How happy certain European and American members of the fisheries management establishment would be if they could apply uniform management laws and regulations to all fisheries under their respective jurisdictions.
If such dream came true, they could apply to some complex problems solutions that were simple, legally and bureaucratically convenient…and wrong. For over a decade, some of them have been trying to portray individual transferable quotas (ITQ) as a sort of ultimate management system, which would heal all the maladies of the world’s fisheries. The jury is still out as to whether ITQ had indeed healed any, but the quota system’s inevitable effects are here with us: continual concentration of fishing rights and the respective benefits in fewer and fewer hands and the resulting displacement and impoverishment of many fishing people and their communities.
Recently, good advice was given to the world’s fisheries managers by Dr Ichiro Nomura, who is FAO’s Assistant Director General in charge of its Fisheries Department. It was published in the July 2006 SAMUDRA Report and appropriately entitled: “No one-size-fits-all approach”. SAMUDRA Report, which is accessible also on line at: www.icsf.org is published three times/year by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers (ICSF) and distributed free-of-charge worldwide in three versions: English, French and Spanish. In short, it is a 50-pp no-commercials periodical that gets around. It publishes articles and reports that deal mainly with cultural, economic, social and other human aspects of fish-workers and communities, and also fishery management and aquatic ecosystem conservation.
Straight from the horse’s mouth
Dr Nomura reacted to a critical article published by Derek Johnson in SAMUDRA’s March issue, reviewing the ‘Sharing the Fish’ conference, which took place last February in Fremantle, Australia. The FAO-supported conference on fishing rights was predominantly populated by government and academy staff from Australia, NZ, USA and Europe. It appears that many of them seemed to be over-enthusiastic about the ITQ system considered by its devotees as practically an ‘all-purpose medicine’ for all fishery management problems.
“(Fishing rights) are absolutely necessary and fundamental to the sustainability of the world’s fisheries resources,” wrote Dr Nomura. “However, fisheries policies, management approaches – and fishing rights – need to be tailored to the specific context of countries and localities with respect to the fisheries in question, the social setting, culture, etc.”
After giving some examples of the application of fishing rights in various forms and areas, from the Bering Sea, through oceanic island-states, all the way to east Africa, Dr Nomura adds: “It is for communities to decide on how efficient they would like their fisheries to be, with few or many boats of small or large size”. And: “Fishing rights do not simply equate to the big ITQ systems that have been designed for large-scale fleets. Moreover, fishing rights should not be limited to large-scale fisheries”.
Finally: “There is no one-size-fits-all approach, and more attention needs to be given to appropriate sequence policies and policy reforms”. Hear, hear! And Dr Nomura proposes an international conference on the allocation of rights in small-scale fisheries.
In view of the two former conferences that have dealt with fishing rights marked with substantial domination of quota systems disciples, such an international conference would be desirable, provided that it would be much more heavy with participants having small-scale fisheries and developing countries background and others independent of the prevailing large management establishments.
Re-education?
On such a meeting, managers and economists from quota-run fisheries wishing to introduce quota systems all over would be able to learn a few things that may cool their enthusiasm to marketable fishing rights.
They’d hear that multi-species and multi-gear operation is inherent in many of the inshore and other small-scale fisheries, where single-species TAC and management by quotas (output control) are impractical. Effort-control management is more likely to react in true time to natural phenomena that influence fish abundance, distribution and mortality. Every managed fishery needs to be understood and related to the dynamic ocean environment as it affects fish and fishing people, and in turn is affected by the efficiency of the fishing techniques employed, which is why effective fishery management mechanisms must be tailored to fit the peculiarities of each individual fishery. Even the same species may need different mesh-size regulation in different areas. For some fisheries, seasonal closures to let the new generation grow may be much more efficient and economically feasible than mesh-size regulation. In other fisheries, it may not be recommendable to fish selectively for the larger and let the smaller and younger fish go. Under certain environmental conditions and prey-predator relations, it may be advisable to fish out a share of the immature fish, and let a share of the large, more prolific ones live and procreate.
Allocation of rights and power
Even for the larger-scale fisheries in the North Atlantic waters, where selective fishing for single or almost single species, regulations should be tailored to specific cases and fit local/regional fishery ecology and fishery-associated cultural, social and economic features. And when it comes to rights allocation, in inshore and coastal waters, preference should be given to artisanal and small-scale fisheries, and farther offshore to middle-scale fishing. International and distant waters that cannot be safely and feasibly fished by the above can be allocated to large-scale industrial fleets.
In the Mediterranean, for example, the fisheries of the EU member-countries (France, Spain, Italy, Greece and Cyprus) are quite different from those of the EU fisheries in the Atlantic, and no way would the EU quota system and other rules fit its Mediterranean members. While many small-scale fisheries have been traditionally self-managed by communities, some of them, fishing people and whole communities in Iceland, Australia, Canada and elsewhere, were shattered by ideologically or politically driven government TAC-ITQ management systems.
A bureaucratic and legalistic approach, however convenient in complex situations, hardly ever works properly, often not at all. Will Dr Nomura’s words fall on receptive ears?
benyami@actcom.net.il
