Posted
on 03 July 2009 - While encouraged by these
plans, WWF is hoping the outcome will not
mirror the result of the first meeting of
tuna RFMOs in Kobe, Japan in 2007 - which
produced a Plan of Action followed by little
action.
“Governments have set
the right agenda at this meeting but workshops
are not going to bring tuna back from the
brink.” said Miguel Jorge, Marine Director
at WWF International. “Talk is cheap, what
we need is action right away.”
WWF warned the meeting
that simply capping fishing capacity at
current levels would not be an adequate
response to the issue of too many tuna boats
chasing too few tuna worldwide.
“Fishing capacity has
to be reduced to a level set by scientific
advice and adherence to the precautionary
principle,” Jorge said. “It is vital also
that reductions in capacity should not become
a cover for freezing coastal and island
developing states out of a fairer share
of their own fisheries.”
WWF proposed to the
meeting that the capacity issue should be
addressed following discussions around fair
allocation of the resource with particular
attention being paid to the aspirations
of coastal and island developing states.
The conservation organization
also cautioned coastal and island developing
states against using this process as carte
blanche to ignore the realities of a limited,
and in many cases severely depleted global
resource.
Principles for determining
allocations which give a high priority to
conservation need to be developed and debated
and agreed upon with the utmost urgency.
WWF also supports the
initiative presented by the International
Seafood Sustainability Foundation (ISSF)
to hold a workshop involving industry, RFMO
national and other interested scientists
to assess the impacts of purse seine fishing
on juvenile tunas and non-target species,
and determine best practices to reduce the
impact of tuna fishing on the marine environment.
WWF is calling on tuna
fishing nations not to wait for the results
of additional workshops to reducing the
number of vessels chasing tuna.
“The best available
science already tells us that there are
too many boats. Nations can stop building
new boats and start scrapping vessels now.”
Jorge said.
Most of these nations
will be meeting again very soon at the annual
meetings of individual RFMOs, and fair and
equitable allocation of the tuna resource
between developed and developing nations
must be the highest priority.
