Fisheries

2 C hallenges and opportunities in global fisheries

2.1 Challenges Overfishing In the early 1970s, fishing activity expanded, particularly in Asia, but also along the Chilean coast, where large quantities of anchoveta were taken, and along the coast of West Africa. By 2005, there was a contraction of high-value areas. However, there has been a considerable expansion of fisheries into the high seas, most notably in the North Atlantic and South Pacific. The maps in Figure 2 represent the annual landed values of the world’s fisheries by decade from 1950 to 2005. In all six maps, concentrations in catch value can be seen in the productive coastal areas of Europe and Asia, as well as areas characterised by the significant upwelling of nutrient-rich water, such as the western coast of South America.

The spatial expansion of marine fisheries around the world partially masks the extent to which fisheries have been overfished (Swartz et al. 2010). In fact, the FAO believes that only about 25 per cent of the commercial stocks, mostly of low-priced species,

are currently

underexploited, 52 per cent are fully exploited with no further room for expansion, 19 per cent overexploited and 8 per cent depleted (FAO 2009). Studies have estimated that by 2003, some 29 per cent of the world’s marine fisheries had collapsed in the sense that their current catch level was less than one-tenth of the maximum registered catch (Worm 2006). In the business-as-usual (BAU) scenario, as presented in the Modelling chapter, half the amount of fish available in 1970 would be available by 2015 and only one-third in 2050. Practices such as "fishing down marine food web", where species are targeted and fished to depletion from largest to smallest species, can bring about significant changes to the balance of species in the ecosystem (Pauly et al. 1998; Hannesson 2002).

The collapse of cod stocks off Newfoundland in 1992 devastated local

communities and the economic

aftershock is still being felt far beyond Canada’s Atlantic coast. Some 40,000 people lost their jobs, fishing towns shrank in population by up to 20 per cent and the Canadian taxpayer spent billions of dollars dealing with the aftermath of the collapse (Mason 2002; Rice et al. 2003; SCFO 2005). Despite a moratorium on fishing cod since 1992, the stock has failed to rebuild to pre-crash levels (Charles et al. 2009).

Halting the fishing of vulnerable, overexploited species and establishing conditions so that stocks can recover are clearly major challenges that have to be achieved despite demand for fish. Explaining the scale of the issue is a challenge in developed and developing countries and catalysing policy reform is particularly difficult when there are legitimate fears that fish stocks might not recover even if complete bans on fishing in certain areas are enforced.

Subsidies Fisheries subsidies are defined here as financial transfers, direct or indirect, from public entities to the fishing sector, which help the sector make more profit than it would otherwise (Milazzo 1998). Such transfers are often designed to either reduce the costs of fishing or increase revenues. In addition, they may also include indirect payments that benefit fishers, such as management and decommissioning programmes. Subsidies have gained worldwide attention because of their complex role in trade, ecological sustainability and socio-economic development (UNEP 2003; UNEP 2004; 2005; 2011).

It is widely acknowledged that global fisheries are

over-capitalised, resulting in the depletion of fishery resources (Hatcher and Robinson 1999; Munro and Sumaila 2002). There are many reasons for the decline of fishery resources, but the contribution of subsidies to the expansion of capacity and overfishing cannot be over-emphasised (Milazzo 1998; WWF 2001). Global fisheries subsidies have been estimated at US$ 27bn in 2003 (Sumaila et al. 2010). Regional estimates of about US$ 12 billion have been provided for the Asia Pacific Rim (APEC 2000) and around US$ 2.5 billion for the North Atlantic (Munro and Sumaila 2002).

Khan et al. (2006), classified subsidies into three categories labelled “good”, “bad” and “ugly” according to their potential impact on the sustainability of the fishery resource. Good subsidies enhance the conservation of fish stocks through time (for example subsidies that fund effective fisheries management or marine protected areas). Bad subsidies are those that lead to overcapacity and overexploitation, such as fuel subsidies. Ugly subsidies can lead to either the conservation or overfishing of a given fish stock, such as buyback subsidies, which, if not properly designed, can lead to overcapacity (Clark et al. 2005).

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