Future challenges for the CWP

Over the past 20 years the global fisheries community has begun to bring a more rational and sustainable approach to the exploitation of wild marine fisheries through the application of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS) and its subsidiary instruments and derived practices. By the nature of inland waters, enclosed entirely within countries or shared between two or more neighbouring states, there has been no equivalent international instruments applied to inland fisheries. During the same period global fisheries have come under ever increasing pressure from rising demand, technological innovation and efficiency, and the increasing globalisation of markets. Sometimes it seems as if the two pathways have proceeded in parallel with only passing reference to the opportunities for sustainability or to the clear risks of ignoring the limits to fisheries exploitation.

In response to recognized pressures the international community has adopted a key document, the Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries (Code), to bridge this gap between international political acceptance and the actual conduct of fisheries. At some point further key subsidiary UN legal frameworks (UN Fish Stocks Agreement, FAO Compliance Agreement) will come into force, and indeed much of the requirements of the Code directly reflect these instruments. Although the Code is voluntary it sets out an agreed code of practice that has wide ranging implications for the ways in which fish stocks are used, including in relation to freshwater fisheries and aquaculture. Much of the Code refers to the development and wise use of knowledge. Every article of the code exhorts States, organisations and individuals to collect data, develop knowledge and apply appropriate measures. It is necessary to consider the requirements for data at all levels and for all purposes and the nature and extent of the information required to populate a 'knowledge system' from which the three interlinked management domains of Policy, Planning and Implementation can draw.

Effective policy-making and management needs to cover all information domains. The main challenge for the future is to coordinate the data collection and exchange programmes of countries, regional fishery bodies and FAO to the broader range of information domains as follows, whereas past efforts have been too concentrated on the first two:

• Fishery and Operations Information Domain: all aspects of the primary capture of aquatic resources and their processing; who caught what amounts of fish, when and how; and what operational management information is required.
• Biology and Environment Information Domain: all characteristics of the biology, dynamics and interactions of exploited living aquatic resources and their associated species within the biological and physical framework of the ecosystem.
• Economic and Financial Information Domain: all aspects of the conduct of the fisheries sector, including human resource, financial and economic, and production and trade issues.
• Socio-cultural Information Domain: all features that are needed to evaluate fisheries policy and management in relation to distribution of income and food, equity and demographics, and participant dependence and social status.