Taking the example of the Mauritius law and looking at the general principles in international law, Pieter van Welzen looks specifically at the obligations of coastal states and their obligations to regulate their own vessels who fish in the waters of another state or in the high seas. The author also looks at cooperation between states in the monitoring of foreign vessels and finally, at how the EU can support developing coastal states in fulfilling their obligations.
States have an obligation to act against beneficial owners of vessels involved in IUU fishing
In this article, Pieter van Welzen argues that states have an obligation to act against their nationals who are beneficial owners and are involved in illegal, unreported, and unregulated IUU fishing activities. For this, the author talks about the challenges for flag and coastal states to fight against IUU fishing in many cases, introduces indications in international law for beneficial owner state responsibility and summarizes key state practice.
Removing obstacles to co-management of West African artisanal fisheries
West Africa has pioneered several decades of artisanal fisheries management reform. Yet there are still major obstacles to co-management: a lack of political will reflected in low budgetary allocations; inadequate and poorly targeted support for fisher organizations; poorly defined roles and responsibilities of fishers in co-management; lack of enforcement of inshore exclusive zones; and inadequate defense of human rights and particularly the important role of women.
Living on the frontline: climate change will first impact African coastal fishing communities
The AKWAABA spirit: the key role of women in Ivory Coast artisanal fisheries
Applying EU Control Rules to Spanish owned vessels fishing under a non-EU flag
Post by Anaïd Panossian, Legal expert in Law of the Sea and Fisheries.
In April 2014, the Spanish tropical tuna fisheries sector signed an agreement with the Spanish administration on 'third country vessels'. This agreement shall allow the Spanish government to apply the same requirements in terms of control, monitoring and surveillance to Spanish owned tuna companies, fishing under a non-EU flag as those applied to Spanish vessels flying an EU flag. It concerns vessels under joint ventures, including with The Seychelles.
Such an agreement was mainly motivated by the constraints imposed by the European Union in the implementation of its IUU regulation for the import of fish products. It should help to facilitate the paperwork required by the IUU regulation to integrate the EU market, since the vessels would meet the requirements of the EU legislation.
This agreement should allow easier tuna landings of these vessels flying non-EU flags on the EU markets. This agreement is also part of a broader initiative of Spain to demonstrate its commitment against IUU fishing and for greater transparency in global tuna fisheries.
A report by Louis Leroy-Warnier, mainly based on interviews with Spanish stakeholders, investigates the rationale for, the strengths and limitations of this agreement, and the opportunity of a transposition of such agreement at the European level.
This type of agreement raises some questions.
It is first encouraging to see that efforts are made to monitor the activities of the fleets who are not anymore under the flag of an EU Member State but whose capital remains European.
Indeed, large gaps remain on the management of fleets of European origin now operating under joint ventures, chartering or private agreements. Such a system could help lead the way to better monitor these fleets.
Questions can be raised about the legal validity of such an agreement since it does not seem to be binding. How does the Spanish administration intend to ensure effective control of these fleets? With what means?
The report questions the administration's liability in case of non-compliance with the provisions of this agreement. But since it is not a priori a binding agreement, it should not be possible.
The role of the flag State should also be clarified in this case, because the first obligation of control and monitoring of its fleets is with the flag state. How can such an agreement be consistent with such obligations?
In any event, it is certainly a step forward, the significance of which still needs to be evaluated, but certainly is in line with a strengthening of monitoring and control of fleets with European capital that are no longer EU flagged. This initiative could be reproduced by other Members States and other EU companies, until the EU itself finalizes an appropriate framework establishing conditions for the establishment and monitoring of EU capital based fishing joint ventures in third countries, the creation of which is in particular encouraged through its bilateral fisheries agreements, and other types of access such as chartering and private agreements by its Member States.
Senegal: Sardinella fishery should be reserved for the artisanal fishing sector
This post is from Dr Sogui Diouf, Veterinary Doctor and former Director of Fisheries
Every year, when the cold season approaches, the Senegalese think about the Russian boats targeting small pelagic resources, which is when these boats come back and ask for fishing permits. The Russian fleet, which once caught 1,500,000 tonnes annually of small pelagic species along the Northwest coast of Africa, now only catches 400,000 tonnes.
In 2010, Russia, with the complicity of our then Minister of Fisheries, was granted permission to catch our coastal pelagic resources. But in April 2012, the new government ordered this fleet to cease its activities in Senegalese waters.
In 2013, a fishing agreement was signed between Russia and Guinea Bissau, offering Russia the opportunity to operate in the common maritime area between Senegal and Guinea-Bissau – once Russian vessels were in the common area, it made it easy for them to make illegal incursions in the waters of Senegal. This is how the vessel Oleg NAYDENOV came to be arrested in late 2013 for fishing in Senegalese waters without permission.
This year, we were wondering what strategy Russia was going to use...
Then we learned that, in September 2014, a Dakar based trading company, heading up a joint venture operation, had applied for ten licenses to fish for small pelagics from the Ministry of Fisheries, as a way to revive the fish processing company Africamer. Africamer was founded in 1979, and processed 20,000 tons of fish annually, 85% of which was exported to Europe. With a fleet of 17 freezer trawlers, it employed 2,500 people. Between 2005 and 2008, Africamer, which was the largest Senegalese company in the fishing sector, got into difficulties due to management errors. In 2011, after several short lived attempts to revive the company, Africamer was put into liquidation.
By coincidence, at end of 2013, the representative of the Russia’s Federal Agency of Fisheries had filed a request along very similar lines to the office of the President of the Republic: fishing licenses for 10 trawlers, operating 6 months per year to catch 100,000 tons of small pelagic species, for 5 years. The request also mentioned the revival of Africamer. The similarities are so striking that one wonders if the 2014 demand from the Senegalese operator did not actually come from Russia’s Federal Agency of Fisheries.
In addition to the reopening of Africamer and the 10 licenses, the request from the Senegalese operator also proposed to create a shipyard and an aquaculture site. In order to realize this ambitious programme, the operator came up with a completely unrealistic proposal to invest only 11 billion FCFA (+ - EUR 17 million). Moreover, the resumption of the activities of Africamer would require a supply of fresh products to the factory – but products caught by the Russian boats benefitting from the ten licenses are frozen on board and packed at sea….
This proposal for a resumption of the Africamer factory is merely a ruse. The promises to recruit workers for Africamer will not materialize because products already frozen and packaged are not suitable to supply such a processing factory. The only way that Russia has found to bring back its fishing vessels to Senegalese waters is to use a lie.
At stake are our food security and our jobs. In fact, fleets of foreign super trawlers fishing in the region compete directly with the artisanal fishing sector over access to the sardinella; a single stock that migrates between Morocco and Guinea Bissau passing through Mauritania and Senegal.
Sardinella occupies a very important place in Senegal fisheries, whether looked at from the landings, local consumption, jobs or exports. Some 60% of the 400,000 tons of the Senegalese artisanal fishery landings are made of sardinella. Nearly 12,000 Senegalese artisanal fishermen live only from the sardinella fishery. In addition, many related activities (artisanal processing and distribution) associated with the sardinella fishery are characterized by low barriers to entry in terms of capital, qualification and know-how and employ thousands of people. The importance of women in the artisanal processing sector is a favorable factor for poverty-reduction policies.
In terms of food security, sardinella is the most accessible source of animal protein in terms of price and quantity. Today, many Senegalese families can only be assured of one meal a day - lunch based on rice and sardinella.
Currently, the state of the sardinella resources is worrying. The FAO/CECAF working group held in June 2013, in Nouadhibou (Mauritania), found that, as in previous years, sardinella stocks are overexploited; fishing effort must be substantially reduced.
Senegalese artisanal fishers, aware of the overexploitation of sardinella, have already introduced restrictions including measures to prohibit the fishing, the marketing and the processing of juveniles sardinella, as well as temporary fishing closures.
Given this situation, we must, today, reserve sardinella for the artisanal fishing sector, while developing the measures already adopted for the regulation of the fishing effort on this resource.
It is a question of food security and social stability.
Dr. Sogui Diouf
Veterinary Doctor
Rights and wrongs: the South African case of fishing rights allocation
Masifundise explain the new policy in South Africa for securing community rights to fisheries, which they describe as promoting human rights and the well being of small-scale fisheries in ways that will undo the harms of the previous 'rights based approach', based on individual transferable quotas. The new policy for small-scale fisheries is however yet to be fully implemented.
Senegal Faces Russian Pressures For Access To Fish: Vigilance Is Required
Since 2010, Senegal is under pressure from Russian pelagic trawlers to access Senegal small pelagic fish. These trawlers are allowed to fish in the Morocco, Mauritania and Guinea Bissau but not in Senegal’s EEZ.
Confronted with the reluctance of the Senegalese authorities to negotiate a fisheries agreement with the Russian Federation, Russian shipowners have found the alternative: use a local co-signatory, and sign private protocols with the Ministry granting them fishing rights.
These protocols between Senegal and foreign private companies do not conform to the legislation in force in Senegal, which States that foreign flagged fishing vessels are allowed to operate in the waters under Senegalese jurisdiction either under a fisheries agreement linking Senegal to the flag State, or the organization that represents this State, or when they are chartered by people of Senegalese nationality.
In other words, the law does not authorize the signature of protocols between Senegal and private companies, as was done with Russian trawlers. In addition, none of these protocols has been ratified by the National Assembly and promulgated by the President of the Republic, let alone published in the Official Journal of the Republic of Senegal.
Illegally, the Minister of Maritime economy in function in 2010 therefore granted abusive benefits to Russian pelagic trawlers, including: the non-obligation to embark Senegalese crew, the non-payment of fees dues in respect of the fishing licenses allocated. The shortfall for the State in this regard, for 29 trawlers involved, was almost 9 million CFA francs on basis of annual licenses.
In addition, at a time when the fight against IUU fishing is a priority for many, some of these vessels arrested for fishing in a prohibited area or for having disguised their markings in order not to be identifiable, saw their fines cancelled by the Minister, although the infractions they committed were most serious.
That was the situation prevailing when the new president of the Republic, Mr Macky Sall, was elected, on 25 March 2012. In line with a commitment made during his electoral campaign, he cancelled all licenses issued on an illegal basis to foreign pelagic trawlers.
But the new Minister in charge of fisheries himself never expressed the wish to put an end to the activities of Russian trawlers in Senegalese waters. Already, end April 2012, he stated that fishing authorisations would continue to be given but taking into account the resources and the interests of the State: ' with experts, we will study the number of fishing authorisations to be granted’.
The issue also invited itself at the Council of Ministers’ table in December 2012, during which the President of the Republic 'decided to extend the biological rest for our maritime spaces, by freezing the granting of fishing licenses to foreign vessels, for a period of at least one year’.
In June 2013, at the end of an inter-Ministerial Council on fisheries, the following recommendation was adopted: ‘To maintain the discontinuation of licensing pelagic trawlers until an evaluation of this operation is conducted. In particular, this assessment should identify the impacts of these operations on the biological state of resources and on the budget, as well as on the social climate in the fisheries sector'.
The question arises: is an illegal operation something ‘to assess’ in this way?
Currently, the small pelagic fishing season is beginning. To lift the obstacles for obtaining licenses, the representative of the Federal Russian Agency for Fisheries in Senegal, recalled on a local television program that Russia ‘was waiting for the results of the evaluation announced at the occasion of the Inter-ministerial Council on Fisheries held in June 2013'.
Another question arises: for shared resources like small pelagic, what is the pertinence of an evaluation made on Senegal alone, when scientific assessments concerning the entire stocks of these shared resources are available through the FAO/CECAF working group, which since more than 12 years is following the development of the small pelagic resources at the regional level?
We must remain vigilant and hope that the new Minister appointed last September will take into account the recommendations of this FAO/CECAF working group, composed of the most eminent fisheries biologists from the coastal countries and the countries that fish along the northwest coast of Africa. This working group is constantly reminding, over the last years, that coastal pelagic resources are overexploited and recommends that fishing effort should be reduced by at least 50%.
There is no 'surplus', which can be given and the Russians must be gently but firmly invited to go fish elsewhere.
Dr. Sogui DIOUF
Veterinary