Recommended Best Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations: Report of an independent panel to develop a model for improved governance by Regional Fisheries Management Organizations.

Abstract

One of the great innovations of the UN Fish Stocks Agreement of 1995 was to place regional fi sheries management organizations (RFMOs) at the heart of international fi sheries management. It was hoped that a multilateral set of rules which created a stronger legal basis for RFMOs to manage the stocks in their jurisdictions, even vis-à-vis non-member countries, would rescue the bulk of the world’s fi sheries from the tragedy of the commons. However, the reality has been different: high seas fi sheries have continued to decline. The FAO’s recently released State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2006 reveals a stark picture: more than two-thirds of high seas fi sh stocks are either depleted or at high risk of collapse, especially the straddling stocks that move between national maritime waters and the high seas. RFMO performance has not lived up to expectation. The FAO publication went on to say that ‘strengthening RFMOs in order to conserve and manage fi sh stocks more effectively remains the major challenge facing international fi sheries governance’. This is not just a scientifi c fi nding, but also a political one. As Michael Lodge notes in the introduction to this report, various UN bodies, including the General Assembly, have identifi ed RFMO governance as needing improvement. This has created the space in which a robust debate on how to reform RFMOs can take place. This expert panel is an effort by Chatham House’s Energy, Environment and Development Programme (EEDP) to contribute a response to this challenge. For us, the opportunity to host this important panel was very welcome. Not only does this fi t well with our wide portfolio of projects on international governance of environment and development. But it also resonated well with the growing amount of work we have recently begun on fi sheries: a new series of stakeholder information meetings and a new website – www.illegal-fi shing.info. More broadly, the panel’s approach of identifying best practices within RFMOs, combined with considering how external drivers from other regimes interface with RFMOs, is very much in line with how Chatham House approaches similar issues. By offering this report by leading experts, and the related technical papers, we hope that the debate on reforming RFMOs will move swiftly from discussion to action. I would like to register my thanks to a number of people. First, our Associate Fellow Michael Lodge has expertly anchored and steered this project. Without him this report would not have been completed as quickly or to such a high standard. Secondly, I am grateful to the panel members themselves for being such enthusiastic and generous participants in this process. Thirdly, thanks to Blaise Kuemlangan for his very helpful peer review. Margaret May and Gemma Green at Chatham House have been instrumental in pulling the many strands together in order to produce this report and the associated technical studies. Finally, the fi nancial support of the contributing governments, especially the government of the United Kingdom, is gratefully acknowledged. In this connection, I am also thankful to the OECD Roundtable on Sustainable Development for housing Michael Lodge during the course of this project.