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Speaking Notes
The Technical Briefing on the St. John’s Conference The Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the United Nations Fish Agreement – Moving from Words to Action
Mr. David Bevan, Assistant Deputy Minister
Fisheries and Aquaculture Management
Fisheries and Oceans Canada
CHECK UPON DELIVERY
We’re less than two weeks away from the conference on the Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the United Nations Fish Agreement in St. John’s, Newfoundland and Labrador. We’ve called this technical briefing today to provide you with some information about the objectives of the conference and expected outcomes – in addition to the details about who is planning to attend and how the program is set out.
Some members of the media are quite engaged on the issue of overfishing and international fisheries governance – but others may require more information about the state of global fisheries and why there is an urgent need for international action to address the immediate issues of non-compliant fishing behaviour and illegal fishing on the high seas – and to take steps to improve the current international fisheries governance regime. I will therefore provide a quick snapshot of this problem and our strategy to address it – in addition to explaining how the St. John’s Conference fits into this strategy.
Participants
Canada’s Fisheries and Oceans Minister, Geoff Regan will welcome an estimated 300 delegates from 48 countries around the world to St. John’s and to Canada on May 1st.
To date, we have confirmation that 18 Ministers will be participating in the ministerial round table that will be chaired by Minister Regan.
These Ministers represent both coastal and flag States; coastal nations with ocean borders like Canada and flag nations that may not border fishing areas where their fleets fish. Participating delegations also represent a good cross section of world economies – from G8 countries to small island developing States. Ministers include those from Australia; the European Union; the United States; Mexico, Brazil and Chile; Iceland, Norway and Denmark; South Africa and Morocco; Trinidad and Tobago; Japan, India, and Indonesia; both the Solomon Island and the Marshall Islands; and Papua New Guinea.
Representatives from six, UN-accredited international NGOs will also participate in the Conference: World Wildlife Fund International; Greenpeace International; Oceana; the World Conservation Union; Natural Resources Defense Council; and Conservation International. Some delegations will also include representatives from their NGOs, including Canada.
Lastly, academic representatives are participating. We’ve confirmed attendance by academics involved in this issue from Memorial University in St. John’s, the Dalhousie University in Halifax, and the University of Victoria in British Columbia.
Process
Minister Regan will open the Conference on Monday, May 1st with a keynote speech prior to the start of the ministerial round table and the presentation of papers for the Conference sessions.
There are joint chairs for this conference – Art May of Canada and Hasjim Djalal of Indonesia. Mr. May has long been involved in issues surrounding the fishery. He worked as a fisheries biologist for 15 years, doing research in the North Atlantic from Newfoundland to Greenland and has served as Deputy Minister of Fisheries and Oceans. He was the first Chairman of the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization (NAFO) and the first Canadian Commissioner of the Canada/U.S. Pacific Salmon Commission. Ambassador Djalal teaches International Law and Relations at Padjadjaran University in Bandung and at the National Defense Institute in Jakarta, and lectures at other universities in Indonesia. A past President of the International Seabed Authority (ISBA), he has written several books and numerous articles on the UN Law of the Sea and regional issues.
We’ve included a media program that details the daily events that are open to the media throughout the week – so I’m only going to touch on the process for the St. John’s Conference and what’s taking place from day to day.
The Conference begins with a one-day ministerial round table. While that private session is going on, conference participants will be presented with five papers that were commissioned to provide guidance to the five conference workshops. The round table will result in a Ministerial Declaration that will be presented to all conference participants near the end of the day on May 2nd. In this way, the Ministers will provide guidance to the delegations in their deliberations throughout the week, and as they seek commitments for specific actions to make progress on the issues.
There will be one and a half days of workshops (May 3rd and 4th) on specific themes which touch on various aspects of international fisheries governance:
Ecosystems-Based Considerations in Fisheries Management;
Compliance and Enforcement;
Decision-Making Processes of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations;
Balancing Fishing Capacity and Fishing Aspirations; and
Addressing New Areas and Gaps.
The remaining one and half days (May 4th and 5th) will be closed sessions of the plenary to discuss and review specific actions and commitments identified for implementation by participating countries.
Purpose
Why is Canada hosting this Conference? Well, the answer is simple although the issue is quite complex: we have a problem – the world has a problem – and that problem is global overfishing, which is essentially about depleting fish stocks.
And, overfishing is occurring around the world. Fish stocks are being harvested at exploitation levels beyond the rate at which these stocks can replenish. The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization estimates that 52 per cent of the world’s marine fishery resources are fully exploited and another 24 per cent are overexploited.
Fully exploited means that a stock is being fished at maximum sustainable yield, which is not intended to be the target amount of fish to catch – it is supposed to be the limit not to reach and for which steps should be put in place to avoid reaching. This is in fact what we call using the "precautionary approach" – leaving a buffer between the maximum catch and what is actually caught. So in essence, providing you statistics from the FAO that 52 per cent of the world’s fishery resources are fully exploited and another 24 per cent are overexploited means that three-quarters of global fish stocks are being overfished.
And, these figures do not factor data from Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing – or I-U-U fishing as these activities are commonly called – which is estimated to be about 30 per cent of the world’s total catch, and which, more often than not, takes place on the high seas – in international waters – away from the enforcement measures put in place in domestic waters of the world’s coastal States.
Fisheries subsidies are another cause for the ongoing decline of many commercial species. Clearly, government programs that encourage the building and operations of too many fishing vessels must be eliminated. And, while member countries of the World Trade Organization are now working toward reducing capacity, the flag States of the world must be willing to adapt to make changes.
The trouble with overfishing and illegal fishing in international waters is that fish stocks recognize no territorial boundaries. And, many commercially important fish stocks ‘straddle’ or ‘migrate’ inside and outside the 200-mile zones of coastal States – sometimes involving a number of these States.
In Canada, this problem is most prominent on the Nose and Tail of the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, which are some of the most productive fishing grounds in the world– and which rest just outside our 200-mile limit.
Strengthening International Fisheries Governance
A key element of the long-term solution to this global problem entails the modernization of international oceans and fisheries governance on the high seas around the world – including the way regional fisheries management organizations manage these fish stocks.
Another element is to move towards mandates of regional fisheries management organizations that incorporate the principles and rules of international agreements, such as the United Nations Fish Agreement and other international treaties, to make their functions more effective.
But, first we must create the conditions for change by building domestic and international public and political support. This entails generating the political will and resources to implement existing commitments and tools and working to fill key scientific, legal and policy knowledge gaps.
And, this is essentially what the Conference in St. John’s is all about. We’re bringing together a great number of fishing nations from around the world to launch an international process that will lead to strengthened high seas governance and improved fisheries management in regional fisheries management organizations.
Participants will discuss the existing international framework for governing high seas fisheries to identify both the impediments to implementing existing commitments for high seas fisheries governance – and the new areas this governance regime should now address.
They will also work to agree to specific actions for addressing these challenges.
And, we expect that the St. John’s Conference will launch an international process that – over time – leads to strengthened regional governance and updated high seas fisheries management.
We’ve already been working hard to gain support and momentum for this process through the launch of a new federal strategy in May, 2004 to combat global overfishing and improve international fisheries governance.
This process has been led by Prime Minister Paul Martin. He has been a strong advocate for addressing overfishing at the highest levels of government – and has pushed this agenda during meetings with numerous foreign counterparts including the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Britain, the Presidents of both Russia and France – and other EU countries, such as Spain and Portugal – as well as the leaders of Japan and India, to name but a few, and in his address to the United Nations General Assembly last September.
Minister Regan has been equally engaged in diplomatic and advocacy activities to create the conditions for change. He joined the ministerial High Seas Task Force on IUU fishing, for instance, that is focused on six priority areas to prevent and reduce IUU fishing, and to ensure that these recommendations are implemented at the national, regional and global levels. Over the past year, he has also travelled to a number of fishing nations to discuss this problem – and to find ways to make changes now.
Diplomacy and advocacy activities are an important part of Canada’s strategy for a number of reasons – but most importantly, they are helping to create the necessary conditions for change in order for international fisheries governance to be improved.
During the past 15 years, the international community has developed a series of legally binding and voluntary agreements meant to provide the tools to tackle overfishing and other irresponsible fishing practices.
Canada has led in the development of some, like the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and the UN Fish Agreement, which is the current driving force for protecting straddling and highly migratory fish stocks. However, implementation of these instruments has been a slow process. And, with a lack of political will in some quarters to use these tools – there has been little change in the overfishing problem worldwide.
We are looking forward to addressing these issues and to working with the St. John’s Conference delegates to continue to push this process along. Because in addition to global commitment, we need to get started on those actions that will lead to meaningful change in how "we" as high seas fish managers, do what we do.
Because of course, the purpose in all of this is to revive and then operate sustainable fisheries the world over.
