In what sector with high rates of unlicensed activity would information on who is licensed be considered confidential in order to help fight corporate criminality?
Interpol and the UN held a meeting in Nairobi at the beginning of November on illegal unreported and unregulated fishing, which was part of its global crime fighting effort called “Project Scale”. During the session open to NGOs, a speech was given by former director of Tanzania’s deep sea fishing authority, now the chairperson of the Fish-I project, launched earlier this year. This project involves governments from East Africa - Comoros, Kenya, Seychelles, Mozambique and Tanzania, and it is run by the Stop Illegal Fishing working group established through NEPAD's 'Partnership for Africa's Fisheries' which is also headed up by the NGO Stop Illegal Fishing based in Botswana. The Fish-I project is funded by the PEW Charitable trust, who work on the steering committee. It is a project that is designed to include other countries, including those in West Africa.
The Fish-I project is based on information sharing, so that the governments and NGOs involved can counter IUU fishing and improve intelligence operations. CFFA, its partners and many NGOs in EU and Africa have been calling for improved public access to information in fisheries for years, so the idea of a regional African initiative to promote information sharing is welcomed. But having listened to the presentation about the way in which NGOs and Governments involved in this project are fighting IUU, it became clear that the idea of information sharing was limited. So I put a question to the speaker: “Are the governments involved in Fish-I committed to publishing information on the licenses they sell and the access agreements they sign and will they publish information on what happens to the money?” The answer was, surprisingly, no:
"we only share the information between governments and the NGOs involved, this is confidential information"
In 2011 CFFA undertook an access to information survey in 14 African countries, including most of those involved in Fish-I. We found that most of the countries involved in Fish-I didn’t publish data on the number of licenses they sell to foreign boats. The situation remains mostly the same today – Kenya, Tanzania, Mozambique keep information about the licensing of foreign fishing confidential, Seychelles publish a bit more, and Mauritius is actually the most transparent country in Africa according to our research. In fact, hardly any governments in Africa publish financial information, including annual budgets for their fisheries administration or income from licenses and fines. That includes Tanzania who recently spent 19 million USD of a 65 million USD World Bank loan on a new deep-sea fishing authority, which still doesn’t publish any information on the licenses it sells. CFFA, through the ‘transparentsea’ project have started publishing information on licenses and access agreements in Africa, including information that is not being made available by governments and companies (i.e. ‘leaked by individuals’). But still, public information on commercial access arrangements in Africa is very limited.
Many people have argued that governments should proactively publish information on commercial fisheries, including a list of licensed vessels. The reasons go far beyond fighting IUU – how can citizens participate in decision making about their marine resources if they don’t have basic information on how commercial fisheries are run? Indeed, the notion of “unreported” and “unregulated” fisheries must apply to situations where there is virtually no transparency and public participation in fisheries management. We shouldn’t sensationalise transparency – it is not a panacea for achieving responsible fisheries - but it does seem a good place to start for fighting “IUU” and promoting participation and accountability in fisheries management.
So why the insistence that information on commercial fisheries should be kept confidential, shared between governments and a few foreign NGOs? How does this help fight IUU fishing? A report on IUU fishing in Africa compiled my the Marine Resource Assessment Group claimed the most corrupt and poorly governed countries are the ones with the worst problems of illegal fishing – so perhaps confidentiality might not be the best route to solving the problem. This was an argument made by the FAO in the 2010 State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture Report
"Lack of basic transparency could be seen as an underlying facilitator of all the negative aspects of the global fisheries sector—illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, fleet overcapacity, overfishing, ill-directed subsidies, corruption, poor fisheries management decisions, etc. A more transparent sector would place a spotlight on such activities whenever they occur, making it harder for perpetrators to hide behind the current veil of secrecy and requiring immediate action to be taken to correct the wrong”.
Coastal communities and NGOs representing small-scale fishers and fish workers such as CAOPA in West Africa, have continually asked for transparency in fisheries, and over the past few years so have the World Bank and several secretariats of RFMOs. More recently I was asked to write the chapter on fisheries for the Open Government Partnership – of which both Kenya and Tanzania are signed up to, and WWF has launched a new initiative on transparency in fisheries to be based at its Mozambique office. So why the reluctance from Fish-I and Stop Illegal Fishing? Why should they have access to this information and not everyone else? We should remember that the Stop Illegal Fishing Working Group was established through development aid (UK-DFID) to provide an open platform for dialogue and participation regarding reducing IUU fishing. It seems now to provide intelligence for crime fighting to countries that are not prepared to be accountable and open.
THis situation reflects fundamental problems with the concept of IUU. The problem of IUU is presented as rogue vessels from outside the continent steeling African fish, for which capacity building of African states is needed. Yet the negative tendencies of commercial fishing is far more complex than this, and the problem is not simply IUU vessels looting Africa, but a wide range of immoral activities by fishing companies, their home governments and host governments, where corruption is thought to be a problem in many countries. We therefore need to see reform of commercial fisheries - and the 'fight' against IUU - as first and foremost a process of deepening democracy and accountability. It is not a problem simply resolved by catching baddies through improved law enforcement.
Here is a simple proposal – the governments participating in Fish-I should start publishing a complete lists of licensed vessels, updated immediately companies buy these licenses, with copies of the license agreement and details of how much money was paid. If they do not want to do this, then FISH-I should not work with them.
Further resources:
- Read the report on CFFA's access to information survey, published in the ICSF's Journal, Samudra, in March 2012.
- Open Government Guide to fisheries
- Paper on transparency in fisheries published by the U4 anti-corruption resource centre