Recommended Best Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations Chatham House (The Royal Institute of International Affairs) is an independent body which promotes the rigorous study of international questions and does not express opinions of its own. The opinions expressed in this publication are the responsibility of the authors, acting in their personal capacities, and do not necessarily refl ect the views of the various sponsors of this work. The following reports, commissioned by the Panel, are also published by Chatham House: Technical Study No. 1 Regional Fisheries Management Organizations: Progress in Adopting Precautionary Approach and Ecosystem-Based Management Marjorie L. Mooney-Seus and Andrew A. Rosenberg ISBN: 978 1 86203 189 0 Technical Study No. 2 Th e Practice of RFMOs Regarding Non-members Daniel Owen ISBN: 978 1 86203 190 6 Technical Study No. 3 Bioeconomic Modelling Relevant to RFMO Resources Trond Bjørndal ISBN: 1 86203 191 3 In addition Chatham House has published the following briefi ng papers as part of this project, available at www.chathamhouse.org.uk: Managing International Fisheries: Improving Fisheries Governance by Strengthening Regional Fisheries Management Organizations Michael Lodge EEDP BP 07/01 March 2007 Best Practices for High Seas Fisheries Management: Lessons Learned Marjorie L. Mooney-Seus and Andrew A. Rosenberg EEDP BP 07/03 May 2007 Enhancing the Eff ectiveness of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations through Trade and Market Measures Richard Tarasofsky EEDP BP 07/04 May 2007 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 Michael W. Lodge David Anderson Terje Løbach Gordon Munro Keith Sainsbury Anna Willock © The Royal Institute of International Affairs, 2007 The Royal Institute of International Affairs Chatham House 10 St James’s Square London SW1Y 4LE (Charity Registration No. 208223) www.chathamhouse.org.uk All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright holder. Please direct all enquiries to the publishers. ISBN: 978 1 86203 188 3 Executive Summary ISBN 978 1 86203 192 0 (English) ISBN 978 1 86203 193 7 (French) ISBN 978 1 86203 194 4 (Spanish) Typesetting by Koinonia Printed in Great Britain by Latimer Trend and Co Ltd The maps on pages 140–1 were drawn by the Department of Fisheries and Oceans Canada and are reproduced with the kind permission of Her Majesty the Queen in Right of Canada, 2005. This project was funded by: Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Government of Canada, Fisheries and Oceans Canada Ministry of Fisheries, New Zealand United Kingdom Government from the World Summit on Sustainable Development Implementation Fund WWF International Contents Foreword vi Introduction and Overview vii The Independent Panel xii Acknowledgments xv Abbreviations and Acronyms xvi Note on Regional Fisheries Management Organizations xviii 1 The Purpose and Role of RFMOs in the International Governance System 1 2 The Economic Drivers of Cooperation 8 3 Conservation and Management 19 4 The Allocation of Rights 34 5 Compliance and Enforcement 44 6 Flag State Duties and their Enforcement 67 7 Decision-making 70 8 The Settlement of Disputes 78 9 Transparency 84 10 The Special Requirements of Developing States 90 11 Institutional Issues 103 12 Summary of Recommended Best Practices for Regional Fisheries Management Organizations in Relation to the Conservation and Management of Fish Stocks 117 References 129 Appendix 1 Ecosystem-based fi sheries management 133 Appendix 2 Maps of Regional Fisheries Management Organizations 140 Foreword 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. Richard G. Tarasofsky Head, Energy, Environment and Development Programme Chatham House Introduction and Overview The idea of preparing a comprehensive suite of recommended best practices for regional fi sheries management organizations (RFMOs) was fi rst proposed as one of the recommendations of the ministerially-led Task Force on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing on the High Seas (the High Seas Task Force). Although the purpose of the Task Force’s work was to devise a set of practical proposals for tackling the immediate problem of illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fi shing, it very quickly realized that if international actions aimed at curbing IUU fi shing were to achieve their full effect, it would be essential also to improve the effectiveness with which the present system of high seas governance is implemented. A key aspect of this would be to promote and encourage progressive reform of RFMOs so as to ensure that they are fully equipped to carry out the role envisaged for them by international fi shery instruments such as the UN Fish Stocks Agreement and the FAO (UN Food and Agriculture Organization) Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Although a relatively recent phenomenon (the fi rst such regional organizations began to appear in the 1950s), RFMOs are generally acknowledged to play a critical role in the global system of fi sheries governance. In recent years, there has been an increasing recognition of the need for RFMOs to improve their performance in accordance with the demands of strengthened international fi shery instruments aimed at better conservation and management of fi shery resources. Calls for better performance have come from, inter alia, the 2006 United Nations Fish Stocks Review Conference, the FAO Committee on Fisheries, the 2005 St John’s Conference on the Governance of High Seas Fisheries and the High Seas Task Force. The most recent (December 2006) UN General Assembly resolution on sustainable fi sheries urged RFMOs to strengthen their mandates and to modernize their measures for and approaches to fi sheries management; it called upon States to make further efforts to strengthen and enhance cooperation among existing and developing RFMOs.1 The same resolution also called upon States to develop and apply best practice guidelines to RFMOs and to undertake performance reviews of them, based on transparent criteria. This publication is intended to assist and inform States and RFMOs in their efforts to improve RFMO performance by setting out what the Panel collectively views as current ‘best practice’ in the implementation of international fi shery instruments and by clearly delineating the priorities and goals that RFMOs should pursue if they are to meet the core challenges of global fi sheries management. Th e Independent Panel The work that led to this publication was commissioned by a group of stakeholders which had been part of the High Seas Task Force – the governments of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United Kingdom and WWF International.