Fisheries leaders in Galicia, Spain, are calling on their industry to be reconsidered as a primary sector, given a new report detailing its dependence on other local industries.
Presenters made their case at a conference in A Coruña organized by the Foundation of Minimum Economic and Social Performance. Carme García Negro, a lecturer at the University of Santiago de Compostela and an expert in Maritime Affairs, showed the results of a university study. "We checked that the fishing activity have technical coefficients higher than 31 percent," said García Negro. This statistic places the fisheries sector at the same level as any other industrial sector.
In relation to the economic and social sustainability, foundation member Torcuato Teixeira said during his speech, "It's necessary to evaluate the social and economic risks in addition to the biological ones. We have to set a threshold for the minimum of the survival of a company."
He also described to SeafoodSource some guidelines that he considers very important. "We should try to give more weight to the social and economic sides of fishery activities in Galicia."
Regarding whether there is equity in the policies of the E.U.'s new common fisheries policy (CFP) in the economic, social and environment sector, Teixeira said: "I don't think so. There is a lot of rhetoric in the E.U. and there are a lot of texts saying the social and economic aspects must be taken into account, but in the end that is not a reality day to day." He was also critical with the current governance model. "We are still doing a management from the top down; the sector wants participative planning."
Mercedes Rodríguez, president of the Producers Organization of Lugo, explained the repercussions of the decisions of fishery policy mostly based on environmental issues. "Obviously, an adoption of decisions of the fishery policy based on environmental issues supposes the removal of ships, and the removal of companies," said Rodríguez.
