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| | | Conditions for sustainable development |
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| | Overall, it is expected that labels testifying to specific qualities and origin will increase their importance in the marketplace, especially in response to consumers' concerns about food safety and species sustainability.There are increasingly significant signs of social stress and conflict over the access to and allocation of fisheries resources and - considering the forecast increase in demand for fish and fishery products in the next decades and the limits on natural productivity as we now know it - maintaining the contribution of fisheries to food security is of both short- and medium-term concern. Essentially all fishing areas of the world are confronted with the major problems of (i) overfishing and (ii) poor economic performance of some, if not most, of their fisheries, and there are many instances of excessive fishing capacity, frequently fuelled by subsidies. | | | | Despite their importance for employment, food security, and poverty alleviation in poor rural coastal areas and, particularly in low-income food-deficit countries (LIFDCs), fisheries can no longer be seen as providing either the ultimate and limitless safety net for the unemployed or the solution to such problems. Similarly, although women and economically disadvantaged groups are important target groups for development, their involvement in the fisheries sector must take into account the limited fisheries resources and the ecological sustainability of the marine environment.Societal awareness - about the environmental impacts of fishing gears and technologies (e.g. driftnets, trawling, and destructive methods), environmental modification (e.g. aquaculture-related damage to mangroves), and the impact of global environmental degradation on fisheries - has raised concerns about the ways in which seafood is produced or procured, its quality, and the health effects of consuming it. Society is also increasingly demanding higher standards of resource stewardship from users and managers alike by requiring greater transparency and accountability even while the capacity of fishery bodies is still insufficient for effecting management or for fully implementing the new international instruments, particularly at regional levels. Many fisheries bodies are still simply advisory, have weak decision-making rules, and lack sufficient resources. Finally, the diverse demands of fisheries management are being exacerbated by the continuously changing and broadening societal expectations and requirements such as ecosystem approaches to fisheries management (even though we have an incomplete understanding of ecosystems) and the high levels of uncertainty associated with our knowledge of aquatic ecosystems, their natural variations, and their resilience to fishing. | | | | The key source of problems is the inadequacy of many systems of use- and access rights for fisheries resources. Operating under the principle of free and open access simply does not ensure the sustainability of these resources, yet this is how a large number of fisheries are still managed. To make matters worse, the process of instituting more explicit access rights and thereby allocating the opportunity to use fisheries resources more precisely requires making policy decisions that have potentially enormous political and financial costs and, hence, many governments encounter great difficulties when even considering implementing the change required. Furthermore, politically unpalatable transitions to more effective fisheries management are made even more difficult by inadequate institutional frameworks (in terms of outdated laws and regulations, poor information flows, and limited stakeholder participation); weak decision-making mechanisms; and a general lack of integration of sectoral development policies. | | | | To help improve the overall nature of fisheries and aquaculture policy, countries should look to the comprehensive foundation provided by the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, the guidelines for its implementation, and the overarching need for adopting a precautionary approach to the use of fisheries resources. All relevant countries, particularly the most important fishing and coastal nations, should ratify the new international instruments adopted during the 1990s to further strengthen the global fisheries institutional framework. Countries should also effectively increase their commitment to improving the situation by improving the national and regional frameworks, strengthening regional fishery commissions, and increasing their collaboration with regional environmental commissions. | | | | Governance-supporting strategies - such as increased transparency, due process, the use of participatory management strategies (e.g. co-management, community-based management strategies) to ensure greater stakeholder participation and devolution of responsibility - need to be designed and implemented. Similarly, management-support tools such as the use of indicators of sustainable development should be used to identify problem areas and sources of pressures, facilitate corrective responses, and help monitor progress towards a better state of the world's fisheries resources. | | | | Ultimately, the basic solution to the problems of fisheries governance will require setting up management systems that clarify and more fully define access rights, including those for traditional fishing communities and others who may be excluded from fisheries. These management systems will also need to be designed so that they limit catches while creating positive incentives to limit capacity and to capture the benefits of technological innovation (e.g. use of improved gears, post harvest and processing practices and value-adding strategies for utilizing allowable harvests more efficiently). Where appropriate, systems of quantitative and transferable quotas - such as those allocated to communities or individuals - need to be put in place. Finally, these new management systems will have to explicitly address the issue of payment for the privilege to use the world's fisheries resources for private gain. | | | | There have been a number of positive achievements in the fisheries sector. Since the early 1950s, fisheries development policies and trade have led to an increasing amount of fish supplied as food on a per capita basis despite concomitant increases in population. During the last two to three decades, fisheries have become a major source of income and foreign exchange for many coastal developing countries. New legislation has been put in place including improving the sustainability of marine aquaculture, particularly close to mangroves. Aquaculture has contributed to increasing the supply of fish and helping lower prices. Societal awareness of fisheries resources and of the impacts of fishing activities on the environment continues to increase. The precautionary approach to fisheries management is now part of many management strategies. Systems of indicators intended to support the concept of ecologically sustainable development have been designed and are being tested. The fisheries policy framework has significantly improved with the entry into force of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the 1993 FAO Compliance Agreement, the 1995 UN Fish Stocks Agreement and the 1995 FAO Code of Conduct. Additionally, a number of new fisheries commissions have been established, thereby putting practically all the world resources, including in the high seas, under some sort of management framework. Members to FAO are showing a greater awareness of fisheries issues and a commitment to act to resolve them both with International Plans of Action (IPOAs - on capacity, sharks, bycatch of birds, illegal fishing) endorsed by the FAO Committee on Fisheries and with requests for radical improvements to national fisheries policies and legislation. | | | | The high attention given to fisheries by the international media will keep a high level the pressure on management authorities to improve the situation. The rapid increase in awareness about the role of access rights and of the experience and competence in implementing them and the likely further development of ecolabelling are positive factors in the quest for a more sustainable contribution of fisheries to human sustainable development. However, the opportunities resulting from globalization and increasing trade also increase the risk to sustainability wherever management capacity is generally insufficient and, especially, in the developing world. Faster progress should therefore be expected in the developed world, where transition costs might be bearable and capacity sufficient. However, surprises may come out of the developing world where, sometimes, the capacity to change may be higher. | | | | |
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1076 Topics - 5135 Related Knowledge - 2534 Members - 34 Editors |
