to be aheated debate, in the context of the

lack of reliable time-series data for tunaproduction. It is expected that enhancedfish-landing facilities and the WCPFCwould improve collection of data andallow for more substantial analysis indetermining the tuna stock.

Soaring fuel prices and the expandedvalue-added tax (EVAT) have pushed upexpenses, while revenues have failed toincrease proportionally. This is furtheraggravated by the currently strongPhilippine peso currency, whicheventually depresses the value of USdollar revenues. Fuel subsidies have beenproposed but the suggestion has beencriticized as a solution that will onlyfurther aggravate the problem.

The push for sustaining livelihoods andgreater access to foreign markets must beharmonized with the limits to the

allowable catch for different producers,and there should be no substantialincrease in TAC from current catchestimates. With the additionalproduction projected to come fromforeign fishing vessels in the expansionwork in GSCFPC, the adverse impact onlocal producers and consumers wouldhave to addressed.

The tuna industry contributes positivelyto the economy of southern Mindanaothrough the economic benefits associatedwith international trade, and theemployment created by the production,processing and marketing of tuna. On theother hand, with frigate tuna being one ofthe cheapest fish products available to theFilipino people, sustainability measuresmust be put in place since this commodityis not included among the species beingmanaged under a TAC regime.

The large volumes of tuna imported forcanneries do not automatically translateinto enhanced food security throughavailability of more affordable food. Thisis because more than 90 per cent of theproduction of the canneries is re-exported.

Detrimental roleOn the contrary, the export of tunaproducts may have a more significantdetrimental role in terms of availability offood. It is critical that all sectors participatein the formulation of policies at thenational and regional levels so as to

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incorporate sectoral issues and concerns.Also, representatives need to wellappreciate the potential decline in tunastocks and the need to contribute to themanagement of stocks.

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This article is by Cesar Allan Vera([email protected]),Co-ordinator, and Zarina Hipolito(admin@ cbcrmlearning.org),Research Associate, of theCommunity-based CoastalResource Management ResourceCentre (CBCRM-RC, www.cbcrmlearning.org), Quezon City,Philippines


Work in fishing

Protecting small-scale fishworkers

South Asian groups have unanimously decided to support the International Labour Organization’s Work in Fishing Convention

Central trade unions of Bangladesh,India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, andorganizations in support of

small-scale fisher people andunorganized fishworkers, took aunanimous decision for a unified positionto support the International LabourOrganization’s ‘Work in FishingConvention’ when it comes up foradoption at the 96th Session of theInternational Labour Conference (ILC) inGeneva in June 2007.

At a meeting held at Sunflower Hotel,Negombo, Sri Lanka, from 10 to 11February 2007, the participants agreedthat the proposed ILO Fishing Conventionwill significantly contribute to decentwork and social security in the marinefishing sector of South Asian workers onboard domestic as well as foreign fishingvessels.

Considering that over 80 per cent ofglobal fish production, fishing fleet andfishing workforce are from Asia, theparticipants called on the South Asiangovernments, trade unions andemployers to demonstrate an issue-basedunity in ensuring that the Convention isadopted at the ILC in June 2007.

Any international legal instrument thatimproves work and living conditions offishers, upholds their dignity, and givesthem identity as workers, especially in thecontext of globalization, should bewelcomed, they said.

It was further advocated that the SouthAsian governments should enter into aproactive dialogue with the governmentsof Africa, Asia and Latin America in orderto ensure that the Convention is adopted.It was suggested that the proposed ILOWork in Fishing Convention should beseen as a useful and practical guide.

The proposed Work in FishingConvention is to update and strengthenthe existing ILO instruments—the last onewas adopted in 1966, long before the 1982United Nations Convention on the Law ofthe Sea—concerning minimum age,medical examination, articles ofagreement, accommodation, competencycertificates, vocational training and hoursof work. It takes into account changes inthe fishing sector for the past 40 years. Itrecognizes the profound impact ofglobalization on the fishing sector. Itacknowledges that fishing today is themost hazardous occupation on earth. As acomprehensive standard, issues hithertounaddressed in relation to personsworking on board fishing vessels havebeen taken up, namely, occupationalsafety and health, and social security. Alsofor the first time, protection for personsworking on board small fishing vesselshas been proposed. Further, fishers whoare paid on the basis of a share of the catchare covered for the first time. Theproposed Convention, also for the firsttime, prescribes effective flag-State andport-State provisions of compliance andenforcement in relation to fishing vesselsremaining at sea more than three daysbeyond the exclusive economic zone (EEZ)of the flag State.

The proposed ILO Convention is anenabling instrument with provisions forflexible implementation in terms ofsmall-scale fishing vessels. The standard,once adopted, is to be progressivelyimplemented. There are provisions tomake amendments to the standard, ifdeemed necessary, but in consultationwith the most representative worker andemployer organizations.

International instrumentILO, for the first time, is proposing aninternational legal instrument that

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protects the interests of fishers on boardsmall-scale fishing vessels, and this is ofimmense benefit to the South Asiancountries that have a large share of thesmall-scale fishers of the world.

The participants further urge the tripartiteconstituents of the ILO to unanimouslyadopt the ILO Work in Fishing Conventionwhen it comes up for consideration at the96th session of the ILC in June 2007.

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This press release was issued at theconclusion of the South AsianWorkshop of Trade Unions on 11February 2007 at the SunflowerBeach Hotel, Negombo, Sri Lanka

Signatories to the Press Release 1. Herman Kumara, WFFP/NAFSO, Sri Lanka

2 . Linus Jayatilake, UFL, Sri Lanka

3. D. W. Subasinghe, CFTU, Sri Lanka

4. T. M. R. Rasseedin, CFL, Sri Lanka

5. M.I.M. Ibrahim, DIFSO, Sri Lanka

6 . Saranapala de Silva, UFL (UFFC), Sri Lanka

7. Asoka Dharmasiri, CBEU, Sri Lanka

8 . W. Sriyani Fernado, SVFWO, Sri Lanka

9. L.T.Subaideen, DIFSO, Sri Lanka

10. M.S.S. Samaraveera, SFO, Sri Lanka

11. Tahira Ali, WFFP/PFF, Pakistan

12. Mohammed Ali Shah, PFF, Pakistan

13. Sharafat Ali, PILER, Pakistan

14. Mohammed Ayoub, PFF, Pakistan

15. Mesbahuddin Ahmed, JSJ, Bangladesh

16 . K. Radhakrishna, UTUC-LS, India

17 . Hasubhai Dave, BMS, India

18 . H. Mahadevan, AITUC, India

19 . Thampan Thomas, HMS, India

20 . M. Satyanarayana, INTUC, India

21. Thomas Kocherry, WFFP, India

22. Harekrishna Debnath, WFFP/NFF, India

23. Sebastian Mathew, ICSF, India

24. J. John, CEC, India


Fishing rights

Fulfilled, healthy, secure?

Conventional fisheries management has been dominated by the enclosing-the-commons model

A debate has emerged in the lastthree issues of SAMUDRA Report(Nos. 43-45) about rights-based

fisheries and the allocation of fishresources. The debate was triggered byDerek Johnson in his review article on theSharing the Fish Conference 2006 inAustralia, in which he describes how thediscussions on rights-based fishing weredominated by presenters from the rich,“temperate-minority” countries. Debateat the conference thus tended to focus onthe options preferred by policymakersand economists in these countries;namely, market-based access rights andallocation mechanisms, such asindividual transferable quotas (ITQs).Conference participants had little to sayabout the applicability of these oralternative rights schemes to thetropical-majority countries.

Ichiro Nomura, Assistant DirectorGeneral of Fisheries of the Food andAgriculture Organization of the UnitedNations (FAO) highlights in the next issueof SAMUDRA Report that fishing rightsand rights-based schemes are “absolutelynecessary and fundamental” to thesustainability of all the world’s fisheries.However, the configuration of theserights needs to be tailored to the specificsocial setting of the countries in question.He proposes that it may be an opportunetime to organize an internationalconference on the allocation of rights inthe small-scale fisheries that dominate thetropical and developing countries.

Finally, in the last issue of SAMUDRAReport, Bjørn Hersoug picks up thethread by connecting the debate overrights-based fishing to the existence ofwidespread poverty in fishingcommunities throughout the developingworld. He concludes that poverty may bemore related to institutional failures than

ecological or economic ones, and thusinstitutional reform is a prerequisite forthe establishment of rights-based fisheriesin order to ensure preferential access toindividual or collective rights for poorfishers. For Hersoug, a conference onrights-based fishing should perhaps beentitled, “Fishing Rights to the RightPeople.”

In response to this timely debate withinthe pages of SAMUDRA Report, I wish toexamine more closely what is meant byfishing rights and rights-based fishing.When economists and governmentofficials talk about fishing rights atconferences and in publications andpolicy documents, are they talking aboutthe same fishing rights that small-scalefishers have been demanding for the lastfew decades? I say, no. Like manyprogressive ideas promoted in the recentpast by small-scale fishing organizationsaround the world—ideas likecommunity-based management,ecological fisheries management, andintegrated management—the notion offishing rights has been seized by theacademic and bureaucratic sectors,filtered through their market-basedframeworks, and promoted as somethingquite different from the original intent.

In other words, the notion of fishing rightshas been co-opted to mean not theguarantee of rights but rather the grantingof privilege. In most cases, rights-basedmanagement consists of the granting offishing privileges to certain groups withinfishing communities as a means of‘enclosing the commons’.

Common-property theoryBased on common-property theory, theobjective is not to guarantee a fishingpeople the right to fish, but to exclude asmany as necessary to ensure that those

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remaining can capture the wealthproduced by the sea for themselves.

If rights-based fishing then hasnothing to do with rights, what is thealternative view of rights? In my view,

the notion of rights is about a fundamentalrespect for the human being, andaddresses the many conditions necessaryfor fulfilled, healthy and secure living. Ifwe are going to talk about fishing rightswithin this understanding of rights, thereare a number of dimensions in the lives offishers that must be considered.

The first is to state that the currentdistortion in the distribution of theworld’s resources makes it close toimpossible to guarantee this fundamentalrespect and provide the necessaryconditions for every human to havefulfilled, healthy and secure lives. As weincreasingly realize the limits on theavailability of resources on this planet, itis clear that the guarantee of rightsinvolves not only poverty reduction butalso, and just as importantly, wealthreduction on the part of the minority whocontrol the vast bulk of those resources. Itis only in this two-pronged approach thatthere can be the ability to ensure fishingrights since so many fishers are among theworld’s poorest inhabitants. If themeaning of this view is not immediatelyevident, let me illustrate by saying that thedemand for such products as luxuryaquaculture seafood, industrial chemicals

and tourism beaches on the part of thewealthy has led to serious degradation ofcoastal habitats and the viability of fishinglivelihoods.

Among the many other dimensions offishing rights, I would list the following assome of the most important:

1.The right to fish for food. Fishersprovide food for their families,communities, regions and country. InAsia and Africa especially, large numbersof people depend on fish protein for theirbasic nutritional requirements. Local,regional and national food securityshould be the number one priority ofsustainable fisheries management. Allfisheries development should be built onthis foundation, not only in developingcountries but also in the developedcountries where there is an increasingrecognition that the most healthy andnutritious food comes from local sources.

2.The right to fish for a livelihood. Formany coastal communities, fish, as arenewable resource, has the potential to bean unending means of deriving alivelihood. Coastal communities havedepended on this resource forgenerations, and they should be permittedto continue to find their livelihoods thusfor generations to come.

3.The right to healthy households,communities and cultures. Fishing

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provides not only an income stream tofishing households but is also an activityaround which many dimensions of lifeare organized, and from which meaningis derived by men, women and youth.The way fishing activities are managedand the benefits distributed are crucial infostering healthy social relations incommunities and in nurturing the culturethat binds them together.

4.The right to live and work in a healthyecosystem that will support futuregenerations of fishers. All of the aboverights depend on taking care of theenvironment in which it takes place,living within the limits of what theecosystem can produce, and withoutupsetting irreversibly the functioning ofthat system.

5.The right to participate in thedecisions affecting fishing. Theprotection of fishing rights and theiroptimal implementation for the benefit offishing communities requires thateveryone in these communities have avoice in decisionmaking. This meansplacing a high value on the knowledge offishing people about fishing and theenvironment, promoting a bottom-upand community-driven decision-makingprocess, and implementing nationalpolicies that protect fishing rights.

The development of fisheries and thedesign and implementation of

management plans based on theabove-listed rights would look verydifferent from a rights-based fishery asadvocated by those who wish to enclosethe fishery commons. A rights-basedfishery stresses one value: economicefficiency. On the other hand, a fisherybased on a guarantee of the fundamentalrights of fishing people recognizes theirequal status and dignity as members ofglobal society, and their equal right to afulfilled, healthy and secure life.

A rights-based fishery would allow onefactor to determine the future of fisheriesdevelopment: a privilege granted to a fewto promote the sale of fish as a commodityto the highest bidders on internationalmarkets. In contrast, a fishery based on thefundamental rights of fishing peoplewould result in a fishery wherecommunities shape a future based onproviding their basic humanrequirements for food, livelihood,communal living and a vibrant culture. Itis a fishery where fishing people couldbegin to realize their dreams to stewardthe resources of the sea, make friends withthem—as some of them would say—ownboats and gear, obtain a fair price for theirfish, and offer a brighter future to theirchildren.

It is also important to point out that thefive fishing rights listed above can all befound in a more generalized form in theUniversal Declaration of Human Rights.

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All too often, the denial of human rights isunderstood narrowly as the violation ofcivil liberties, without adequaterecognition of the rights to food,livelihood, communal living and culture.

Finally, I wish to conclude by makingreference to Derek Johnson whostarted this debate in SAMUDRA

Report No. 43. In another article that hewrote last year ("Category, Narrative andValue in the Governance of Small-scaleFisheries", Marine Policy 30, 2006), heargues that the perceived importance ofsmall-scale fisheries may not only lie in thesustainability of their scale of operationsbut also in the values of social justice andecological sustainability that small-scalefishers have come to represent in responseto the dominant modern narratives ofchange. He goes on to state that this viewdoes not always correspond to reality,given those situations where small-scalefisheries have been overly exploitativeand ecologically destructive.

The fact that the fisheries of the last 50years have been dominated by the drive tokill fish and that many are responsible forthis mining of the sea, is not at issue. Thetheme of this article is that fisheriesmanagement for the past 30 years has beendominated by theenclosing-the-commons model, at thesame time that small-scale fishers havebeen demanding social justice andecological sustainability throughrecognition of their fishing rights. I wouldargue that the dominant model of fisheriesmanagement has contributed to—or, atleast, not stopped—the collapse of fishstocks and ecological degradation aroundthe world. It has resulted in greaterinequities in the distribution of fisheriesbenefits, and now has co-opted the notionof fishing rights in support of itself. It istime to recover the true and full meaningof fishing rights, to listen to small-scalefishers, and allow them the opportunity toexercise their fishing rights for a sociallyjust and ecologically sustainable fishery.

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This article is by John Kearney([email protected]),an independent researcher whohas worked with small-scale fishersand fishing communities for thepast 28 years


Fishing rights

Private rights tragedy

The Canadian experience shows how flawed economic theory works to undermine sustainable development in fishing communities

The possibility that the Food andAgriculture Organization of theUnited Nations (FAO) would

sponsor an international conference onthe allocation of fishing rights focusedexclusively on the interests of small-scaleharvesters and traditional fishingcommunities is heartening. Such an eventis long overdue and, if it were to providean opportunity to hear and documentthose authentic voices that have beenresisting and offering alternatives to theprivate appropriation of public fisheriesresources, it would be a good thing. Itmight even begin to re-establish somesense of balance and objectivity in thedebate about the merits of different rightsschemes by identifying those that work tosupport sustainable development intraditional fishing communities andthose that undermine it.

If the objectives of such a conference wereto include discussions about how theallocation of rights could “re-establishand formalize traditional fishing rightsand thus, protect the rights of fishermen”,as Ichiro Nomura of FAO suggests (seeSAMUDRA Report No. 44, pg. 25), it wouldalso challenge the central orthodoxy ofmodern fisheries management; that intheir natural state, fisheries develop in theabsence of rights and play out the“tragedy of the commons”.

In “Opening the tragedy?” (SAMDURAReport No. 45, pg 3), Bjørn Hersougcorrectly identifies Scott Gordon’s TheEconomic Theory of a Common-propertyResource: The Fishery and Garrett Hardin’sThe Tragedy of the Commons, as the coreintellectual foundations that underpinthe theories of modern fisheriesmanagement.

But the Hardin contribution to thisfoundation is seriously flawed when it

comes to understanding fishingcommunities and how they managefisheries resources held in common. WhileGordon recognized that fishermen cometogether to establish rules to regulatefishing activity, Hardin did not. This is avery significant difference.

Gordon’s treatise recognized that theso-called common-property problem was,in fact, an open-access situation. Even themost primitive of societies, he noted,generally recognized the risks ofoverexploitation caused by unregulatedaccess, and moved to regulate resourceuse for “orderly exploitation andconservation of the resource”. Societiesthat failed to do so, he posited, simplywould not survive. Gordon recognizedthat humans live in societies that imposenorms to inhibit socially destructiveindividual behaviour.

In Hardin’s construct, community orsocietal regulation is non-existent, andsociety is but the aggregation of selfishindividuals, each seeking their ownindividual short-term advantage.

Since Gordon understood social control asan essential trait of human society, he didnot prescribe the form it should take toavoid resource depletion. (Like Nomura,he appears to have been of the“one-size-does-not-fit-all” school.) On theother hand, the absence of community inHardin’s flawed analysis led him toprescribe only two options to preventresource depletion: paternalistic Statemanagement or privatization of thecommon property.

Sustainable managementIn Canada, unfortunately, Hardin, notGordon, has been used to understand theproblems and make prescriptions forsustainable fisheries management. In fact,

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it could be argued that Canada’s modernfisheries management has followedHardin to the letter: first, through ashort-lived and failed experience withpaternalistic State management; and, inthe face of failure, the subsequent doggedpursuit, in many of the country’s fisheries,of Hardin’s alternative—the privatizationand concentration of the commonproperty in individual and primarilycorporate hands, through marketmechanisms.

The first phase—the one ofpaternalistic State control—startedwith the extension of Canada’s

fisheries jurisdiction to 200 nautical milesin 1977, and saw the uncontrolled growthof harvesting capacity, much of itencouraged by the government’s desire toindustrialize the fishery.

By the mid- to late-1980s, overcapacity,overfishing and sharp conflicts betweenfleet sectors over resource access definedmany of Canada’s fisheries. In AtlanticCanada, much of this conflict wasbetween the traditional small-scale sector,known as the inshore fishery, and thehighly capitalized corporate offshore andindividually owned midshore sectors.

The second phase of Canada’s modernfisheries management, dealing with thisovercapacity through the allocation ofproperty rights through individualtransferable quota (ITQ) schemes, began in

the late 1980s, and has been the State’spreferred, almost exclusive, option eversince.

Descriptions of the CanadianState-sponsored private-propertyschemes can be found in the proceedingsof both the FishRights99 and the Sharing theFish 2006 conferences. They providetextbook examples of the efficiency ofproperty rights and market-basedmechanisms in putting a stop to thedissipation of resource rents in individualfisheries thereby generating rents andsubsequently allowing the State torecuperate some of these throughnegotiated agreements with quotaholders, an increasingly importantobjective of Canada’s Department ofFisheries and Oceans (DFO) as it attemptsto generate external revenues tocompensate for more than a decade ofcontinued budget cuts.

Critics in the small-scale fishery do notchallenge the efficiency of classic ITQsystems in dealing with themacroeconomic problems ofoversubscribed fisheries. The efficiency ofthe market is readily acknowledged. It isthe externalized costs to fishingcommunities of the ITQ approach that is inquestion.

Small minorityFrom the small-scale/ community-fisheryperspective, ITQ systems give rights and

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benefits (including significant economicwindfalls) to a small minority ofindividuals in fishing communities, whoare encouraged to dispose of these rightsin pursuit of their economic self-interest,irrespective of the impact on thecommunity. Under this system, thebenefits of the right go to the individual,while the long-term costs, in terms ofemployment opportunities, resourceaccess and wider distribution of resourcerents, get transferred to the communitiesand future generations.

In late 2004, the environmentalnon-governmental organization(NGO), Ecotrust Canada, published a

major study on the impacts of resourceprivatization in Canada’s Pacific fishery,documenting, for the first time, its costsfrom the perspective of community andthe small-scale fishery.

According to the study, the capital costsof vessels and equipment in the Pacificfishery shrunk dramatically fromCan$777 mn in the pre-privatizationperiod (the late 1980s) to Can$286 mn in2003, as fishing rights concentrated infewer and fewer hands, and individualquotas eliminated overcapitalization inthe race for fish. But the research alsofound that this decrease was offset by thesoaring capital costs of quota andlicences, which are now estimated atCan$1.8 bn.

According to the report, “In the past, theproblem was too many fishermenchasing too few fish, but today it hasbecome too much money chasing too fewfish. Overcapitalization in licence andquota has become the problem, especiallyin terms of social equity.”

The costs of licences and quotas are nowso high, Ecotrust Canada says, that afisherman needs to be a millionaire toenter most British Columbia (BC)fisheries, putting ownership of licencesand quota out of the reach of most ruralfamilies, aboriginal people and youngerfishermen.

The study goes on to document howmarket-led mechanisms undermined theinterests of traditional fishingcommunities by stripping them of fishinglicences and quota. With virtually no

restrictions on who could buy fishingrights, rural ownership of both quota andlicences declined precipitously.Traditional fishing communities—particularly aboriginal communities,which have been hit especially hard—lost45 per cent of all major licences. The bigwinners were urban investors—bothcorporate and individual—who hadbetter access to the capital needed topurchase the quotas and fishing licencesthat increased rapidly in value as morebuyers entered the market.

Rural residents, hobbled by lowerincomes, reduced economic opportunitiesand lower property values that limitedtheir borrowing ability, simply could notmatch the prices urban dwellers andcorporations were willing to pay forlicences and quotas that were put up forsale by harvesters in their communities.

Another notable consequence of thistransfer of fishing rights from rural tourban hands has been the siphoning off ofresource rents from working fishermen to‘slipper skippers’, absenteeresource-rights owners, who do not fishbut lease the rights they own back toworking fishermen. In separate research,the Canadian Council of Professional FishHarvesters (CCPH) has documented howin some BC fisheries, like herring, up to 70per cent of the landed value in some yearsis paid to rights holders. Since the rightsare leased at prices set prior to the fishingseason, this has led to fishermen fishing anentire season at a loss. The practice ofleasing is now so widespread that eventhose captains who own licences andquotas deduct the going market rate forleases from the calculation of crew shares,thereby significantly reducing returns tocrew members. According to CCPH, thecosts of leasing are also endangering thelives of fishermen as captains cut back oncrew levels to reduce costs and alsoventure out in unsafe conditions becauseof the need to fish quota they have paidfor, before the season ends.

Safeguards establishedThe DFO is now in the process ofintroducing ITQs for the Pacific salmonfishery, following the recommendationsof Professor Peter Pearse, a consultant tothe department who was also one of thekeynote speakers at the Sharing the Fish

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2006 conference. This will bring the lastmajor Pacific fishery under aproperty-rights scheme. There is nothingto suggest that safeguards will beestablished to protect coastal-communityinterests as that process is launched.

With property rights now firmlyestablished in Canada’s Pacificfishery and the costs of

acquiring these rights beyond the reach ofmost residents of coastal communities, theonly way to restore these rights to thecommunities that originally had them isby entering the rights market. This is whatEcotrust Canada now proposes to do. Ithopes to establish a capital fund to acquirefishing licences in the open market, andthen lease them to young, new entrants tothe fishery from coastal communities ataffordable rates. The irony here is that anNGO is having to raise significant amountsof capital to purchase rights in order torestore them to a new generation of ruralresidents whose predecessors acquiredthem for nominal costs but wereallowed—even encouraged—by govern-ment policy, to sell them off to the highestbidder.

In Atlantic Canada, there has beengeneralized resistance to market-drivenprivatization by the inshore fishery,generally understood as comprising boatsunder 45 ft length overall (LOA). There,inshore fishermen’s organizations havedeveloped alternative rights-based

schemes to control and regulate access tothe fishery. These alternatives tend to bevalue-driven, and are generally concernedwith the equitable distribution of resourcerents because of the impacts of inequitabledistribution on coastal communities. Theyare also very process-oriented, seeking tobuild consensus through bottom-up,democratic decisionmaking that buildsfrom the community level towards largerterritorial units (region, province,inter-provincial). They have also tendedto be ecocentric, seeking to providesmall-scale harvesters with rights to thefull range of harvestable species adjacentto their communities, using low-impact,fixed-gear techniques, as opposed tolimiting these rights to specialist,single-species fleets using higher-impactmobile gear. Throughout the last 30 yearsof modern fisheries management, thiscommunity-/small-scale approach hasbeen in constant tension and conflict witha corporate view of rights schemes thatconcentrates access and seeks primarily tomaximize the generation of resourcerents.

Modernization processThere are numerous examples of how thesmall-scale sector in Atlantic Canada hasbeen successful in devising value-basedrules to allocate rights and restrict accessto the fishery. Very early on in themodernization process, as the Stateimposed limited entry to control access tofisheries resources, it made a significant

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concession to the small-scale sector byprohibiting corporations from holdinglicences for species fished from vessels ofless than 65 ft LOA. This became known asthe ‘fleet separation policy’ as itprohibited fish processors from ‘owning’inshore fishing licences, thereby‘separating’ processing from harvesting.

Individuals who obtained fishinglicences in the under-65 ft fleets alsohad to fish these licences themselves.

They could not (and still can not) lease thelicence or hire others to fish for them. Thisbecame known as the owner-operatorpolicy.

Individuals were also prohibited fromholding more than one licence for thesame species but a multispecies-licenceportfolio approach was encouraged forthe small-scale sector, allowing onlythose who held certain key licences toobtain licences for other species as thesebecame available either throughharvester retirement or the developmentof new fisheries. The use of value-basedcriteria such as ‘dependency’ (level ofincome derived from fishing) and‘attachment’ (length of time in thefishery) were also used first in the Gulfregion of the Maritime provinces (NewBrunswick, Prince Edward Island andNova Scotia) under the ‘bona fide policy’and, subsequently, in Newfoundland,under the fish harvesterprofessionalization programme, to

restrict access to full-time fishermen. InNewfoundland, this led to the denial ofaccess to approximately 15,000 part-timelicence holders, cutting the numbers in thesmall-scale sector in half, a process thatgenerated surprisingly little opposition,largely because of the extensivecommunity-level consultations on themeasures. Nowhere has the contrast beensharper between the value-drivenapproach for the equitable distribution offishery rents and the rents concentrationmodel than in the Atlantic’s Area 12snow-crab fishery.

Until the 1980s, snow crab was a marginalfishery in Atlantic Canada. The collapse ofthe Alaskan king crab fishery and theJapanese appetite for seafood conspired toincrease international demand for thisproduct and turn it into one of Canada’smost lucrative fisheries. Under limitedentry, access rights to Area 12, the mostbountiful of the Atlantic’s differentcrab-fishing areas, have been restricted to130 licence holders, since the 1970s. (Theyinclude seven native-owned licences thatwere transferred to aboriginalcommunities following a CanadianSupreme Court ruling recognizing theirtreaty rights to the fishery.) This fishery isgenerally recognized as beingwell-managed.

Individual quotasThe owner-operator licence holders in thismidshore fleet (vessels under 65 ft LOA)

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moved to individual quota managementwith strict limits on transferability in thelate 1980s, eliminating the race for fish andmany wasteful practices. The licenceholders fund and manage docksidemonitoring, and contribute significantlyto funding the government-basedscientific stock assessment throughco-management agreements. In manyways, the midshore Area 12 crab fishery isa model fishery except in one crucial area:the equitable distribution of resourcerents.

The generation and concentration ofrents, however, is the fishery’shallmark. According to costs and

earnings estimates for 2002, this fisherygenerated gross earnings per vessel ofmore than Can$750,000, and average netreturns of Can$363,000 for what amountsto a five-to-eight-week fishery. (The netreturn is the amount generated above thebreak-even point of Can$400,000 pervessel. The break-even point includessalary of Can$50,000 for the captain, andwages of Can$29,400 for each of the crew,and a return on capital invested of 11 percent.) Despite fluctuations in crab pricesand total allowable catch (TAC), thispattern of very high profitability has beenconsistent for the last 15 years. It alsocontrasts sharply with the very lowreturns to both labour and capital for the1,230 inshore-fishery licence holders insome of the same communities along theeastern shore of the province of NewBrunswick (NB). These small-scale,multispecies fishermen, who derive mostof their income from lobster but also fishother species in a season that lasts sixmonths, generate net incomes per vesselbetween Can$3,500 and Can$5,600, afterpaying themselves wages betweenCan$10,350 and Can$14,000.

NB inshore fishermen were excluded fromthe snow-crab fishery until 1995, despitethe fact that the resource was bothplentiful and easily accessible to themusing their existing vessels. Incommunities where unemployment isvery high and where job opportunitiesoutside the fishery very limited, thisexclusion was a source of resentment,social conflict and general instability inthe fishery. After extensive politicallobbying, the Minister of Fisheriesreallocated a small percentage of the

snow-crab fishery quota to NB inshorefishermen for the first time in 1995. Underthe leadership of their organization, theMaritime Fishermen’s Union (MFU), thelicence holders chose to exercise this rightin a highly creative and democratic way,with a strong emphasis on equitabledistribution of benefits. Given that theallocation was not large enough to make asignificant impact on each individualenterprise—had it been dividedequally—the licence holders chose to holdand manage the quota collectively,through the MFU, and distribute itsbenefits in the following way:

• Approximately 60 per cent of thequota was divided into 11,000-lbindividual quotas, which weredistributed by lottery topartnership groups of four ormore fishermen (that is, apartnership of four would receive44,000 lb) who were leased crabtraps purchased by the MFU. It wasagreed that any fishermen whoreceived quota through the lotterywould not be eligible insubsequent years for anotherchance at receiving quota until alllicence holders had received a11,000-lb share.

• The remaining quota was fishedby charter, and the proceeds wereused to:

˚ finance an extended healthcareplan for all 1,230 licence holdersand their families; and

˚ support a fish-harvesterprofessionalization programme,finance scallop- andlobster-enhancement projects,and for scientific research onherring stocks.

Except for the years it was excluded fromthe crab fishery (1998, 1999 and 2000), theMFU continued to manage its allocation ofsnow-crab quota according to the sameformula.

Fleet rationalizationHowever, the long-term decline of lobsterlandings in eastern NB and thedeteriorating returns to the inshore fleetforced the MFU, in 2004, to significantly

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change its strategy and to begin using thecrab resource for fleet rationalizationpurposes.

It chose an approach, however, thatwas a radical departure fromtraditional practices. Instead of using

market mechanisms or centrallymanaged licence buyback and retirementschemes, it has instead turned the crabresource over to fishing communities andempowered them to make the decisionson how best to use it to bring harvestingcapacity in their communities in line withresource availability and fleet economicviability.

The approach, if it is successful, willensure that revenues from the inshorecrab allocation are spent in the bestinterests of coastal communities byallowing these very same communities,through democratic, grass-rootsprocesses, to make these decisionsthemselves. Under the new approach,which was adopted in 2005 afterextensive community consultations, theMFU continues to receive an allocation ofsnow crab on behalf of all inshore licenceholders in eastern NB. From the proceedsof the crab allocation, it also continues tofund a health insurance plan, which isavailable to all licence holders and theirfamilies.

But the MFU no longer conducts a centrallottery for the distribution of individualcrab quotas. Instead, it distributes thecrab quota on a pro-rata basis to 12Communities of Interests (COI), territorialunits made up of groups of inshorefishing licence holders who share acertain affinity/territory (see map). TheCOIs decide how many vessels willharvest their respective quotas and howmuch they will pay to have fishermen intheir communities fish the crab accordingto harvesting plans determined andapproved by all licence holders in publicmeetings.

The other significant change is that amandatory minimum of 50 per cent of netrevenues—after paying administrationand health-plan costs—must be used forlicence-retirement schemes in thecommunities. However, it is up to theCOIs to decide how best to remove excesscapacity in the fishery in their

communities, according to the fundsavailable to them.

In addition, monies from the crab sales arealso set aside in each COI for economicdiversification and development funds tofinance sustainable-development projectsin the communities, again decided uponby the fishermen according to criteriacommon to all COI. For example, severalCOIs have already identified the purchaseof lobster larvae for seeding in theircommunities from a project that wasinitiated by the MFU several years ago.

The COI approach to the allocation offishing rights is a radical departure fromthe market-driven, individual-property-rights process experienced elsewhere inCanada. Instead of allocating fishingrights to individuals, who are then free touse them in the pursuit of theirself-interest, irrespective of the impact onthe community, it creates a situationwhereby community interests are placedfront and centre. In the words of the MFU,under the COI approach, fishermen have toorganize themselves and make decisionscollectively on the use of the fishing rights“to tackle both the problems of the fisheryand the economic developmentchallenges faced by their communities.”

The approach is designed to work in thelong-term interests of fishingcommunities and to make fishermenaccountable for the decisions that theymake on the use of their rights. Theprogramme is very new and has createdall kinds of challenges for the MFU. Itremains to be seen how successful it willbe. But from the community perspective,it can do no worse than the alternativeprocesses that have already proven tostrip communities of access to fisheryresources.

The Canadian experience with theallocation of tradable, individual propertyrights as a means for dealing with fisheriesovercapacity shows that these schemescan be highly successful in concentratingthe benefits of the fishery in the hands ofindividual rights holders.

Rights-based systemsThese schemes, however, have worked toundermine sustainable development intraditional, rural fishing communities by

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depriving them of access to fisheriesresources.

In the best interest of theircommunities, the small-scale fishharvesters in Canada have

consistently sought to devise rights-basedsystems for fisheries management thatdistribute the benefits of fisheries accessequitably and avoid concentration.

If there is to be an international conferenceon rights-based systems focused on theinterests of the small-scale fishery andtraditional fishing communities, thenrepresentatives of the Canadiansmall-scale fishery would surely want toparticipate. They would not come forthproselytizing for ITQs, however, norrepresenting a ‘temperate-worldminority’ view. Rather, I suspect, theywould come to share, listen and learn aspart of a universal majority of women andmen who fish for a living, carepassionately about their smallcommunities, and want them to continueproviding decent livelihoods for theirchildren’s children’s children.

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This article is by Marc Allain([email protected]), formerpolicy adviser to the CanadianCouncil of Professional FishHarvesters, and now aGeneva-based fisheries consultant


Fisheries property rights

The litmus test

It should be demonstrated that a property-rights regime will increase the welfare of those most in need

Recently property rights have beenheralded as the solution to the‘fisheries problem’ (that is,

overfishing)—by economists at aconference in Australia (see article byDerek Johnson, “Who’s sharing thefish?”, SAMUDRA Report No. 43, March2006) and by leading institutions such asthe Food and Agriculture Organization ofthe United Nations (FAO) (see piece byIchiro Nomura, “No one-size-fits-allapproach”, SAMUDRA Report No. 44, July2006). That comes as no surprise. It is oldnews. The puzzle worth pondering,however, is this: If property rights aresuch a blessing to fisheries as alleged,why are they so often received withanimosity within the fishing population?Let me suggest the following possibilities:

The reason could be that people do notget the message; it is eitherincomprehensible or they are not yetready for it. They may not see the problemfor which property rights are held to bethe solution. Thus, what is needed is moreeffective communication to make peopleunderstand the significance of themessage and feel better about it.

Maybe it is not property rights per se thatpeople find so problematic, but theparticular kind of property rights that ispromulgated. To proclaim that propertyrights “are absolutely necessary andfundamental to the sustainability of theworld’s fisheries resources” (Nomura)does not say much unless one is willingto specify what type of property rightsone is talking about: private property,common property, community property,State property, corporate property,etc.—which all come in various formsand have different implications.Therefore, if the argument had been morenuanced and people were offered a set ofalternative property-rights solutions that

they could relate to, they might be moresupportive.

But perhaps the problem lies elsewhere.People may both understand the messageand see its merits, and yet oppose itbecause they see it as threatening to theirlivelihoods and ways of life. For peopleliving under an open-access regime, theproperty-rights concept is often perceivedas an alien and inappropriate concept:“How can somebody acquire privilegedownership of a resource that was free forall to share?” If that is the case, a morecautious presentation that does not ignorepeople’s unease might do the job.

Still another explanation for people’sdefiance may be that property rights donot offer any solution to what peopleperceive as their most important andurgent problems: “Whatever the problemproperty rights are supposed to solve, myproblem is another one.” If you, forinstance, struggle to feed your family on adaily basis, a property-rights regimemight not figure high on your priority list.

I can think of yet another reason, which isperhaps the most likely one, why manyfishing people show resistance to theproperty-rights systems favoured byeconomists: They have already sufferedtheir consequences. They, in contrast toacademics, fisheries managers and otherswho believe so strongly in property rights,know how it feels to lose access to theresource.

Standard definitionBut in order to understand what theproblem is really all about, we need to digeven deeper and ask what property rightsare in the first place. Here is a standarddefinition: The essential thing about aproperty right is not the relationship itestablishes between a person who is the

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owner and the item that is owned but therelationship it forms between people: thehaves and the have-nots. Thus, propertyrights are a social relationship, and anychange in property rights is interveninginto existing social relations bydifferentiating categories of people.

As someone benefits fromacquiring a property right, othersnecessarily lose, because the

owner is in a rightful position to excludeothers from enjoying the stream ofbenefits from the thing that is owned.Thus, property rights are inherentlyinequitable, and this problem does not goaway if you simply ignore it as DerekJohnson found was happening at theSharing the Fish 2006 Conference. Neithercan the equity issue be postponed untilafter property rights are introduced, as itwill typically pop up long before you tryto implement them, because people cananticipate their social and economicimpacts.

It is not for nothing that social scientistshave long been concerned with theempowering and disempowering effectsof property rights. The famous Frenchanarchist and philosopher Pierre-JosephProudhon captured the quintessence ofthis problem in his 1840 treatise What isProperty? Or, an Inquiry into the Principle ofRight and Government through hisoft-quoted statement, “Property is theft!”Fishing rights are often opposed by

similar language. That is perhaps goingtoo far since property rights can meanmany things, and also serve goodpurposes. As Bjørn Hersoug argues in hiscommentary on both Johnson andNomura (“Opening the tragedy”,SAMUDRA Report No. 45, November 2006,pg. 3), we, therefore, need to ask if fishingrights are used to empower the rightpeople. Consequently, one should not bedogmatic about property rights, as theycome with potentials as well as risks.Property rights can lead to more inequitybut they can also be employed forcorrecting inequities, as they can be usedas a mechanism to protect those in need ofprotection, that is, the marginalized andimpoverished among fishers. This isunfortunately not what those who mosteagerly sponsor property rights, such asindividual transferable quotas (ITQs), havein mind.

I suggest, therefore, that before weembrace any particular property-rightsregime, it should be litmus-tested againstthe ‘difference principle’ established byJohn Rawls—perhaps the most importantphilosopher of the 20th century—in his1971 work, Theory of Justice: “Social andeconomic inequalities should be arrangedso that they are to the greatest benefit ofthe least advantaged persons.”

Specific situationThus, unless it can be demonstrated—notonly in theory but also in practice, and not

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only on average but for the specificsituations in which fishing people findthemselves—that a particularproperty-rights regime will increase thewelfare of those most in need, we all havelegitimate reasons to remain sceptical,whatever the economists and FAO mightsay.

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This piece is by Svein Jentoft([email protected]) of theNorwegian College of FisheryScience, University of Tromsø,Norway


Books

Feast for the eye

A new book provides a unique inside view of some of the fishing people of the North Atlantic regions of Faroe, Shetland, Iceland and Greenland

Images of Fishermen: TheNorth Atlantic may wellbe the first book on the

market to covercommercial fishing thiscomprehensively throughphotography. And thephotographs are powerfulenough to capture the

interest of anyone, anywhere.

The book presents, in compellinglanguage, the reality of the fisheries of theNorth Atlantic regions of Greenland,Iceland, Faroe and Shetland as seenthrough a photographer’s lens. This bookis a tribute to those who fish for a livingand bring seafood to the world. Throughsix photo essays, photographer MariaOlsen delivers a feast of more than 200amazing pictures, documenting fishingtrips as diverse as gillnetting for monkish;longlining for cod; demersal pair-trawlingfor saithe; twin-rig trawling forgroundfish; pelagic pair-trawling forherring; and bottom-trawling for northernshrimp.

Images of Fishermen: The North Atlantic alsocontains an authoritative treatise writtenby the internationally renowned fisheriesadviser, Menakhem Ben-Yami, oncontemporary fisheries-managementissues, first and foremost related to thespecial case of Faroe. The book isintroduced with a brief overview of thegreat fishing traditions of the four tinyNorth Atlantic island communities,written by Búi Tyril.

Images of Fishermen: The North Atlantic isthe work of three individuals: MariaOlsen, Menakhem Ben-Yami and BúiTyril. It is a first book for Maria Olsen, whohas worked for more than a decade as aprofessional photographer, taking

assignments from news media and clientson both sides of the Atlantic.

Menakhem Ben-Yami is an independentadviser on fisheries development andmanagement, who started his career as afisherman, became a master mariner, and,subsequently, a technical andmanagement adviser, serving as Chief ofthe Israeli Fisheries Technology Unit andas Fishery Industry Officer for the Foodand Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations (FAO).

Búi Tyril is a publisher with years ofexperience as editor, journalist,copywriter and public-relationsconsultant.

Images of Fishermen: The North Atlantic ispublished by GlobalOne Press Ltd,Aberdeen, United Kingdom, and isavailable from the publisher. To order, call+44 (0) 845 052 3422 or emailnais(a)globalone-press.com.

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This notice is based on a factsheethandout from GlobalOne Pressand PRnewsMedia.com. Moreinformation on Images ofFishermen: The North Atlantic isavailable atwww.images-fishermen.com


SWIMMING IN CIRCLES: AQUACULTURE AND THE END OF WILD OCEANS. By PaulMolyneaux Thunders Mouth Press, New York, 2007

Not quite under control

The book under review paints an integrated picture of the complex reality of shrimp and fish production globally

In this very recentpublication, PaulMolyneaux highlights

the crisis in fish productionas it has been unfurling inthe last two to threedecades as scientists andfish business companiestry to demonstrate that the

fall in capture fisheries can be replaced byaquaculture.

Having himself worked in marinecapture fisheries and retrained as awriter/ journalist when it collapsed, hepresents, in an extremely sensitive, liveand readable style, the unethical andunsustainable route taken to end fisheriesin the wild.

Essentially a journey through thecommunities of marine organisms,fishing people, seafood farmers and theoffices of those who run aquacultureindustries at different levels, the bookexposes the reader to the experiences ofreal people and locations, movingbetween Maine and eastern Canada onthe Atlantic coast, and Sonora andSinaloa in Mexico on the Pacific coast,highlighting the battle for survivalbetween the artisanal fishers and thesalmon farms in the former and betweenthe subsistence fishers and shrimpfarmers in the latter.

In a very lucid, travel-diary writing style,Molyneaux weaves in and out of fishers’and farmers’ experiences, governmentdecisions, scientific promises andvagaries, the directions given byadministrators and scientists ofmultilateral institutions, and the acumenof the business giants, making nojudgements himself but certainly helpingthe reader understand the folly in the

prediction that production has to keeppace with growing demand of consumers,whose only criteria is the availability ofcheap seafood.

Molyneaux helps the reader look ataquaculture from the perspective ofecological economics, which recognizeslimits to growth, and, at the same time,exposes the prospects of biotechnologythat imply that all limitations inproduction can be overcome. Hejuxtaposes this view with the struggle ofthe artisanal fishers and the shrinking fishstocks, actually attempting to consider theperspectives of the targeted fish andshrimp themselves.

Through his interactions withofficialdom, Molyneaux highlights theimpetus given by the Food andAgriculture Organization of the UnitedNations (FAO), which predicted in Kyotoin 1976 that aquaculture would be thefood-producing system of the future, andthe way its policy was carried through byits scientists despite all the disease,environmental destruction andmarginalization of people thataquaculture causes.

Global tradeThe United States, Mexican andNorwegian governments do likewise.While Molyneaux notes their logic of thelaw of comparative advantage—thataquaculture farms can feed more peoplethan fishing can, which, in turn, leads toincreased food security—the experiencesof people in coastal communities provethe opposite. In addition, the global tradein aquaculture products has spread thepathogens to shrimp farms around theworld and sometimes led to thecontamination of wild stocks, and theassumption that technology can

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substitute for natural and social capitalcontinues to accelerate the depreciation ofboth.

Molyneaux does not fail to drawattention to the dismissivereactions of all fisheries-related

sections to environmentalists andbig-budget non-governmentalorganizations (NGOs) and the endless yetimpractical debate on their use of theprecautionary principle. He neverthelesspresents sufficient evidence to supporttheir claims. For example, in October 2001,the infectious salmon anemia outbreakthat began in the Norwegian-ownedcompany Atlantic Salmon of Maine, US,spread throughout Cobscook Bay, leadingto the destruction or early harvest of 2.6mn farmed salmon. Maines’ productionfell from 36 mn pounds in 2000 to 15 mnpounds in 2002. By 2005, a newmanagement regime cut harvest to a littleover 11 mn pounds. The viral epizooticbrought the US$60-mn-a-year industry toits knees and the three large farms inCobscook Bay laid off roughly 400 of the1,200 salmon farm workers that year. Onlya US$16-mn bailout package kept the bigproducers from abandoning Maine. Themassive movement of water, which madethe bay so attractive to salmon farming,also spread pathogens. Health monitoringand bio-security measures, such aswashing of feed barges and otherequipment, cost New Brusnwick salmongrowers around US$40,000 per site peryear, in addition to losses from ongoing

disease outbreaks. As with salmon, thebest scientist in the shrimp world soughtways to enable their industry to live withdisease rather than eliminate it. By 2001,the major shrimp viruses had caused atleast US$10 bn in losses, not counting thedestruction of certain wild stocks in thenorthern Gulf of California. Molyneauxgives similar evidence of the impact of theuse of drugs and contaminated feedpellets.

He notes that most research institutionsare deeply tied to the aquacultureindustry. Very little money has gone intorisk assessment and monitoring of wildstock, which could return and haunt theindustry when it starts looking for broodstock, as it needs uncontaminated shrimp.Moreover, studies like that of DavidCarpenter, reveal that in addition topolychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs), farmedsalmon had levels of at least 13 organicpollutants more than 10 times higher thantheir wild counterparts. Buttechno-optimism goads institutions topour millions of dollars intosolutions-oriented research to address theproblems inside the pens and pondsthrough biotechnology, disease controland what some refer to as the“geographical cure”.

Offshore farmsFocusing on the present trend to movefarming offshore, Molyneaux discussesthe system to lease the open oceans, whichstimulated the promulgation of the

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Offshore Aquaculture Act in 2005 in theUS, and highlights the need to ensure thatthe National Environmental ProtectionAct applies to the exclusive economiczone (EEZ) as well.

Molyneaux also brings inconvincing argumentsregarding the food conversion

ratio. While the Suzuki Foundationaccuses salmon farmers of taking morefish protein from the ocean than theygenerate, and destroying the ecologicalbalance that supports wild stocks andcommunities, ecological economist PeterTyedmers of Canada’s DalhousieUniversity highlights how fish farming inthe worst-case scenario uses more thanthree times the resources commercialfishing uses per ton of fish produced.According to Stuart Barlow and Ian Pike,by 2010, the aquaculture industry wouldtake 79 per cent of the world’s availablefish oil and 48 per cent of availablefishmeal, provided supply remainsconstant at 6-7 mn tonnes of meal and1.1-1.4 mn tonnes of fish oil annually.Tyedmers also proves that even if theconversion ratio of food in salmonproduction is better than for otheranimals like chickens and pigs, it is thequality of food they consume that has tobe taken into consideration.

Feeding high trophic-level fish to farmfish turns the food pyramid upside downand, depending on the amounts of fishused, could increase the ecological

footprint of farmed fish exponentially. Butas cod and salmon farmers move offshore,shrimp farmers move inshore, attemptingto wean shrimp off fishmeal diets bycreating microbial systems withinrecirculating tanks and protecting themfrom disease. Finally, it is not theMalthusian argument but market factorsthat enhance consumption, andMolyneaux explains how the shift inproduction and marketing changedAmericans’ taste in seafood. Forthousands of people who had never eatenwild salmon, the farmed varieties pouringout of Chile, Norway and other regionstaste great. In 2002, five companiesproduced 40 per cent of the world’ssalmon. By 2005, Panfish controlled 30 percent of global farmed salmon production,making it the undisputed king of farmedsalmon through vertical integration.There is no differentiating betweenfarmed and wild fish. No labels arerequired to identify chemicals used inproduction. Consumers make a statementthrough their buying and they puteconomics ahead of social andenvironmental considerations.

Corporate paradigmFor the consumer, cheap fish is moreimportant than sustainably produced fish,resulting in a struggle with the wild-fishproducers for a place in the market. Newinitiatives work only within the paradigmdefined by the corporate world. Thebusiness houses and governments drivingthe new industry believe they have it

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under control. They might have failed infisheries but, using the same developmentrationale, they believe they can succeedwith aquaculture.

The poor people and the wildspecies pay the opportunity costsof these development choices, as

they attempt to survive in a degradedenvironment that can no longer producesubsistence foods. Rather than solvefisheries problems, the industry continuesto consume natural capital. Molyneauxconcludes that the cost of technology interms of its tendency to accelerateresource decline soon exceeds its benefits.

While this book paints an integratedpicture of the complex reality of shrimpand fish production globally,unfortunately it is not the policymakerswho will draw inspiration from it. Thevery structures of administrative powerand thinking defy an integratedunderstanding of life systems. The logic ofmoney reigns supreme whereas whatactually sustains life and livelihood is theinterconnectedness of living systems. Thescientific community may treat the booklightly, as the author does not strictlyadhere to academic norms of referencing.But, on the whole, the book provides animmense amount of information andevidence for ordinary people who desireto safeguard life on the planet.

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This review is by Nalini Nayak([email protected]),a Member of ICSF


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THE RIGHT TO SURVIVE: TURTLE CONSERVATION AND FISHERIES LIVELIHOODS. A 52min video film. Produced by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers. 2006.

A more direct dialogue

The film under review strives to understand the question of olive ridley marine turtles in Orissa, India, and their interactions with marine fisheries

Throughout the film under review,information is provided in awell-balanced way that keeps the

viewer’s attention. This readily allows forthe marine turtle question and theinteractions with marine fisheries in thelocality to be understood. The filmprovides a structured view of thehistorical context, the current situationand future prospects. It also considers thepossible effects of the development of thecoast for the exploitation of petroleum andits derivatives, a matter that will affect thehabitat and drastically complicate boththe survival of the turtles and othermarine species that are currently takenadvantage of for human consumption.

Considering only the current situation, itis very important that the needs of thepopulation in general and of thefishermen and their dependent families inparticular are understood and resolved.Restrictions imposed on the exploitationof resources, in certain areas, will cease tobe functional if they do not also resolve theproblems of the families who depend onthem. For however many regulations maybe established, the food needs of thecoastal population increase daily,becoming an urgent requirement.

Another issue is that the fishermen do notunderstand why they are banned fromworking in the traditional fishing areasthey are accustomed to, when theyobserve that turtles are still abundant,although not all the year round.However, the film can be used to showthem that large numbers of turtles arebeing found dead on the beaches, whichindicates that something bad ishappening. It also needs to be clarifiedthat the fishermen of the locality knowwell, where and when they can catchmarine turtles, whether intentionally or

unintentionally. As they are the ones whocan best help avoid their capture, seasonaland zonal bans must be establishedthrough the common consent ofauthorities and the fishermen or theirrepresentatives. If they are established inthis way, measures to restrict access toareas of turtle concentration and to delimitseasonal bans will be more easilyaccepted. In this sense, the film is apositive step, as, through it, a more directdialogue is possible with all the peopleinvolved in the exploitation of marineresources in the area.

One of the most significant parts of thefilm shows the consequences of fisheryregulations, designed to protect turtles,that in some cases have pushed a smallnumber of fishermen to commit suicide.This is not only due to the laws establishedbut also due to the circumstances underwhich the fishery is developed, wherethere is an apparent scarcity of facilities tosupport the fishermen’s work or to helpthem to deal with their economicproblems. It is, therefore, most necessarythat these social and human dimensionsare resolved in parallel with applyingfishing restrictions. Also, the lack of creditfor the purchase of vessels and fishinggear, increases the problems of thefishermen, and, with no clear solutionsbeing provided, creates a vicious circlebetween working for turtle conservationand subsistence fishing.

Other optionsWhat other options are open to theinhabitants of the Gahirmatha andRushikulya coastal regions? Is it possibleto project turtles as an ecotouristattraction? Can some of the eggs laid onthe beaches during spawning beexploited, for example, through a simpleprocess that transforms them into

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powdered egg? It may be possible toestablish an organization in the arearesponsible for ecotourism or utilizingthose eggs that have no chances ofsurvival. Questions also remain as towhether turtle eggs are consumed in theregion illegally (through smuggling), orwhether, in general, turtles are not eatenfor religious reasons.

If the community in the area has notradition of eating eggs, the work toprotect the beaches will be made

easier.

In major fisheries, quotas for by-catchhave been established, as, for example, inthe exploitation of tuna in the centralPacific, and when the ceiling is reached,the fishery is closed. Perhaps a systemcould be set up that puts limits onby-catch that does not affect people’ssurvival. The film does not show whethera complete record is kept of the by-catch(for both dead and live turtles), nor doesit indicate whether any record is kept ofthe number of turtles that are freed alive,and in what conditions they are returnedto the sea. This is important forestablishing mortality levels, and forunderstanding the impact incidentalmortality has on the population of marineturtles. If no record is kept of by-catch, itwill be necessary to design a log,particularly for trawlers and gill-netters.Using the information thus gathered, itshould be possible to design a model ofthe (incidental) fishery, and its effects

over the years, so that it is possible tomonitor the positive or negative effects ofconservation measures (restrictions,closed fishing areas, restrictions on fishingeffort and catch levels).

It is also important to clarify that thespecies in question “is not in danger ofimmediate extinction, unless its habitat isradically altered”. The distribution of thisspecies (Lepidochelys olivacea) is the wideston the planet. However, it is clear thatthere are places where their populationshave reduced drastically, and there areeven some beaches where massivespawning used to take place, and wherenow only a few of the turtles remain.Without any support or protection, it willbe difficult for these to recuperate.

There are three countries wherepopulations of this species occur in greatnumbers. These are India, Mexico andCosta Rica, and in all three countries, theissues are very similar. Fishing interactswith turtle populations, occasioningby-catch and mortalities, and, in eachcountry, efforts to resolve the problemhave adopted a different focus.

Incidental mortalityThe film does not tell us whether theeffects of incidental mortality rates on theabundance of the population have beenquantified, nor about the effects on thesurvival of the populations. In the threecountries mentioned, incidental mortalityhas been reduced substantially, but is still

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considered to be very high. But there areno definitive studies.

In Mexico, it has been observed that onthe beach of La Escobilla, in the Stateof Oaxaca, despite commercial

catching and high levels of destruction byhumans and animals (wild and domestic)on females, nests, eggs and hatchlings,after applying a total closure in 1990, andcontinuing with protection activities onthe spawning beach, the population hasremained stable and, in the last decade,has even shown a slight recovery.Activities to protect reproduction on thisbeach have been carried out since 1973,and between 1987 and 1988, after the turtlepopulations had reached minimum levels,they recovered and today the populationsare considered abundant and healthy. Aresearch centre has been established at LaEscobilla, which undertakes monitoringof the species, and also offers alternativework opportunities for a community thatwas previously occupied with turtlefishing. There has been no significantrecovery of the turtles on other spawningbeaches in Mexico, possibly becauseprotection and conservation activitieshave not been undertaken with the sameintensity and constancy over the past 20years. This implies that the recovery of thisspecies can be achieved if protectionprogrammes are implemented, andregulations for the fishery and closedseasons are respected, and if alternativeoccupations are given to those fishermenwhose livelihoods depend on turtles.

The film under review has much about theneed for protection and management,implying that the survival of the speciesmay be prejudiced even more if thedevelopment of the infrastructurerequired by the petroleum industry isgiven the go-ahead. This requires theformation of a powerful andmultidisciplinary movement to promotemarine resource conservation and tosupport the dependent populations, giventhat industrialization in the area will notonly affect turtles but also the entireecosystem of the region. The humanpopulation will be particularly affected, aseach day their inheritances arediminished, and their chances of survival,reduced. In Orissa, 47.5 per cent of thepopulation live in poverty, including70,000 fishermen. It is crucial that their

lives are improved, and that, at the sametime, nature conservation is enhanced.Both marine turtles and traditionalfishing—and their protection—should beseen as priorities. The diffusion of thisdocumentary is a very importantcontribution towards that goal.

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This review is by Rene Marquez-M.([email protected]), VicePresident of the ScientificCommittee, Inter-AmericanConvention on the Protection andConservation of Marine Turtles(www.Iacseaturtle.org)


INTERNATIONAL LEGAL INSTRUMENTS RELEVANT TO FISHERIES AND FISHINGCOMMUNITIES: A HANDBOOK. International Collective in Support of Fishworkers.2006.

A practical road map

A review of a unique handbook on international legal instruments relevant to fisheries and fishing communities

The easy-to-navigate eight-volumethematic handbook onInternational Legal Instruments

Relevant to Fisheries and FishingCommunities, published by theInternational Collective in Support ofFishworkers (ICSF), is both wide-rangingand comprehensive, and is accompaniedby a CD-ROM. The information is alsoavailable on ICSF’s website athttp://legal.icsf.net.

The handbook offers a compendium of114 instruments, including ‘hardlaw’—those with legal effect that arebinding on parties, such as treaties andconventions—and ‘soft law’—those thatare voluntary, such as United NationsGeneral Assembly Resolutions, the 1995Food and Agriculture Organization of theUnited Nations (FAO) Code of Conductfor Responsible Fisheries, and ActionPlans.

The handbook has important andcommendable features that are tailored toa readership concerned about fisheriesmanagement, many of whom may nothave more than a nodding acquaintancewith international legal processes or afirm understanding of the suite of issuesinvolved. Equally, experts in variousaspects of fisheries and fishingcommunities, who have spent a lifetimedevoted to international processes thathave shaped these instruments, wouldgain knowledge in complementary areasto round out their experience.

This reference guide was originallydeveloped for an ICSF trainingprogramme held in 2003 for fishworkersand non-government organizations(NGOs), and it was realized that thehandbook could be important in the

advocacy and campaign activities of theseand many other stakeholders.

To that end, the legal instruments weregrouped into seven themes:

• Human Rights, Food Security,Women and Development

• Environment and SustainableDevelopment

• Oceans and FisheriesManagement

• Environmental Pollution

• Fishing Vessels and Safety at Sea

• Labour

• Trade

The thematic approach is of great valuebecause it fosters an integrated approachtowards fisheries management andunderlines the impact of currentglobalization dynamics—for example, therapidly expanding development of trademeasures in fisheries.

Practical informationFor each instrument, practicalinformation is provided on themechanisms for implementing theinternational instruments, includingdecision-making bodies andimplementing agencies. The frequency ofthe meetings of the bodies and agencies isdescribed, as are rules for participation byStates and NGOs. Monitoring agenciesand regional bodies relevant to theinstrument are also listed. Importantly,the handbook highlights key provisions ofeach instrument that are relevant for

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fisheries, small-scale fisheries andfishworkers.

In that regard, it is a useful tool becauseit identifies the processes of globalfisheries governance and the web of

decisionmaking that affects those in thefisheries and related sectors. It can serveas a framework, or checklist, for those whowish to better understand day-to-dayprocesses at the international level, or toidentify strengths, constraints or areaswhere reform is needed.

The instruments selected arecomprehensive and, for the most part, arepresented in chronological order. Ageneral introduction is contained inVolume I, with a brief description of theorigins and objective of the handbook.

It also contains an extensive and useful listof acronyms, a glossary and large foldoutchart of the instruments for ease ofreference. A one-page synopsis for eachof the other volumes serves as a clearintroduction of each theme for the initiate.

Theme I, referring to the broad,entrenched issues of human rights, foodsecurity and (thankfully) women anddevelopment, gives a human dimensionto all other themes. Theme II,Environment and SustainableDevelopment, focuses on the UnitedNations Conference on Environment andDevelopment (UNCED) and its manyspinoffs, small island developing States

and other environmental and culturalinstruments.

Theme III, Oceans and FisheriesManagement, provides a wealth ofinformation on binding and voluntaryagreements and conferences, FAOMinisterial conferences and meetings,International Plans of Action under the1995 FAO Code of Conduct for ResponsibleFisheries, and 11 relevant United NationsGeneral Assembly (UNGA) resolutions. Itis the largest volume in the set. Thecoverage of this theme tends to be moreabout fisheries management than oceansmanagement, as many instrumentsrelating to the latter fall within Theme IV,Environmental Pollution. In that volume,many of the landmark agreements arereported, including the UN FrameworkConvention on Climate Change and theGlobal Programme of Action onLand-based Pollution.

Theme V, Fishing Vessels and Safety atSea, comprises mainly older instruments.This reflects the continuing need forattention to this area. In fact, this is thethinnest volume. Recent initiatives toestablish a global register for fishingvessels—made more effective by globalconcerns about security—may impactpositively in this area.

Sixth themeTheme VI, Labour, the second-largestvolume in the compendium, is usefullydivided into fisheries and applicable

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general instruments, and those relating towomen.

A pleasing feature about the printversion of the handbook is itsminimalist size: it is published in

small, concise booklets that are easilytransportable. It is a tribute to thepublishers that such a great wealth ofinformation was arranged in such apractical manner.

A drawback, at least for the current printversion, is its lifespan: it is current as atMarch 2005, almost two years ago. Thisis offset by the fact that the current decadetends to be more about implementation ofthe international instruments negotiatedearlier, with a surge of activity in the1990s. Many of the instruments relatingto fisheries and environment were ignitedby the 1992 UNCED.

The international community continuesto call for additional instruments onfisheries that would build on existingagreements, with greater detail thatrespond to current technologies andfisheries-management issues. The callsare generally made through UNGAresolutions or forums such as the May2006 Review Conference of the 1995 UNFish Stocks Agreement or the FAOCommittee on Fisheries (COFI). Examplesof current issues that are expected to bediscussed at the March 2007 Session ofCOFI, and have the potential for resultingin international instruments, are theperformance of flag-State responsibilitiesand a process for a binding instrument onport-State measures. The development inFAO of ecolabelling guidelines would alsobe an important addition to thecompendium.

However, given the fundamental natureof the instruments already included, thisshould not detract from the overall bodyof knowledge presented by thehandbook. It is to be hoped that updatescan be added from time to time, at leaston the website.

The handbook is set apart from othercollections of fisheries instruments by itsscope, template and target audience.However, although it is well organized, itwould be a challenge for the layperson tonavigate through the volumes without

explanation and some study. On the otherhand, those who are familiar withinternational processes and might wish tolearn more about the instruments, willfind it a practical road map.

Its effectiveness for the layperson—thefishworkers themselves—could beaugmented by a simple explanation in theintroduction about what makes a countrybound by international instruments. Anexplanation is presented in a piecemealway in the glossary, but it requires that thereader knows enough to look up wordssuch as ‘accession’, ‘date of effect’,‘ratification’ and ‘signature’. In addition,the template could refer to websitesshowing each instrument, and for thosethat are binding, the countries that haveratified or are otherwise bound by it.

Another suggestion for expanding thereadership would be to explain thepurposes for which the handbook couldbe used. These could include, forexample, compliance by countries withtheir international obligations, verifyingstandards for labour or other relevantlaws, providing background for law ortreaty reform, defining the obligations ofcountries to take into account social,economic and cultural factors, andimproved understanding of regionalarrangements. This would be an excellent‘selling point’, inspiring the reader andadvocate to approach the instrumentsfrom different angles.

The handbook reflects the purpose forwhich it was originally intended—asresource materials for a trainingprogramme—but its potential usefulnessis much more wide-ranging.

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This review is by Judith Swan([email protected]),Consultant, Fisheries Institutionand Liaison Service, FisheriesDepartment, FAO


Fishmeal fishery

Golden goose or albatross?

Behind the apparent success of Peru’s fishmeal export industry lies a sorry tale of low efficiency, and high environmental and social costs

After the boom years of the 1960sthat bust in the 1970s, it is boomtime once again for Peru’s

fishmeal industry. Preliminary figures for2006 indicate that Peru’s export earningsfrom fishery products (both fishmeal andfor direct human consumption) reachedhistoric levels of around US$1,761 mn, anincrease of 7.9 per cent over 2005. Despitea 30 per cent drop in production, fishmealretains its place as the jewel in Peru’sfishery export crown. At around US$1.136bn, the estimated fishmeal export earningsin 2006 are slightly down on 2005.

But this is rather cosmetic, as behind thissuccess story lies a huge, unaccountedcost, which Peru can ill afford. The annualextraction of 8-10 mn tonnes of anchoveta,a mainstay of the entire marine food webof the Humboldt Current large marineecosystem (LME), is homogenizing Peru’srich marine biodiversity and destabilizingthe marine ecosystem.

In 2006, a World Bank-commissionedevaluation report on Peru’s marinefisheries sector, described the Peruvianindustrial fishery for anchoveta as “beingovercapacity in the fleet and processingsectors; displaying low efficiency; causingsignificant losses in rent and highenvironmental and social costs for thePeruvian State; and generating hugeforeign-exchange earnings that benefit aminimal fraction of the industry.”

This report highlights the fact that thefishmeal export balance sheet does notaccount for the:

• impact on the wider marineecosystem, the food web, and thesustainability (and developmentprospects) of Peru’s otherfisheries, particularly the artisanalfishery;

• impact of fishmeal production onthe wider coastal environment(the impact of waste discharge intothe sea, air and land), and on thehealth of the coastal-dwellinghuman populations;

• highly skewed distribution ofbenefits, with Peruvian society atlarge gaining precious little fromthe relatively large earnings beingmade (at high, externalized,environmental and social costs); or

• opportunity costs of transformingall the anchovy catch intofishmeal, even as malnutrition andpoverty affects 40-60 per cent ofthe Peruvian people.

The ‘Anchovy Week’ campaign took placein Lima from 4 to 10 December 2006.Organized by the newly formedSustainable Environmental Centre (CSA),based at Peru’s Cayetano HerediaUniversity, Anchovy Week targeted thehighest socioeconomic sectors of Lima’spopulation. It aimed to change the imageof anchoveta as food fit only for animalsor the poor, into a luxury, gourmetproduct, and to stimulate investment inthe production of anchovy for directhuman consumption. The campaign alsodrew attention to the need to ensure:

• the sustainability of Peru’s marineresources;

• the long-term economic viabilityof Peru’s fishery enterprises;

• that future generations should notbear the costs of today’s fishmealfactories; and

• that fishery activity contributesnot only to wealth creation, but

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also to sustainable developmentand the reduction of malnutritionin Peru.

According to the organizers, all theabove is achievable if “lessfishmeal is produced and more

anchoveta is consumed”.

Currently, the Peruvian State receives asrevenue only around US$1.15 per tonne ofanchoveta landed (a total of some US$9-12mn annually, given declared anchovetalandings of 8-10 mn tonnes), which isused to cover the costs of fisheriesadministration and research. This is apittance, compared to the earnings of thefishmeal sector as a whole, and can hardlybe described as correct practice.

Marcos Kisner, a Peruvian fisheriesspecialist, points out that as one tonne offishmeal requires around 4.4 tonnes ofanchovy, every tonne of fishmealexported generates just over US$5 for theState. Given average 2006 prices ofaround US$600 per tonne, and today’sprices of around US$1,400 per tonne, thePeruvian fishmeal sector is makingwindfall profits.

Put another way, the Peruviangovernment is incurring a significant lossof potential revenue. Kisner argues thatas it uses natural resources of suchnational and international importance,the fishery sector, as a whole, should

contribute to the State’s coffers inproportion to its earnings.

The January 2007 flotation of Peru’sfourth-largest fishmeal company,Copeinca, on the Oslo Stock exchangeshows just how large private earnings are.With 37 vessels and five processingfactories, Copeinca reportedly grossedearnings of US$90 mn in 2006, boasting anoperating margin of 40 per cent. In otherwords, the earnings of just one companyare around 10 times the total annualrevenues that the Peruvian State receivesfrom fishing. The opportunity cost ofallowing a privileged few to squanderPeru’s rich fisheries in this way isenormous.

Given the huge levels of investmentrequired to improve the catching, landing,processing and distribution of fish to meetthe demands for direct humanconsumption, the State can ill afford suchhuge losses of potential revenue not tomention the costs of managing andregulating the fishery; training; researchand development; and combating illegalfishing.

Same prospectsAs regards sustainability, the Peruvianfishmeal industry today faces the sameproblems, and perhaps the sameprospects as it did in the boom year of1971, just prior to its spectacular bust. Thefishing fleet has the capacity to catch four

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to five times the anchovy stocks availablein years of abundance (when there are noENSO events). In a single day, the fleet cancatch over 100,000 tonnes, reaching theannual quota in just three or four months.

The processing plants have acombined processing capacity of146 mn tonnes—20 times the

allowable catch in years of abundance.Overcapacity is the cause of fiercecompetition both for fish and raw materialfor processing. It also encouragesunder-reporting and illegal fishing(notably within the five-mile zonereserved for artisanal fishing andconservation), and the use of fish speciesreserved for human consumption, likemackerel and horse mackerel, forfishmeal.

Catching such large quantities ofanchoveta deprives other fish species ofcommercial importance, andguano-producing birds and marinemammals of their main food source.Patricia Majluf, Director of the CSA and2005 winner of the Whitley Gold awardfor her conservation work, points out thatsuch a large extraction of biomass affectsthe resilience of the ecosystem (its abilityto withstand stress and to recuperate), inwhich the anchovy stocks represent animportant cushion.

A recent study on fresh-fish landings fromthe artisanal fishing sector in Peru,commissioned by the InternationalCollective in Support of Fishworkers(ICSF), highlights a related issue: thehomogenization of the fishery ecosystem,and the implications of this for thelivelihood and food security of the coastalpopulations.

The report draws attention to two maintrends. Firstly, statistics have beenmanipulated to show that fresh-fishlandings have kept pace with populationgrowth. If these manipulations arediscounted, fresh-fish landings show adecline of 40 per cent over the seven-yearperiod 1998-2004. But in the last decade,the number of artisanal fishermen landingfresh fish has almost doubled, frombetween 30,000 and 50,000 in 1996 tobetween 80,000 and 100,000 today. A 1996census recorded 6,200 artisanal fishingvessels; another, carried out in 2005,

showed the number to have increased to9,090.

Official statistics show that in 2004 around40 per cent of the fresh-fish catch, some150,000 tonnes, originated from “other”(that is, unknown) ports, while catchesfrom known ports had reduced fromaround 250,000 tonnes in 1997 to 200,000tonnes in 2004. The report claims that alarge proportion of the fish fromunknown ports is, in fact, imported. It alsopoints out that in 2004, around 25 per centof the catch comprised one species thegiant squid, locally known as ‘pota’.

From insignificant levels in 1998, todaypota forms a major part of the artisanal(and industrial) fish catch, but due to itslow unit value and technical processingproblems, fishermen’s incomes havereduced. Pota has almost entirely replacedhake in fish landings, a fish that has beensubject to intense fishing pressure andwhich is highly dependent on anchovetaas a source of food.

Majluf contends that “although whilethere is no conclusive evidence that we areoverexploiting the anchoveta, it is certainthat we are overexploiting the ecosystem.But that does not mean that we shouldstop our industry. Rather, what we needis an industry that is managed from awider perspective. We have long knownthat overfishing of anchoveta causes thedemise of other species. But when you askIMARPE (Peru’s Marine Institute) aboutthis, they reply that they have studiedeach species, but separately. They don’tmake the ecosystem connections”.

Meanwhile, unlike other industries, noeffective environmental regulations areapplied to the fishmeal processingindustry. No maximum allowable limitsare applied to the discharge of effluents,solid, liquid or gas, from fishmeal plants.

Premier cityNelly Luna Amancio writing in Peru’s ElComercio, describes the seabed aroundChimbote, Peru’s premier fishmeal city, asa dead zone covered with sediments over1-m deep, and the air as a toxic mixture ofsulphurous gases and vapours. There are24 fishmeal plants that discharge liquidwaste in Chimbote, but only seven areauthorized to do so by the

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Directorate-General for EnvironmentalHealth (DIGESA).

Processing such large quantities offish into fishmeal also raisesimportant questions about equity

and social justice. Alongside resourcerichness and private accumulation ofwealth, over half the Peruvianpopulation—some 15 mn people—live inconditions of critical poverty, unable tomeet their basic needs for food, health,education, clothing or shelter.Meanwhile, according to the UnitedNations Educational, Scientific andCultural Organization (UNESCO), one infour under-five Peruvian child suffersfrom malnutrition.

According to Gastón Acurio, a Peruvianchef of world renown and one of theco-organizers of the Anchovy Weekcampaign, if 10 per cent of Peru’s fishmealcatch was channelled into massive,targeted nutritional campaigns, Peru’smalnutrition levels could be reduced byhalf. Therefore, in a sense, the currentmodel of fishing in Peru robs millions ofPeruvians of their right to a healthy diet.

But, as Marcos Kisner explains, “Nobodyis proposing that 8 mn tonnes ofanchovy should end up as food, andneither will it replace sea bass cebiche.Rather, what we need is a national policythat assures the possibility for, and accessto, healthy nutrition for children....Another reason for scepticism is that noone wants to replace white-fish filletswith anchovy. Just as some children mayreject milk or other food that they don’tlike, and mothers must force them toconsume these because they areindispensable for their nutrition, thesame goes for anchovy.”

“Anchovy should be made available tothe public at a low price in variousforms.” He continues. “Mothers have theresponsibility for getting their childrenused to it. Moreover, by encouraging ananchovy-eating habit, we are creatingconditions for the healthy developmentof our children. It is this segment of themarket—children and pregnant mothers—for whom the resource should beprioritized. Those who can, and thosealready of adult age, can go on eatingother fish, and perhaps from there, they

may develop a taste for anchovy. Recordsshow that prior to the Spanish conquest,catching, drying and trading anchovetafor human consumption was wellorganized, and that the Incas used toorganize regular transport of anchovy tothe high plains for distribution to the localpopulation.

Peru’s recently elected government hasdeclared war on malnutrition, part ofwhich includes the promotion of massconsumption of anchovy. Under SupremeDecree 002-2007, the National FoodAssistance programme of the Ministry forWomen’s Affairs and Social Developmentis now required to allocate not less than 8per cent of its budget to the purchase ofproducts based on anchoveta and pota.The Ministry of Production and theInstitute for Fisheries Technology are towork alongside the Defence, Interior,Health, Employment and Women’sAffairs Ministries to develop programmesfor the production and supply ofanchoveta-based products. These are to bedistributed through various Ministries, toprovide food for police and militarypersonnel, as well as for poorer sections ofPeruvian society.

Peru also recently signed an agreementwith Japan, through the JapaneseInternational Co-operation Agency (JICA),for the “Responsible FisheriesDevelopment of Anchoveta for DirectHuman Consumption”. In addition togovernment food-aid programmes, theprivate sector is also to be closely involvedin this initiative, catching, processing andcommercializing anchoveta for directhuman consumption.

The five-year programme envisages theuse of improved anchoveta handling andstorage on board artisanal fishing vessels,and the use of low-cost and hygienicprocessing methods, with technicalassistance from Japan.

Good businessBut commercializing anchovy productsfor direct human consumption could alsomake good business sense bothnationally and internationally. Cannedanchovy from Peru is gaining ground inmany foreign markets, notably in Africa,where there is a high demand for low-costproducts with a high nutritional value.

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According to Alfonso MirandaEyzaguirre, Peru’s Vice Ministerfor Fisheries, in 2000, practically

no anchovy was landed for humanconsumption. In 2006, more than 50,000tonnes were landed for direct humanconsumption. The value of cannedanchovy exports from Peru reachedUS$847 mn in 2005, with the maindestinations being Colombia (US$202,800),Italy (US$190,900), Angola (US$174,400)and Zaire (US$81,700).

The Anchovy Week campaigndemonstrated that, with imaginativepreparation, professional marketing andpromotional campaigns, anchoveta couldalso become a luxury food in Peru, aspopular with the yuppie set as Pisco Sour.During Anchovy Week, fresh anchovywas selling in Lima’s supermarkets forUS$0.5-1 per kg, and stocks were quicklysold out. In all, around 18,000 peopletasted anchovies during the AnchovyWeek in the 30 participating restaurants.Some earned over US$500 per day from theanchovy dishes sold during the week. Of600 people surveyed in these restaurants,95 per cent liked them and would eat themagain.

But redirecting Peru’s fishing fleet tocatching anchovy and other fish for directhuman consumption, and establishing theinfrastructure and economic supportnecessary to enable wider consumption offish, faces many challenges. First and

foremost is the problem of how torestructure and rationalize the fishmealsector.

Currently, the overcapacity debate in Peruis focusing on how to reduce fleetcapacity. Options under discussioninclude the application of an individualquota system (as proposed by theindustrial fishing organization, SNP),installing refrigerated fish-holds (toreduce vessel capacity by between a halfand a third, also improving the quality ofthe end product), and vessel buyback andconversion schemes (to fish for mackereland horse mackerel for humanconsumption).

But perhaps the biggest problem, ashighlighted by Kisner, is that Peru’sfisheries “are submerged in waters ofpolitical indecision. The absence oflong-term policies with an ecosystemsapproach leading to a technically basedstructural reform of the sector, directed bydecisionmakers with the capacity toprovide leadership and capable ofresisting the temptations that come withpower, is what has brought the sector tothe sorry state it finds itself in today.”

All this makes Peru’s anchoveta fisheryfor fishmeal look more like an albatrossthan a golden goose.

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This article, by Brian O’Riordan([email protected]), Secretary,ICSF Belgium Office, is based onvarious sources, includingOannes (http://www.oannes.org.pe/), Patricia Majluf(http://www.conam.gob.pe/documentos/Analisis_ambiental/CEA%20Per%C3%BA%20-%20Evaluaci%C3%B3n%20Ambiental%20del%20Sector%20Pesquero.pdf),Marcos Kisner Bueno:(http://pescasostenible.blogspot.com/) and Pesca yseguridad alimentaria(http://www.cooperaccion.org.pe/publicaciones2.php?id_publicacion=0087)


Shifting sands

Building sand castleson the beach may befun, but building awhole country out ofsand? Not funny, asSingapore andIndonesia arediscovering.

Indonesia has bannedsand exports to itstiny neighbour,saying that some ofits islands are beingstripped bare asSingapore tries togrow more land Adecade-long squabblebetween the islandrepublic and

Indonesia over whatseemingly ought tobe an inexhaustiblecommodity hasescalated, withJakarta suddenlyslapping a permanentban on sand exportsand risking anothersetback in theoft-strained relationswith its nearestneighbour.

The move is nolaughing matter forthe wealthy islandState, which has builtbig chunks of itsmetropolis onIndonesian sand anddesperately wantsmore. Constrained by

water on all sides,Singapore believes itmust continue togrow physically aswell as economically.At the very tip ofMalaysia, thecountry is otherwisealmost completelysurrounded byIndonesia across theSingapore Strait.Jakarta is becomingconcerned that assand is stripped offfor sale from tinyislands, thegeography of thecountry is changingand Singapore willactually encroach theislets that make up itsgeographicalboundary in thestrait.

In 1960, the entireisland State was only581.5 sq km. It hassince grown to some650 sq km andexpects to grow byanother 100 sq km by2030 if it can find thefirmament. MariPangestu, Indonesia’sfeisty trade minister,has had enough. Shebanned the exports,saying the decision isnecessary to protectthe environment andmaintain hercountry’s maritimeborders.

Zones harm

Some zones may bespecial but they couldbe harmful as well.That is what somemarginalizedcommunities in Indiaare finding out. AnIndian law meant to

promote economicdevelopment iscausingenvironmentaldamage and harming

the livelihoods ofsome of the nation’spoorest people, so itshould be repealed orgreatly revised.

This is among theconclusions of areport released by theInternational Institutefor Environment andDevelopment andWinrockInternational India onthe eve of aninternationalconference on the roleof natural resourcesin sustainabledevelopment.

The report wascompiled after ameeting of over 70participants,including members ofIndia’s Parliament,State BiodiversityBoards and PlanningCommission,nongovernmentalorganizations (NGOs),local communities,research institutesand internationaldonors.

It calls on the Indiangovernment toimplement policies toprotect the

environment andlocal livelihoods, torepeal or significantlyalter laws thatpromoteunsustainabledevelopment, and toensure that poorpeople have a greatersay in how theenvironmentalresources theydepend upon aremanaged.

The report highlightsthe way that SpecialEconomicZones—which aretreated as foreignterritory in order tomake exportseasier—are exemptnot only from taxesbut also fromstringentenvironmental andlabour regulations.

Legal eagle

Those who wish to beeagle-eyed aboutlegal matters thataffect fisheries andcoastal communitiesworldwide, now havea readyreckoner—theInternational LegalInstruments Relevant

to Fisheries and FishingCommunities. Broughtout by theInternationalCollective in Supportof Fishworkers (ICSF),this compendium isnow available onlineat http://legal.icsf.net/.

News Round-upSubscribe free to SAMUDRA News Alerts at http://www.icsf.net


The website providesdetailed informationfor a wide range ofinstruments relevantto fisheries andfishworkers. Itcovers 124 legalinstruments,categorized into thefollowing seventhemes: HumanRights, Food Security,Women andDevelopment;Environment andSustainableDevelopment; Oceansand FisheriesManagement;EnvironmentalPollution; FishingVessels and Safety atSea; Labour; andTrade.

The site also offersother usefuldocuments oninternational legalinstruments, and alisting of relatedevents/announcements andnews, as well as atimeline tracing thechronology of thevarious instrumentsthematically. Thesearch feature on thesite offers both simpleand advancedfunctions, whichallows users to callup the relevantarticle/paragraph forthe particularkeyword searched.

Green gaps

Tourists love beachesand coastal delights.But are they givingback to theenvironment as muchas they are extractingfrom it? Not quite,says the InternationalTourism Partnership.

The tourism industrycould do more tohelp protect the

marine and coastalecosystems on whichit relies, according tothe January edition ofgreenhotelier.Exploring the valueof natural assets suchas coral reefs,mangrove forests,whales, dolphins,manatees, sea turtles,reef fish and othermarine organisms,the magazineexamines howtourism contributesto the degradation ofmarine and coastalenvironments andhow its members canhelp redress thebalance.

Protecting our coastaland marineenvironments looks atthe vulnerability ofcoastal and marineecosystems to threatssuch as climatechange andtourism-relateddevelopment.

Issues includeoverfishing anddestructive fishingtechniques, land andmangrove clearancefor construction,intensive prawnfarming andagriculture,sedimentation, waterpollution anddamage from boatsand other marinerecreation activities,high nutrient loadingfrom improperlytreated waste water,and increased solid

waste from importedpackaged food anddrinks.

There are strongeconomic incentivesfor the tourismindustry to be moreproactive not only toavoid stressing thenatural assets fromwhich it benefitsfinancially but alsobecause it is knownthat protection ofcoral reefs andmangroves costs farless than neglect.Governments,planners, developers,hotel associations,cruise lines and othertourism industryoperators need towork together withcommunity membersand adopt integratedcoastal zonemanagementstrategies, says thereport.

Fuel fire

Fishermen aroundthe world have toconfront the problemposed by increasinglyrising costs of fuel fortheir fishing vessels.So any alternative isseen as worthexploring. Thesedays, fuel frombiological sources areall the rage. But notwithout worry asbiodiesel sweepsChina in controversy.

Everyone seemseager to get a share ofChina’s biofuels pie,reports Jiao Li forRenewable EnergyAccess.

Liang Yulin, a28-year-old real estatetycoon in southernChina’s GuangzhouCity, began investingin biodiesel

production lastOctober. Using palmoil imported fromSoutheast Asia, themanager of theGuangzhou TinyoReal EstateDevelopmentCompany plans toturn out 50 tons aday, selling the fuelto fishing boats thatwork around the PearRiver Delta.

Although he has yetto see returns fromhis new investment,Liang says he willkeep persevering.And he is not alone toventure in thisseemingly promisingindustry. “As far as Iknow, there aredozens of biodieselcompanies just inGuangzhou,” he said.

Even the latest pricecut in theinternational oilmarket does not seemto dampen Chineseenthusiasm for thenew energy resource.

Leading the game area variety ofgovernment-supporteddemonstrationprojects.

While calling forbiofuel standards andregulations, however,many experts alsoworry about the landuse of the oil crops.Clearly, unless theseissues are sorted out,fishermen can nothope to fill their tankswith biofuels.


All of this dazzling beauty paled, however, with the rise ofthe full moon directly at our bow, larger and clearer than Ihad ever seen it. Quickly it revealed its full form from behindthe edge of the earth, its light tarnished golden yellow by thethickness of the atmosphere. How close it appeared: as if itcould be reached just over the horizon or knocked across theheavens with a giant tennis racket. As the moon inchedhigher into the night’s sky, the burnt yellow colour imper-ceptibly brightened to a sharp silver, and the silver lightplayed on the sea water, turning it into a vast field ofsparkling diamonds.

— from Walking on Water: Four Days Over the Horizon on a Jangada by Patrick Hefferman

ICSF is an international NGO

working on issues that concernfishworkers the world over. It isin status with the Economic andSocial Council of the UN and ison ILO’s Special List of Non-Governmental International Or-ganizations. It also has LiaisonStatus with FAO. Registered inGeneva, ICSF has offices inChennai, India and Brussels,Belgium. As a global network ofcommuni ty organizers,teachers, technicians, re-searchers and scientists, ICSF’sactivities encompass monitor-ing and research, exchangeand training, campaigns andaction, as well as communica-tions.SAMUDRA Report invitescontributions and responses.Correspondence should be ad-dressed to the Chennai office.

The opinions and positionsexpressed in the articles arethose of the authors concernedand do not necessarily repre-sent the official views of ICSF.

SAMUDRA Report can now be ac-cessed on ICSF’s home page onthe World Wide Web athttp://www.icsf.net orhttp://www.icsf.org

Published byChandrika Sharma for

International Collective in Support of Fishworkers27 College Road, Chennai 600 006, India

Telephone (91) 44-2827 5303 Facsimile (91) 44-2825 4457Email: [email protected]

ICSF Belgium Office:Sentier des Rossignols 2, 1330 Rixensart, Belgium

Telephone (32) 2 - 652 5201 Fascimile (32) 2 - 654 0407Email: [email protected]

Edited byKG Kumar

Designed bySatish Babu

CoverArtwork by Savi Savarkar for NESA

Photographs courtesy ofMSC, Brian O’Riordan, Stefano Ponte, Neena Koshy, Rita Banerji

V.Vivekanandan, N.Venugopalan, Venkatesh Salagrama, Rolf Willmann, Maria Olsen

News courtesy ofAsiaSentinel.com, OneWorld, International Tourism Partnership

Renewable Energy Access/Worldwatch Institute

Printed atNagaraj and Company Pvt. Ltd., Chennai

SAMUDRA Report No. 46 March 2007

FOR LIMITED CIRCULATION ONLY

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No. 46 March 2007 - COnnecting REpositories · PDF file · 2016-05-14Small-scale Fisheries” ... rights-based approaches in fisheries should only ... regimes are built on principles