ASEAN-SEAFDEC have hosted a cooperative forum in Thailand to cooperate with other Asian countries to develop a joint declaration to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing and enhance sustainable fisheries development in the region.
The resulting joint declaration takes into consideration aspects including strengthening of monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) programmes and enhancing the traceability of fish and fishery products from capture fisheries and aquaculture.
It also wants to focus on managing fishing capacity, enhance regional cooperation and address labour issues in the fisheries sector.
Thailand is already working some way towards these goals. It has established a Marine Fisheries Management Plan to address problems on overfishing capacity by freezing the registration of new fishing vessels.
And, among other things, it has developed a Catch Certificate Scheme to enhance the traceability of fish and fishery products. It’s also looking at Port State Measures to try to exercise control over foreign-flagged fishing vessels and prevent the entry of IUU fish and fishery products into the country.
IUU fishing problems are complicated in the region because of fishery resources being shared by several countries, labour related issues and products being intra-regionally traded prior to exportation.
These problems cannot be addressed by countries individually, but require cooperation among concerned agencies and with regional collaboration to enhance the effectiveness in combating the problem.
It is expected that this High-level Consultation should lead to closer cooperation among the ASEAN Member States to combat IUU fishing and enhance the competitiveness of ASEAN fish and fishery products.
