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The First World Summit on Fisheries Sustainability, supported by the Spanish Ministry of the Environment and Marine and Rural Affairs in collaboration with FAO, will be celebrated coinciding with the World Fishing Exhibition. Grimur Valdimarsson, Director of the Fish Products and Industry Division of FAO, explains his point of view about sustainability, how to reach it and which the keys for the management of fisheries are.
As you know, the first World Summit on Fisheries Sustainability, supported by FAO, will be held in parallel to WFE. In your opinion, what does sustainability mean? Do you think that fishermen understand this concept?
From the biology side, it simply means that no more fish be taken from the seas than the ecosystem can produce on an ongoing basis. From the human side, it means that these limited fish should be caught in a way that is commercially viable for businesses and socially viable for fishing communities. It means that the fishery should be managed in such a way that we can continue fishing year after year without exhausting the resources, damaging the ecosystem in other ways and without extensive external support. I think that fishermen understand this very well. However, we all have bills to pay at the end of the month and as the Economist said recently: “Despite their salty independence, even fishermen respond to market incentives.” There is nothing wrong with that – most people do. Unfortunately, we are slowly, and may I say painfully, learning that the single most important issue threatening sustainability is that most fisheries management systems cause the fishers to compete against each other for the fish. Each of them knows that if they don’t catch it someone else might. This, however, has nothing to do with a lack of knowledge or understanding of the issues but with the fundamentally flawed incentive systems that most fisheries systems have – with obvious consequences.
What do you think about this initiative?
Vigo is one of the most important fisheries centres in the world, and the Exhibition attracts the professionals who have made a career from fisheries. I do hope that they will attend the Summit, as we need good dialogue among the industry on how to deal with the difficult problems the sector is facing. These problems will not go away and have to be dealt with. In recent years the sector’s problems have been widely discussed by just about everyone but the industry itself. Moreover, far more energy has been spent on the symptoms of the wrong incentive structure rather than their underlying causes. It is time that those who are trying to make a living from fisheries take a much bigger part in working out practical solutions to these problems. I can only agree with Alfonso Paz Andrade when he wrote recently in this magazine that “The fishing industry today more than ever needs a completely new approach and strategy.” Therefore, I hope that the Summit will set in motion a new bold process to address the problems.
When we talk about sustainability, we do it with a triple approach: biological, economical and social sustainability. Is it possible to balance these three pillars?
Biological sustainability is the starting point for all successful fisheries. However, I sense that the focus on biological sustainability may have distracted attention from the more fundamental questions I mentioned earlier, i.e., what set of circumstances make fishermen behave properly. It is now acknowledged that in fisheries management we can only hope to be able to affect the behaviour of the fishers. Ecosystems and the interactions within them are simply too complicated to be fully understood and managed as such. Yet, that approach is very pervasive and leads to arrays of technical solutions to problems that the correct incentive structures would effectively address.
As for economic sustainability, it is sometimes forgotten that captured fish are in direct competition with other foods in the marketplace. At the extremes, the choice between “super-efficient” fisheries, with few big vessels and big nets, versus many small-scale vessels with hooks and lines, is of course a political balancing act. Yet, it is good to remember that bigger boats do not necessarily mean more economical ones. To resolve such questions each country must have in place good and inclusive dialogue, in which the fishing sector is directly involved. We all want sound economic retribution for our work, but the possibilities of solving inefficiency problems with taxpayer’s money are becoming more and more difficult in light of international agreements.
As for social sustainability – as I said before, we all want to make a decent living. We also deeply dislike when the social fabric collapses, e.g. because of serious overfishing with the resulting loss of jobs. On the other hand, the world changes and moves on, and like other sectors, so must the fisheries sector. So to answer your question, the three aspects of sustainability are entwined. They can indeed be balanced, but only through well-formulated political processes in which all the stakeholders participate and collaborate.
Agents agree on the need for improving the management of fisheries. Taking into account that we have been managing most of the fisheries in the world for years and that we need to improve, what do you think the key point is? Why is it so difficult to manage them?
Indeed a good question. It is now a well established and well publicised fact that too many fish are being taken from the oceans. The management systems that we have chosen do not limit catches successfully, as I mentioned before. This holds true even if we count only those 2/3 of FAO member countries that have some fisheries management mechanisms in place (1/3 of them state that “they have no management plans in place”). Most management plans in use are crude, “top-down” command-and-control systems that have a proven record of failure in many countries and in many different sectors of the economy. They induce competitive and wasteful fishing and do not create reasons for fishermen to bother with the concept of “stewardship.” It is becoming increasingly clear that for such stewardship to be established and for effective management mechanisms to prevent overfishing, fishermen must have legally recognised fishing rights. That, however, is a politically delicate process, as it means giving valuable rights to the various stakeholders involved. Also, it requires a fairly solid societal infrastructure in terms of access to information and transparent processes.
In a recent article in the Journal of Science an analysis indicated that rights-based fisheries were 50% less likely to collapse biologically than fisheries managed by other means. The short answer to your question is that fisheries are difficult to manage because under most management schemes today every fisher is “for himself” and every fisher has a vested interest in giving as little information as possible about what he/she is doing. That leads to a “race for the fish” and poor data on what is actually happening in the fishery.
In your opinion, which are the keys to fishery management? The responsibility of the parties? Achieving a higher definition of our objectives? Exercising more control? Obtaining more reliable data, etc.?
I believe that there is a general consensus now on what constitutes a good fishery: taking precautions based on good science; active management of targeted catch, bycatch and incidental catches of sea birds, turtles, marine mammals, etc; and securing recognised fishing rights for the participants - in general, an ecosystem approach to fisheries management which requires good records to be maintained on the production process we call fishing operations. This would be in line with Quality Management Practices, now fully adopted in manufacturing and food processing, including fish processing. The very slow uptake of these approaches in fishing operations is a testament to the wrong incentive structures that exist in fisheries management. The well-known slogan in Process Management applies here: “If you cannot measure it, you cannot control it.” Any successful fishery management regime should eliminate competition for the fish so that the biological data from every fishing trip and every landing can be shared and used to take sound management decisions. This will lead to internal controls – each actor watching the others – with verification by official parties if necessary and to effectively apprehend violators.
Do you think that the main parties should become more important in fisheries management to achieve “appropriate management?”
Effective and responsible fisheries will not be achieved, in my view, unless all parties, including government agencies, individual private fishing operators, and their associations, collaborate fully. Fortunately we have more and more examples of this happening within capture fisheries, success stories that FAO has been keeping track of in recent years. One could also point to the successes of this approach, which one can call private-public partnerships, in other sectors, e.g. in food processing, as relates to health and safety management where private companies and government agencies collaborate. In this respect fish processing actually led the way in adopting the HACCP approach early on, resulting in much safer products and lowering the cost of compliance.
The Johannesburg Summit established the year 2015 as the limit to restore fisheries. Do you think that we have enough time to reach this ambitious goal, and if so, how?
I think it has been evident for many years now that the call for “the restoration of depleted fisheries no later than 2015” is not achievable within that timeframe and in light of the flawed management structures common to fisheries. Yet, there are positive developments taking place within the sector in many places. There will be no quick fixes, and the sector itself has to fully participate and collaborate in finding a way forward so that fisheries can be at peace with society.
