For decades, regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) have attempted to manage fishing pressure on a range of species across the world’s oceans by establishing rules and regulations for member countries.
Across those decades, RFMOs have established a range of rules governing myriad management issues like the amount of fish that can be caught, the types of gear that can be used, and what level of observation each fishery will be put under. Those rules are the product of years of work, multiple avenues of scientific research, and widespread input from dozens of countries and NGOs.
Pew Charitable Trusts Senior Fisheries Officer Jamie Gibbon told SeafoodSource that agreeing to the establishment of these rules is just the first step; determining who is actually following those rules, and to what extent, is just as important.
That challenge was the central motivator behind Pew’s recently released fisheries compliance review tools.
“It all started with our recognition that this RFMO compliance review process is really important when it comes to international fisheries management because these RFMOs go through a long process of developing management measures, rules, and regulations, but those are only effective if the countries actually comply with them,” Gibbon said. “You can make all the rules in the world, but you need to know what your compliance is before you can say you’re actually making change.”
RFMOs undergo compliance review processes, which essentially boil down to having member countries determine how well their own fishers are following RFMO regulations. While the concept is simple, the practice in actuality is anything but.
“It takes a lot of capacity from the RFMO secretariates, from the compliance committee, and from the members themselves. They need to collect all the data, they need to submit that data, and they then need to sit in a room and review it,” Gibbon said. “What we often heard was that many countries said they didn’t have the capacity to fully effectively engage in these processes, which is understandable.”
While large, wealthy countries like the United States have well-established fishery management practices and the scientific and data-collecting capacity to make compliance with RFMO guidelines easy, smaller, less wealthy countries may not even have domestic fishery management frameworks – let alone the ability to comply with complex requirements.
“Maybe they’re a small country and they only have one person who is doing this for multiple RFMOs. There are countries that are members of a dozen RFMOs,” Gibbon said.
A country being unable to effectively engage in the compliance review process reduces an RFMO's ability to gauge overall compliance, weakening its ability to create adequate management measures that member countries can adhere to.
Gibbon said one of the things Pew found as it investigated the problem is that countries didn’t even know where to start when it came to compliance review processes.
“We heard members say, ‘We don’t have the capacity,’ but that was it. There weren't many more details. I think they didn’t know where they were having issues. They just knew that the process was hard and they weren’t able to effectively engage,” he said.
In response, Pew has created a series of questions and forms that countries can fill out to determine which aspects of the compliance process they are struggling with which they may be able to accomplish.
Gibbon said the assessment was broken down into four main categories: data collection, data submission, data review, and follow-up actions. Using those four pillars, the assessment is broken down into categories that dive into each of those elements.
“Does a country have sufficient personnel to collect data? Do they have the right IT systems to review that data to produce a report and send it to the RFMOs? Do they have enough institutional knowledge or delegation size to effectively participate at the meetings themselves?” Gibbon said.
The assessment has two main parts: a general questionnaire that compiles the information and gives a score for the country and a separate tool that can collect information from separate government agencies and feed into the main tool for a more cohesive assessment.
The tool comes as a PDF that can be downloaded and printed out. It is designed in such a way that all information is kept internally and can be used as any country using it sees fit. Countries could either make the information public and use it to seek additional capacity assistance and funding sources or keep it private and just use it for planning purposes to prioritize areas that need improvement.
Gibbon said the new tool dovetails with the growing push in global seafood markets for greater transparency. Major efforts like the Tuna Transparency Pledge have already garnered signatures from major retailers pledging greater accountability within their supply chains.
“I think there's a lot of talk currently about transparency and traceability within the market, making sure you know where your [seafood] is coming from and where,” Gibbon said. “How does the market feel confident that the seafood they’re buying is coming from a vessel and a country that is complying with the rules?”
Gibbon said it’s impossible for a retailer to check every single piece of seafood it buys for compliance, which is why compliance reviews at the RFMO level are so important to ensure fisheries management is accomplishing the goals it sets out.
“It's helping members themselves more effectively participate in this process, which makes the compliance process stronger and then, ultimately, makes the RFMO and fisheries management stronger,” Gibbon said.
