Some 150 stakeholders, civil servants, scientists and politicians listened, learned and debated regionalisation – one of the perhaps most popular, but complex aspects of the upcoming CFP reform.
The high-level conference, organised by FISH, Pew Environment Group and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a joint OCEAN2012 and WWF event, in order to explore different possible paths for regionalisation under the future Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). It was hosted by the Committee of the Regions close to the EU Parliament.
The purpose of the conference was to provide examples from different geographical levels and regions, in order to provide ideas, inform and stimulate further discussion, hopefully enabling stakeholders to reflect on these aspects in their response to the consultation on the Green Paper later this year.
“We believe that much can be learnt from examples both outside and within the EU”, WWF and OCEAN2012 said.
And even though a representative of Iceland’s small-scale sector observed “as an outsider” that the current CFP was in “about the same state as the Icelandic bank system”, and simply “should be scrapped”, there was a general consensus that regionalisation, whatever that might imply, indeed was a way forward.
The first session focused on what could be learned from the American experience, where a formal regionalisation of fisheries management has been in place for several decades now and a high-level process to formulate a new national ocean policy is underway. The US fisheries, the management of which is often seen as more successful than the EU, are managed by eight Regional Councils, working at the coastal state level.
Laura Cantral, a senior staff member with the Meridian Institute, but with earlier government experience from both the federal level in Washington and the state level in Florida, gave the general picture, and Lee Crockett, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Federal Fisheries Policy unit described to the conference how the US regionalisation process has worked.
The program shocker may have been the presentation by Paul Parker from Massachusetts, a Cape Cod fisherman/conservationist who vividly described how the fisheries management system in his region, under a system of tradeable rights and effort-control (days-at-sea) had failed dramatically and almost destroyed the fabric of local fishing communities. Today, he is working for The Cape Cod Community Trust, a new consortium formed by the local fishermen. It has bought up some of the tradable rights and now leases that back to its members on an annual and affordable basis. They also meet about once a week to discuss and agree on management measures for their stocks.
Next on the program were three examples of regionalisation at a more local scale within the EU:
• Simon Woodsworth spoke on the Languedoc-Roussilion Regional Council on the French Mediterranean coast.
• António Garcia Allut of the University of La Coruña spoke on work with local fisheries in the important north-western Spanish province of Galicia.
• Andrew Brown spoke about the recent Scottish government initiative to set up Inshore Fisheries Groups (IFGs) and run what they call a Conservation Credits scheme.
The last session of presentations focused on initiatives on the international level trying to embrace both environmental protection and fisheries management. Katarzyna Kaminska, a chief expert on resource management in the Polish Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development and co-chair of the Helsinki Commission’s (HELCOM) Fisheries/Environmental Forum, described their work with fisheries from an ecosystem perspective in implementation of the Baltic Sea Action Plan (BSAP). She was followed by Stephan Lutter from WWF, who provided an insight into the more large-scale North Atlantic cooperation under Convention for the Protection of the marine Environment of the North-East Atlantic (OSPAR) and North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC).
The day’s discussions where then launched with three scientists airing thoughts and opinions from the perspectives of the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the North Sea, respectively: Ramon Franquesa, a professor at Barcelona University; Henrik Österblom, a scientist at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and David Symes, Reader Emeritus at the University of Hull, and currently a member of the Scottish Government’s inquiry into the future of fisheries management.
Most of the discussions then centred around issues such as possible structures, participation/representation, level of integration of environmental concerns, as well as the limitations of the very specific legal and political context of the EU. The last word was given to David Symes, who used it for a short and telling summary:
“A system with different solutions for different regions – or ONE system for ALL regions? That, to me, is a very crucial question.”
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OCEAN2012 is an alliance of organisations dedicated to transforming European fisheries policy – for more information:http://www.ocean2012.eu/OCEAN2012