On 11 November 2019, MEPs Caroline Roose and Grace O'Sullivan organised a meeting at the European Parliament to hear the voice of representatives of African artisanal fishing communities from countries that have signed a Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreement (SFPAs) with the EU. On this occasion, the Coalition for Fair Fisheries Arrangements (CFFA) collected the presentations made during this meeting by representatives of the African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Organisations (CAOPA), invited as part of a joint initiative of WWF, Birdlife and CFFA. This initiative aims, through dialogue with stakeholders and the European institutions, to identify the changes needed in SFPAs to ensure that they become effective instruments of an EU-African partnership for the development of environmentally, socially and economically sustainable fisheries in Africa.
Mr. Gaoussou Gueye, President of CAOPA, insisted on the need to make the SFPAs a tool to protect coastal marine environments.
At this event, Mr. Gaoussou Gueye, President of the African Confederation of Artisanal Fisheries Organizations (CAOPA), stated that while many improvements have been made, “there is a need for a renewed political will” both at EU and African countries’ level to “maintain the acquis of these agreements” and “make them “efficient partnerships that promote sustainable fishing communities.”
In this regard, as the negotiations have recently started between EU and Mauritania for the renewal of the protocol, Mr. Sid’Ahmed Abeid, president of the artisanal section of FNP, explained the excellent acquis from the former protocol and called for the three measures, namely, the landings of 2% of catches for food security, the access to octopus reserved for local artisanal fishermen and the current zoning, to be maintained. These changes have allowed the number of artisanal fishermen to double, an increase of 50% of pirogues and the number of freezing factories to almost triple. It has also had an impact on food security: the local consumption of fish in Mauritania has grown from 4 to 12 kg per person per year.
Also progress was made in support to women fish processors in the Ivory Coast protocol, where landings of bycatches by EU fleets are to provide fish to women for the months where there is no access the resource locally. However, this has not yet been implemented. Mrs. Micheline Dion, president of the women fish processors cooperative in Ivory Coast stated “we hope that once this supply is in place it will contribute to demonstrate that local landings by the EU fleet in favor of women fish processors […] can support the development of African artisanal fishing communities.”
You can find a full transcription of their interventions, including the recommendations that were shared, here.