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Frank E. Loy Under Secretary for Global Affairs U.S. Department of State Keynote Address at the Conference on Current Fisheries Issues Co-hosted by the Center for Oceans Law and Policy, University of Virginia School of Law and the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations Rome, Italy, March 16, 2000

(As prepared for delivery)

Let me use as my starting place the proverb of Rome's own great -- Cicero: "It was ordained at the beginning of the world that certain signs should prefigure certain events."

Now, that's a bit portentous and heavy for some after-dinner remarks on fish -- but in fact it applies fully to the discussions here over the past two days: in the oceans, there are worrisome signs that indeed prefigure grave events unless the world's fishing nations join together to prevent them.

I'll talk a bit tonight first about the "worrisome signs"; second, about the "grave events"; but principally about a third topic: the means to prevent such events.

What are the signs?

For centuries, it was presumed that the bounty of the oceans was infinite and inexhaustible. But we've learned that marine resources are not boundless or impervious to our assaults. They are finite. We know that now, although we've been slow to recognize the severity of the problem.

According to one of our hosts here, the FAO, more than two-thirds of the world's fisheries have been fished to or beyond their capacity to sustain themselves. Some stocks have literally collapsed: cod in the Northwest Atlantic, pollock in the Central Bering Sea, Peruvian anchovy in the Eastern Pacific. According to a scientific finding reported last week, North Sea cod stocks are in serious trouble owing to overfishing and warmer water. Some highly migratory species, such as bluefin tuna in the Western Atlantic and swordfish in the North Atlantic, have been significantly overfished as well.

During the '90s, the total catch in fisheries worldwide remained relatively stable or even declined from year to year, an indication that those fisheries are fully exploited, overexploited or depleted. However, to maintain this level of harvest, we have had to fish down the food chain, so to speak. As the more lucrative stocks have become depleted or disappeared, fishers have begun looking for species they once disdained -- monkfish, skate, dogfish.

The reasons for all this are no mystery to anyone here: too many fishers out there chasing too few fish. Making matters worse, they are chasing them with ever more sophisticated boats and equipment. Thanks to this -- and let me stress this -- and to the substantial government subsidies that many fishers continue to receive, our fishing industries have developed a certain ruthless efficiency.

Conflicts at sea have become increasingly common: Russia threatened military action against fishers working an area of the Sea of Okhotsk that is not within Russia's EEZ. Canada seized a Spanish trawler on the high seas, claiming it was interfering with conservation efforts.

Compounding all this is the phenomenon of flags of convenience. It remains much too easy for vessel owners who can't or won't abide by the rules established for a given fishery to evade those rules by registering their vessels with countries that aren't beholden to them. Those vessels can work that fishery with impunity, not bound by any rules on equipment or quotas. This not only damages the resource, it spits in the faces of those countries and fishers who have made real economic sacrifices in order to nurse that fishery back to ecological health.

What events do these signs prefigure?

Nearly 1 billion people depend on fish as their primary source of protein. [note 1] As Myron Nordquist points out, an acre of oceans yields -- or can yield -- much more food than an acre of land. A continued decline in marine fishery resources -- concurrent with continued global population growth -- will inevitably lead to long-term food insecurity.

In its 1998 report on the state of the world's fisheries, the FAO forecast that world demand for seafood in 2010 will be 105-110 million tons, while capture fishery supplies will total only 95-100 million tons -- a 10-million-ton shortfall.

This is a prescription for serious trouble. As fish stocks become depleted, mobile fishing fleets inevitably begin exploring other fisheries. For example, some Spanish fishers have found they can no longer earn a profit in the depleted fisheries of the Northwest Atlantic, so they now, for the first time, bang on the doors of other fisheries, such as those in the Pacific. This will increase pressure on those resources, which to date have been harvested sustainably, but now are beginning to show strain. This is particularly the case with the elevated catches and discards of small fish.

How has the international community responded to date?

Fisheries and marine issues have, thankfully, risen to the upper echelons of the global environmental agenda. The international community has begun to embrace the view that conservation -- and by extension, sustainability -- ought to be the central guiding principle of fisheries management everywhere. Our recent successful conclusion of an agreement with Canada regarding Pacific salmon was possible only because we applied this principle.

We have elaborated worldwide agreements for addressing particular problems -- agreements based on the proposition that conservation should override other considerations. The 1995 UN Straddling Fish Stocks Agreement and the 1993 FAO Compliance Agreement are the most notable examples, but obviously, they will do us little good until we bring them into force. We have begun -- but only begun -- creating a good and widely accepted framework of international law for managing the oceans.

We have also created a system of global and regional institutions for managing marine fisheries, applying some of these international agreements. The Northwest Atlantic Fisheries Organization and the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas are examples.

Unfortunately, though, participation in these institutions has not put a stop to overfishing and the depletion of marine resources.

Why? Too many governments remain indifferent to what has been happening in ocean fisheries, or lack the political will to respond. Others, who do appreciate the urgency of the problem, lack the capacity to formulate or implement the national laws and regulations necessary to deal with the problem.

What are the solutions?

Restoring the health of marine fisheries and finding a way to exploit them sustainably will not be easy. But, generally, we know what needs to be done. Our approach to fisheries management should rest firmly on two fundamental pillars:

The first is a collective and forceful commitment that resource conservation shall be the central driving force of our approach to fisheries management. This implies that the economic interests of fishing States and fishing industries cannot be pursued in a manner that in any way compromises the goals of resource conservation or sustainability.

The second is that we need to act against those malefactors out there who refuse to fish responsibly by hitting them where it hurts: in their pocketbooks.

Let me expand on these two thoughts by offering some specific suggestions for changes -- in four categories: structural, institutional, environmental and enforcement-related.

Structural changes:

Clearly, it is imperative that we cap fishing capacity worldwide, and that we begin to lower capacity in over-exploited fisheries.

How?

First, we need to bring several key international agreements into force. And the Fish Stocks Agreement would be a very good start. Under the agreement, only states that are members of regional organizations, or that agree to obey the rules established by such organizations, will have access to the fisheries resources those organizations control.

Put simply, this means ocean fishing is no longer a free-for-all where a vessel's catch is constrained only by the capacity of its hold.

It's not often that I get to say the United States is a leader in adhering to a multilateral agreement, but that is the case here, so I'm going to take full advantage of it. We have not only signed, but have ratified the Fish Stocks Agreement and we strongly urge those who have not ratified it to do so soon. We're almost there: 26 countries have ratified and only four more are needed for its entry into force.

The same is true of the 1993 FAO Compliance Agreement. The United States has accepted it, but too few other nations have. Bringing that agreement into effect will give us two important tools:

It will impose upon flag states the responsibility for keeping track of and regulating the operations of fishing vessels that fly their flags.

And, it will rectify our current lack of reliable fisheries data by requiring parties to provide to the FAO information about their high seas fishing vessels -- their size, their capacity, and where they fish.

One promising tool is the Vessel Monitoring Systems satellite technology. VMS enables States and fisheries managers to know where individual boats are at any given time, and it enables on-board observers to relay information quickly by satellite. The use of VMS is growing -- in some fisheries, it's already required -- and we ought to do all we can to make it a universally utilized system. This is an achievable goal.

Second, we need to reduce and eventually eliminate those government subsidies of marine fishing fleets that contribute to overcapacity and overfishing. I would point out here out that during my various bilateral and multilateral discussions preceding and at the Seattle WTO Ministerial, addressing fisheries subsidies was one of the few topics on which we were able to make substantial progress -- before the process collapsed.

At the FAO last year, governments reached agreement on the need to eliminate those subsidies. We mustn't lose momentum on this. The key now is to find a way to implement that agreement, using the combined expertise of the FAO, the WTO and other multilateral institutions.

And third, we need to move forward on the FAO Plan of Action on overcapacity and to continue making progress on "Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported," or IUU, fishing problems. Too few states have made any serious effort to put these measures to work and enforce them. Some seem to think that if they ignore the problem, it will just go away on its own.

Institutional changes:

While we probably do not need new fisheries institutions, we do need to make the existing ones more effective. And the FAO, effective though it is, could do more itself. Today, the FAO devotes four percent of its budget to fisheries issues. Without increasing its overall budget, the FAO could increase its funding for fisheries work by 25 percent, simply by reallocating a mere one percent of it. I would suggest such a change is desirable.

There is also a need to examine the policies of the World Bank and other international financial institutions as they apply to the fisheries sector. Though they have made some important policy changes in the last few years, historically, they have been concerned almost exclusively with strengthening economies, and have given inadequate thought to sustainability in fisheries, agriculture, forestry and other industries that exploit natural resources.

The time, I believe, is ripe for the FAO and the World Bank to re-energize their discussions toward identifying sustainable fisheries projects that the Bank could fund on FAO's recommendation.

Environmental changes:

Let me here make three suggestions.

First, again, the hallmark of our approach to fisheries management needs to be that conservation -- and thus, sustainability -- will be our overarching goal. To that end, we must adopt the precautionary approach to fisheries management, as spelled out in the UN Fish Stocks Agreement. It says: "the absence of adequate scientific information should not be used as a reason for postponing or failing to take conservation and management measures."

Second, we must zealously protect resources that are essential to fish reproduction and growth, such as wetlands, coral reefs and other aquatic ecosystems. Coral reefs are among the most productive ecosystems on earth. Yet there loom a number of serious threats to their long-term health and viability -- coastal development, exploitation for commercial gain and bleaching and mortality as a possible result of global climate change.

President Clinton this month set a goal of preserving 20 percent of the coral reefs in U.S. territorial waters by 2010 -- primarily by establishing a series of no-fishing zones so that those areas can have a break from exploitation and start to recover from it. We hope this program will set an example that other coastal countries might follow.

And third, we must reduce the by-catch of marine life unintentionally caught and killed along with target fish. It doesn't require a Ph.D. in fisheries biology to understand how a 20-mile long line with 3,000 baited hooks might snag a lot more marine life than the species the fisherman is looking for. In fact, our National Marine Fisheries Service estimates that about half the marine life caught with long-lines is by-catch and is thrown back into the water, usually dead.

We've made some progress here; we've banned large-scale drift-nets, which brought horrendous by-catch, and our technicians who devise and test fishing gear are developing equipment that will allow for more selective fishing.

Enforcement changes:

Again, we need to improve our efforts at cracking down on the "bad actors" of the fishing community -- those who ignore agreed-upon fishing rules, such as by flying flags of convenience from states that are either unwilling or unable to enforce the rules. In fact, I suggest we collectively resolve here and now to put and end to this insidious practice. For as long it continues, responsible fishing nations have good reason to wonder why they should bother being thoughtful stewards of the oceans.

Regulating a fishery is not an easy job. When, for example, dozens -- perhaps hundreds -- of fishing boats registered with countries that belong to ICCAT re-flag with non-member countries, then go steaming back into that fishery and ignore everything ICCAT has done to try to keep tuna and swordfish stocks from disappearing, it renders ICCAT's hard work almost pointless.

ICCAT and other fisheries organizations have started to crack down on these offenders. For example, Members of ICCAT, NAFO and CCAMLR will not let outlaw vessels land fish in their ports. ICCAT has gone a step further -- its members now impose trade sanctions against countries that allow their vessels to work the North Atlantic swordfish and bluefin tuna fisheries without following the rules.

We should broaden the use of these and other economic tools. We might even go a step further. Under U.S. law, if a foreign-owned boat is caught entering an American port with illegal drugs on board, the U.S. government can seize that boat in addition to prosecuting the owner. Why shouldn't States consider a similar right under international law with regard to outlaw fishing vessels that enter their ports?

Finally, we should work to make the FAO and the International Maritime Organization cooperate more efficiently in dealing with flags of convenience. Both are concerned with the issue, although from different perspectives -- fishing boats in FAO's case and international shipping in the IMO's. These two bodies have a lot to offer each other and we ought to work to see that they can do so.

Conclusion

The bottom line is that all states with a stake in the long-term survival of marine fisheries -- and by extension the marine fishing industry -- need to summon the political will to do what's necessary. The decisions we make in the next few decades will have a profound effect on food security throughout the 21st Century.

Thank you for your thoughtful attention.

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Footnote:

1. UNEP "Global Environmental Outlook 2000"

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