PROFISH: Is it also pro-fishermen?

In 2005 the World Bank (WB) created the global partnership with the fishing industry, the Alliance for Sustainable Fisheries (ALLFISH), to scale up its work in the fisheries sector.

Now, WB president Robert Zoellick thinks that the world needs a new SOS: Save Our Seas. The world fisheries, says WB, is in a crisis. This, because while fish are the main source of animal protein for 400 million people from the poorest countries, and some 200 million people in developing countries depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihood, over 75% of the world’s fisheries are considered fully or overexploited.

Poor governance and environmental degradation of fisheries habitat in critical areas, such as the coastal zone and coral reefs, are primary causes of overexploited‚ unsustainable fisheries and poverty in fishery-dependent communities. Thus, there's little room for increased landings from wild stocks. Notwithstanding, there's still an opportunity to create livelihoods and improve food security and nutrition worldwide. So how's the WB going to take advantage of this opportunity?

On the one hand, according to WB, the pitiable state of global fisheries is due to weak governance that led to excessive fishing capacity, overfishing, a vast loss of wealth and stagnation in the world's fishing yields. On the other hand, aquaculture expands at a very fast rate, supplying about a half of all food fish. Evidently, WB believes that aquaculture is able "to recapture lost wealth in capture fisheries". Serious challenges faced by aquaculture with its rapid growth‚ such as ‘boom and bust’ cycles and environmental problems can be overcome by "improved governance‚ thoughtful planning and access to information‚ technology and capital".

International trade
PROFISH had been created in view of extensive international trade in fish and fishery products, covering some 40% of the total that flows from poor to wealthy countries. "Our [PROFISH] mission," says WB, "is to promote and facilitate the contribution that fisheries and aquaculture can make to sustainable economic growth, better nutrition, and economic opportunities for women and poverty reduction"…through…"supporting an inclusive and sustainable globalisation‚ enhancing growth with care for the environment‚ and creating individual opportunity and hope.”

What's needed is good governance of inland and ocean resources, which, says WB again, will "enhance food security‚ nutrition‚ biodiversity‚ gender equity and community resilience‚ and mitigate climate change". All the more that "Potential net gains from good governance of capture fisheries are in the order of US$50 billion per year from improvement in production efficiency alone. With market gains considered‚ sustainable net benefits are estimated to exceed US$100 billion per year".

And who but the WB, being a "source of leveraged funding, with access to high-level policy makers‚ officials‚ and development planners whose decisions bear upon the governance of the fisheries industry" has such "unrivalled convening power‚ bringing government officials‚ donors‚ and stakeholders together in consultation", and "reaching out to the private sector and other organisations to form strategic partnerships."

All this boils down to the WB's notion that, "due to the common property nature of fisheries‚ aquaculture externalities‚ national and international ocean management issues and the linkages between fiscal issues and sustainable management of fisheries", both capture fisheries and aquaculture "require greater emphasis on governance". These governance issues are much wider than just fisheries. Fisheries governance arrangements‚ therefore‚ "often need to be addressed in a broader institutional context".

Good governance
What's left now is to find out what WB understands under the expression "good governance", and whether this expression is an overt definition that can be found among WB publications, or rather a sort of cryptogram shrouding a not necessarily agreeable subtext.

Well, when it comes to aquaculture it seems that good governance means securing land and water tenure. WB doesn't specify how, but I believe that it believes that it means privatisation of the area and water resources where fish farms are situated. In capture fisheries, it means "controlling the ‘open access’ problem", in particular through controlling the access and harvest rights, while "using well-designed rights and responsibilities and regulatory reform." Here again, I'm afraid that all this controlling and the "well-designed" regulation serves here as euphemism for privatisation.

According to Mr Zoellick, countries need to understand "the full value of the ocean's wealth and ecosystem services”. "We cannot manage what we cannot measure," – says he, apparently oblivious of Einstein's saying that "not all that can be counted counts and not all that counts can be counted". Measuring economic benefits represent WB's (management) tool to all ocean ecosystems, while taxes and subsidies can serve incentives and disincentives to strengthen the enforcement of rights-based fishing. From the net economic loss of about $5 billion per year, "we should increase the annual net benefits of fisheries to between $20 billion and $30 billion". "The key to the success of this partnership will be new market mechanisms that value natural capital and can attract private finance," a senior American banker, a partner in PROFISH, told Reuters.

Etc., etc. Well, I haven't succeeded in finding a straightforward description of the WB's promoted "governance", except of some hints here and there, such as this one: "…the need for an institutional framework that provides certainty for investment, exclusive use, a setting for trade, an environment for innovation, and capacity to manage." However by reading all this stuff, I can't but to come to the conclusion that what the WB/PROFISH is essentially about is more privatisation, more marketable fish quotas, and more concentration of fishing rights in the hands of those who can produce higher ‘economic rent’ - a euphemism for ‘profits’, achievable through reallocation of fishing rights away from small-scale fishermen and their family businesses to bigger and corporate owners.