A Brand New Task Force To Fight Illegal Fishing

A Report for BBC World Service "Calling the Falklands" by Jenny Hargreaves (JH) 12/12/03

Sitting here in London, it’s hardly for me to tell you that illegal fishing in the Southern Ocean is a very serious problem, indeed. And, it’s already lead to a serious decline in the number of Patagonian Toothfish. What could be done to curb this threat? Various agreements have been signed over the last few years but success is still far away. Now, there’s a real glimmer of hope on the horizon. Five Maritime Countries, Australia, Britain, Chile, Namibia and New Zealand have got together to launch a top-level task force to tackle illegal fishing. This is the first initiative of its kind. It will be lead by Britain’s Minister of State for the Environment, Eliot Morley. The aim is to draw together all the different initiatives taken so far and generate the political will to tackle the issue head on. Amongst those involved is Simon Upton (SU), Former New Zealand Environment Minister. When I spoke to him on the phone earlier today, I asked him how widespread illegal fishing really is.

SU: The honest answer is that it’s an unknown percentage of an ill-defined resource. The reason I say that is that most of what we know about the world’s fisheries is known about the fisheries within the Economic Exclusion Zones of Countries. The further out to sea you go, the less you know because no one owns the high seas. All we know is that in those bits of the world which are trying to be managed by regional fisheries organisations, it appears to be big. For instance, in the Southern Oceans, which are under the management of CCAMLR, there are places where it is estimated stocks of fish have collapsed by anything up to 90%. That doesn’t all happen from legal fishing.

JH: Indeed. Now, do we have a clear idea of who is doing this illegal fishing?

JH: You have put your finger on the big problem there, which is flags of convenience. And, not actually knowing, in the final analysis, who actually owns these boats. What can be done about this very knotty problem?

SU: This is the crux of the issue and it goes back to the Law of the Sea. The Law of the Sea governs what happens on the high seas. The Law of the Sea was negotiated in 1982. What it says is that if you are flying a flag, then the only country that can enforce any international law which you may be breaching is the country that gave you the flag. So, if you fly a British Flag, only the British Government can call you to order. The problem with that, of course, is that it effectively creates little pockets of moving sovereignty around the world. And, if your particular flag state doesn’t take too much interest in what you do, you have effectively, immunity. Now, the only real way you could guaranty to control this would be to change the Law of the Sea. And that would be to say that you don’t have to be the flag state, other states could intervene. Many flag states are extremely wary of that and I can’t see that happening in a hurry. What we have been doing over the last 10 years is papering the walls with other treaties, which try to make it harder, try to extend the regional organisations. But at the end of the day, the honest answer is that if a country hasn’t signed one of these treaties then what the fishing boat does is not illegal. It remains legal in terms of international law.

JH: So, what new ideas have people come up with to break this deadlock because it seems that illegal fishing is actually on the increase.

SU: All sorts of ideas and we don’t necessarily have to solve the Flag of Convenience problem to tackle it. One thing countries can do is to deny access to boats which fly the flags of countries that don’t do the job. Or, if they do come into port, to impound what are called Port State Measures. Another thing countries can do is to ban the importation of fish which has been illegally caught and, in the Southern Oceans,, again, CCAMLR has set up a scheme where-by only legally fished Toothfish, for instance, identified with a mark, can go into some of the richest countries in the world. Now, these things aren’t absolutely water-tight because you can always find a market that isn’t part of the scheme, or a country which won’t close its ports. But through international pressure, you can make it progressively harder and harder for the stuff to find a market.

JH: This all sounds very encouraging. And, with the creation of this ministerial task force, where are you going from here? What’s the next initiative?

SU: I wouldn’t, at this stage, say it’s necessarily encouraging. There’s lots of ideas but there are so many holes and gaps in the system. And, the level of engagement of countries is so different that we really have a very, very long way to go. What this task force is about is trying to get some political leadership behind some of the hopeful solutions. One of the criticisms people have made over the last 10 years is there doesn’t seem to be enough political will. There’s all the treaties in the world, it comes down to enforcement. So, what we’ve got here are a group of countries whose citizens have said that they will take the lead politically and want to make progress and that they are going to say what they think should be done and they are going to advocate for it. I wouldn’t for a minute suggest that this task force will solve the problem but certainly it will provide a very high level of political focus on the problem and hopefully these Ministers will be able to persuade some of their colleagues to join them.

JH: Do you have a kind of time-table?

SU: The aim is to be quite quick about this. We don’t want to re-invent the wheel. We are not going to do a big round of Naval Gazing. We want to pull together all of the threads in the space of about 18 to 24 months and give the Ministers who have set this task force up the best information in the world to tell them what you would do next if you wanted to make a difference. As I said before, there is no shortage of proposed solutions but the real question is, which ones would get you the furthest. What are the key points of leverage. And, they may not all be about negotiating another treaty. For my part, I think we have done quite enough of that. We actually have to do some other things.

(100X Transcription Service)