Environment
Illegal fisheries in African high seas will continue

afrol.com, 9 October - Governments from over 40 countries participating in an international conference this week failed to adopt a plan to effectively stop the plundering of ocean resources by pirate fishing vessels - denounced Greenpeace. Several African states observe their fishing resources depleted and tried to address the problem, without achieving support for their proposals. Local fisheries in countries such as the Comoros and Mauritania are already suffering from depleted resources.

Governments met this week to negotiate an international agreement at the United Nations Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO) Conference on "Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported Fisheries (IUU)". The draft agreement had initially contained important proposals to close ports and markets to fleets fishing illegally on the high seas and to penalise companies that own and operate them. Most of these proposals were either rejected or severely weakened. 

Coastal states such as Angola, Mauritania, and Nigeria, had called on governments to agree to market closure and other mechanisms to deter poaching and plundering of marine resources in their national waters, as well as on the high seas, by foreign fleets. These were backed by Norway and the United States. 

In particular, a number of countries led by Mexico and Brazil opposed and ultimately defeated a proposal calling on individual states to adopt laws making it illegal to import or trade in illegally caught fish. "If they cannot even agree that the sale of a product obtained by theft is a crime, then how can we expect the FAO agreement to even begin to address one of the most serious threats to world fisheries", denounced Matthew Gianni, Greenpeace International Oceans Campaigner attending the meeting in Rome. 

Comoros
Illegal fishing contributes highly to deplete local fishery ground, a resource vital to food security in many local societies along Africa's coast. Last week, government officials from the Comoros stated that fishing was becoming difficult because of the disappearance of certain kinds of fish in the nearby seas. Fishermen had to go a long distance to fish, and they still came back with less fish. With the fall in the value of exports and the high price of staple food, almost the entire population was forced to live on a meagre diet. 

Mauritania
Mauritania, also a country highly dependent on its fisheries, has seen its resource base dwindling. Fisheries are one major contributor to the country's exports, and fisheries treaties (mainly with the European Union, EU) give needed cash revenues. Further, many coastal, local societies are heavily dependent on coastal fisheries - also influenced by illegal fishing in addition to the large scale legal high seas fishing by EU vessels. Fish and seafood is a major protein source to the Mauritanian population.

Biodiversity
Illegal fishing is also a major threat to fish and marine biodiversity. The FAO estimates that 60-70% of the world’s major fish stocks are fully exploited or overexploited. Illegal fishing fleets are rampant in the Atlantic Ocean and the waters around Antarctica among other ocean areas. They seriously undermine international efforts to conserve fish stocks and, in the Southern Ocean, are estimated to kill tens of thousands of albatrosses and petrels as 'bycatch' each year. 

Current loopholes in international law allow a fleet of some 1300 large- scale fishing vessels flying "flags of convenience" to avoid international fisheries regulations and plunder the seas at will. According to research conducted by Greenpeace, the majority of the companies that own these vessels are based in Spain, Taiwan, and "flag of convenience" countries such as Panama, Belize and Honduras. 

Source: Based on Greenpeace and UN

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