These are turbulent times for fishing sectors around the world and the results are being felt by many in many ways. But the economic group that are arguably feeling the stress the most are the fishers who make a living off the ocean.
With environmental pressures to reduce fishing intensity to allow recovery of fish stocks and species that are in danger of depletion. And when you factor in the problems of marine pollution, global warming and illegal fishing by displaced fleets, something apparently needs to be done to secure the resource.
The worldwide fish harvest has reached a plateau over the past five years (at 100-120 million tonnes) it would seem the seas harvest capacity has reached its limit. With fewer fish and as such less income, policymakers have responded to calls from fishers for subsidies and have tried increasing fishing capacity. Rather than implementing a regime that could ultimately and over time solve the problem.
The problem seems to be too few fish for too many fishers. With over 30 million fishers worldwide making a living directly from the sea and another 200 million being dependant on fisheries for related activities or industries, many people would suffer negatively were they to cease fishing.
Still, something has to be done to ensure the sustainability of the resource. It has been proposed this can be done by reforming domestic fisheries, getting excess people out of the industry is key. While the immediate adjustment might hurt most fishing communities, the price of doing nothing is higher in the long run.
Many new legal instruments, guidelines and such have been developed but the political will has not existed to implement them, as doing so would mean less economic returns. One interesting view that exists is that money that has been sent to the fisheries sector through government financial transfers (which from OECD countries totalled $5.5 billion in 1999 alone). Some of that money could be used in part to get people out of the sector by funding programmes to place them in related occupations like coastguard, tourism or recreation.
For developing countries it would be more complicated as some countries lack the resources to develop their own management regime let alone monitor and survey their EEZ’s (owned waters). There may also be no alternative to fishing for their economy. In cases like this it is obvious more developed countries should help and not only in fisheries but in part as a wider development program.
The problems with the world’s fisheries are many, but one thing is certain, countries of the world must take action and cannot stand by as we head further down the road toward a global crisis.
By Matthew Shepard, Marcus Dawe, Lori King and Amanda Calnen.
