Based on these somewhat limited responses from the member countries, a number of trends seem to be emerging in addressing fishing capacity and IUU issues in the region and combating IUU fishing.
There is an increase in awareness of, and actions to address, fishing capacity issues by member countries. Nationally coordinated plans for management of fishing capacity have become much more common and, to support these plans, added attention has been paid to the measurement of fishing capacity, particularly in small-scale fisheries. Inland fisheries, however, have not been addressed to any great extent.
While there has been an increase in the use of capacity reduction programmes in small-scale fisheries in countries of the region within the past few years, this has not occurred to the same extent in industrial fisheries. This parallels the increase in activity related to measurement of fishing capacity in small-scale, but not industrial fisheries.
Although there is an increase in awareness of fishing capacity issues and increased attention to developing plans to manage fishing capacity, actual fishing capacity in the largest fisheries of the region has continued to increase within the period 2002-2005, particularly in small-scale fisheries. Over the same time period, there has also been a parallel reduction in landings from the vast majority of these fisheries (see Box 6), which together account for over 80 percent of total landings in the region. Clearly, the impact of capacity reduction programmes undertaken to date has been small when considered in a regional context and countries themselves have seldom reported that these programmes have rarely achieved their original objectives.
Fourthly, there is a clear lack of management tools within many countries of the region to effectively address the management of fishing capacity. Management Plans for specific fisheries that could provide the policy guidance for capacity management are still not in place for all fisheries, although there has been a great improvement since 2002. Data systems are generally not well developed, commonly-used policy tools for managing fishing capacity in the region appear inappropriate and ineffective (see Box 5), licensing and registration systems and other capacity-measuring tools are not developed and MCS capabilities could be improved significantly.
While many of the fishing capacity and IUU issues of the region are demonstrably national issues and lie within the jurisdiction and responsibility of individual states, there is a clear need for regionally coordinated approach, particularly for IUU fishing issues.
A welcome recent development has been the setting up by Australia and Indonesia of a Regional Plan of Action (RPOA) to promote Responsible Fishing Practices including Combating IUU Fishing in the Region.
The RPOA, which is designed to begin a coordinated approach to addressing IUU issues in the region, was agreed to in Bali in May 2007 by the Republic of Indonesia, Australia, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, The Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste and Viet Nam.
Among its various Agreements, the following are key elements of the RPOA:
The RPOA therefore provides a template for addressing the emerging fishing capacity and IUU issues that have been identified above, particularly for the major issues of providing a cooperative regional approach to improving management, MCS and data collection systems. The question for the region is how to extend this template to include other member countries.
One of the key issues for the region in extending the template of the RPOA is the lack of any Regional Fisheries Management Organization that can provide effective coordination of these regional initiatives. While the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) has management responsibility for tuna stocks within its region and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries
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16 Noting recent developments in the FAO to negotiate a binding international agreement on Port State Measures, the Parties to the RPOA agreed to consider the provision of the FAO document once it is completed.
Commission (WCPFC) has responsibility for management of highly migratory species in the western and central Pacific, there is no Regional Fisheries Management Organization with responsibility for management and coordination of fisheries issues that brings together all the countries of the Asia-Pacific region. Since many (if not most) stocks are shared between countries of the region, because national fisheries management practices and capabilities are often not fully effective and because of the major issue of IUU fishing in the region, the establishment of such a management body would likely bring significant benefits.
