MARITIME SECURITY ‘GROUND-BREAKING’ PSMA COMES INTO FORCE BY DR. LISA OTTO
An agreement on Port State Measures has recently come to force, to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing (PSMA), championed by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), came into effect with the minimum threshold of adherence having been met. Whilst 29 states, along with the European Union, were initially signatories to the treaty passed originally as a FAO agreement in 2009, the legally binding treaty now comes into force with the 25th country having recently deposited its instruments of adherence. Those having ratified the PSMA are now bound by law to implement measures portside to detect vessels involved in IUU fishing, intercept their catches, and share information about known offenders far and wide.
FAO Director General Jose Graziano da Silva has called this “the dawn of a new era”;
one that should be particularly beneficial to developing countries given the cost-efficacy of implementing measures at port as opposed to having to monitor vast seaspaces, an unrealistic task for many fiscally and capacity challenged countries.
This could be useful for the West African region, for example, where IUU fishing is thought to cost these economies US$1.3 billion per annum, with estimates suggesting that catches may be 40% higher that what is reported. This signals the depletion of a precious resource that could be creating opportunities for local communities, and contributing to food security in this region. Sadly, however, only two countries in West Africa have become party to the agreement, the Gambia, and Gabon (while Guinea Bissau is yet to deposit its ratification), forming part of the group of only six countries of 54 on the African continent that have signed up to this agreement.
In the same vein, only three of the world’s ten largest fish-producing countries are party to the PSMA, the United States of America (USA),
Chile, and Thailand, while China, Peru, India, Indonesia, Japan, Vietnam, and Russia are not. Further, Japan and the USA are also some of the highest net importers globally. These are thus stakeholders whose involvement could provide powerful impetus to shifting the status quo. To make matters worse, many of the countries on this list are ones that struggle the perennial challenges in dealing with IUU fishing and other maritime security challenges, broadly including: extensive coastlines and vast maritime territory that is difficult to monitor and patrol; financial impediments; and a deficit in capacity.
The FAO has called this development ‘groundbreaking’, and whilst the organisation should surely be hailed for the work that it has done to bring the PSMA into effect and to develop the capacity needed to implement the measures it entails, it surely can’t be considered groundbreaking until it begins to generate critical mass. Evidently, more work needs to be done to generate consensus around the need for an agreement on IUU fishing that could bring practical outcomes in making it difficult for illegal fishers to continue to operate.
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July 2016 |
www.dockyard-mag.com | p45
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