The best way EU Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements contribute to food security is by protecting and promoting artisanal fisheries

A long-standing question when it comes to the Sustainable Fisheries Partnerships Agreements (SFPAs) the EU signs with African countries is what are the benefits for the partner country.

As we highlighted recently, this is a key challenge to address, in order to improve the relevance of SFPAs for partner countries and to convince them to further engage in their implementation.

A recent report by Poseidon, funded by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), contributes to this debate, looking at how to increase benefits from SFPAs in African countries, “with a particular attention on small-scale fisheries, gender equity and food security”. This report builds on the recent SFPAs evaluation published by the European Commission (EC), including on the use of sectoral support, and explores further issues like local landings. Based on four countries case studies, - The Gambia, Mauritania, Madagascar, and Senegal, it provides a series of recommendations to the EU, African partner countries and donors.

Local landings bring benefits, but it is not the best way SFPAs contribute to food security

An important topic discussed in the report is whether increased fish landings by EU vessels in African partner countries would be desirable from a food security perspective. It reminds that “there are no SFPAs mandating sales to local industries (except for in-kind contributions), for the reason that it would distort commercial relationship.”

The relationship between fish landings and the contribution to food security is not straight forward: “Landings in the ports do not necessarily mean that products landed will contribute to supplying the local markets or be available to local processing industries if product is exported without being processed.” The report then indicates that a processed product contributes to local job creation but, if exported, it will not be “available for local consumption” and that transshipped catches (i.e. not landed) create “no/little onshore economic benefit to the African partner countries over and above transshipment fees”. The report further notes that “while not quantified or fully understood during this assignment, there may be risks of such landings distorting local markets,” -that could be the case of EU vessels landing catches to be sold on local markets, competing with fish products coming from small scale fisheries, traditionally sold on these markets.

And this does not take into account “the bigger picture”. In Mauritania, the landings by EU vessels of 2% of small pelagic catches, as an “in kind contribution” under the SFPA has undoubtedly contributed to increase the local consumption of fish. But this is a drop in the ocean - as is rightly pointed out in the report: “the main and recurrent issue faced by [Mauritanian] fisheries policy makers is to increase the quantities of small pelagics destined for human consumption and simultaneously, reduce those which go the fishmeal industry, while preserving the stocks”. However, the fishmeal produced in Mauritania from over-exploited stocks, feeds mainly salmon farmed in Norway, which finds its way to the EU consumers’ plates. It, therefore, could be contended that the EU, as the major market for Norwegian farmed salmon, has a much bigger negative impact on food security in West Africa than it has a positive impact with the landing of small pelagics in Mauritania.

The EU consumption of smoked salmon from Norway which has been fed fishmeal and fish oil produced in West Africa has a much bigger negative impact on food security in the region than the EU has a positive impact with its landing of small pelagics (“contribution in kind”) in Mauritania. Photo by Vicky Ng.

The report argues that “improved resource availability for species caught by EU vessels could/would result in greater catches and therefore potentially greater landings and linkages between EU vessels and African partner countries in terms of contributions to food security, value added and employment.” This rightly suggests that strengthening fisheries management, making it more transparent and inclusive, as it is called for by African artisanal fishers, should be a priority of SFPAs, particularly through the sectoral support. But this would not de facto lead to “greater catches by EU vessels,” as the state of exploitation of many resources targeted by EU vessels call for a diminution of fishing effort, and in such a situation, the priority should be ensuring the access to these resources for small scale fisheries.

What attracts local landings? Not the existence of an SFPA

Apart from a potential, but limited, contribution to food security, local landings and transshipments do bring other benefits to African countries, as listed in the report: “the provision of raw material to processing plants for export, the purchase of goods and services by EU vessels (e.g. fuel, chandlery, vessel repairs, port services, etc.) during their visits to port, etc.” Most importantly, SFPAs also play a role for improving control, as it allows the African country where fish is landed or transhipped “to engage in inspection of transshipments to ensure compliance with conservation and management measures.”

The EC evaluation had already noted that when SFPA partner countries have ports or fish processing industries compliant with EU food law, “they derive significant socio-economic benefits from SFPAs”.  As CFFA, we have previously argued that in these well-equipped countries most of these benefits, -supplying goods and services, processing fish landed-, would still exist in the absence of an SFPA. This is also reflected in the report: “Ghana and South Africa for example do not have an SFPA with the EU, but receive part of EU tuna catches made in the region through SFPAs, with their ports and onshore processing facilities deriving benefits.”

When it comes to countries having signed an SFPA, the ones benefitting the most from the linkages between EU vessels and ports and processing facilities are, “for small pelagics, demersals and crustaceans, Morocco and Mauritania; and for tuna, Cabo Verde, Senegal and Côte d’Ivoire in the Atlantic Ocean, and Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles in the Indian Ocean.” All these countries “have port infrastructure that is capable of servicing large-scale fishing vessels (and/or are well placed geographically to handle product flows to Europe and/or have a SFPA which mandates landings), although some are more developed / operational than others.”

The study lists the main elements that do attract local landings, including : the location of catches and how close fishing grounds are at different times of the year to different ports; the capacity of African partner countries to export fish to the EU market based on their compliance with EU requirements (on hygiene, food safety, IUU fishing, and/or tariff/quota arrangements); the status and condition of port infrastructure and services (quays, lack of congestion to allow fast turnaround times, bunkering, quality, timeliness and price of port services including vessel maintenance and repair).

“The presence of onshore processing industries with the capacity to process part of [EU vessels] landings, which pay within a reasonable time and provide for rapid weighing by species; the prices paid for fish in African partner countries as compared to in other ports and/or by other international buyers” are additional factors that explain the interest of EU vessels to land and sell their catch in specific African ports.

The benefits derived from supplying goods and services and processing fish landed in African countries with well-equipped port infrastructures would still exist even if there was no EU Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements. The elements that attract local landings are independent from the existence or not of an SFPA. Photo by Paul Einerhand.

Well established historical relationships also play a role: “while African partner countries which do not benefit from landings of EU catches may have an interest in attracting greater landings, disrupting historical patterns of landings and market dynamics could require very significant investments in port and processing infrastructure and be difficult to achieve.”

A telling example is presented in The Gambia country report: EU vessels owners do not land tuna catches in the Gambia, as they find better landings infrastructure, processing plans and vessel support facilities, in other ports in the region like Dakar and Abidjan.

Increasing local landings in SFPAs? Sustainable fisheries management should come first

The first recommendation of the report calls for caution: “The EU and African partner third countries should continue to critically assess on a SFPA-by-SFPA and a species-specific basis the extent to which mandating or incentivising a part of landings is appropriate, and where possible and relevant to do so, include relevant provisions in future Protocols.” It adds: “Assessments should consider the conditions present in different PTCs, and the risks of displacement of benefits between PTCs and impacts on domestic markets.” It also suggests donors should “fund a comparative assessment of port infrastructure and services in all African partner countries and African countries in a position to receive catch from EU vessels, to ensure that African ports are competitive, and meet the current and future needs of visiting foreign vessels.”

Other recommendations insist on the necessary support, through SFPAs and from donors, for fisheries management, research, enforcement activities, “especially for non-tuna species, given that research and management arrangements for tuna are generally more advanced.” Support to providing good employment conditions for crew working on EU vessels, through “the enforcement of the social clause in SFPA Protocols” should also be continued. This is a topic that has been recently explored in depth by the EU Long Distance Fisheries Advisory Council.

Interestingly, the report also calls to “use the strength” of the partnership between the EU and African partner countries “to ensure non-EU foreign-flagged vessels (or those with foreign beneficial ownership which are locally flagged) are subjected to sufficient control and surveillance and that their numbers do not negatively impact on resources available for catch by local fleets, or negatively impact on the linkages between EU fleets and PTCs through their impacts on EU vessel catches”.

The importance of recognizing and supporting the role of men and women in small scale fisheries for food security is also stressed. Indeed, the best way for SFPAs to support food security is to protect small scale fishers’ access to resources, - establishing a zoning in SFPAs that ensures there is no competition between EU vessels and small-scale fishers is of paramount importance-, and to promote its sustainable development. On the latter, the fact that 33% of the SFPAs sectoral support has been spent on actions supporting small scale fisheries is remarkable, and should be continued, albeit in a more structural way. The recommendation made in the report, to “systematically use and refer to the FAO’s Voluntary Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-Scale Fisheries in the context of food security and poverty eradication as a way of increasing small-scale fishers in decision-making and making sure their interests continue to be reflected in the sectoral support programmes”, is very appropriate.

Banner photo: A fish processor in Cacheu (Guinea Bissau) prepares the fish before smoking it. The lack of preservation facilities means that women often work long hours in to the night in order to process the fish that has been landed before it goes bad. Photo by Carmen Abd Ali.

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