Campaign group urges greater fisheries openness

The campaign will feature a series of short films, the first of which has already been released.

Ryan Orgera, Accountability.Fish’s global director says that regional fisheries management organisations (RFMOs) operate with an unacceptable level of secrecy, creating a ‘black hole’ around monitoring the health of oceans.

“Fisheries management is an obscure area of resource governance,” he said. “The world’s RFMOs want to keep it that way, even if it results in unverifiable processes to measure actual sustainability.

Orgera accuses RFMOs of denying NGO observers a role in key meetings, threatening their observer status, holding meetings at inaccessible locations and imposing media bans.

“These practices serve to reinforce the dependence on their word in this matter,” he said. “That has had massive implications for workers’ rights, local economies and the environment.”

He cites this obfuscation as ‘fuel’, driving Accountability.Fish’s efforts to expose this lack of transparency. “This campaign aims to push them to the point where they will no longer be able to defend their indefensible governance practices,” he said.

The organisation says it is also stepping up its support for a parallel campaign working with industry and market players to improve observer and media access to RFMO proceedings – The Equal Access Principles.

“The more people become aware of the murkiness and arrogance of the RFMO system and the nations who enable it, the less defensible it becomes,” said Orgera. “We are winning.”