Memorandum submitted by the Royal Society
for the Protection of Birds (K6)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
1. Fishing is the single most influential
activity on marine ecosystems, and fishing activity has caused
considerable changes in the structure and function of these ecosystems,
including fundamental shifts in the balance of seabird populations.
2. This year's reform of the Common Fisheries
Policy may be the last chance to restore the balance in European
Community waters between fish stocks, fishing effort and the marine
environment.
3. Significant and permanent reduction of
fishing effort is the single greatest improvement in the Common
Fisheries Policy that would help lessen a wide range of direct
and indirect environmental impacts, as well as taking the heat
off Europe's over-exploited fish stocks.
4. The RSPB welcomes the broad thrust of
the European Commission's proposals for Common Fisheries Policy
reform. In particular we support proposals to reduce fleet capacity
and effort, abolish public subsidies for building and modernising
vessels, re-direct funds towards scrapping vessels and social
support, and develop an ecosystem approach to fisheries management.
5. The weak status afforded to environmental
integration within the Common Fisheries Policy reform proposals
is disappointing. The measures are proposed in a non-binding Communication
which confers weaker status than a legally-binding Regulation.
6. We have actively advocated extension
of Member State control of fishing activities of all vessels out
to 12 nautical miles (ie extending the current regime from six
to 12 nautical miles).
7. The RSPB is concerned that the complex
linkage between industrial fisheries, wild capture fisheries and
aquaculture/mariculture is not fully appreciated in the reform
proposals.
8. The RSPB regrets that the first objective
of the Commission's Action Plan on illegal, unreported and unregulated
(IUU) fishing is merely "to discourage" (rather than
prevent) Member States from flagging their vessels to States with
proven weak control of such fishing.
INTRODUCTION
1. The RSPB works for the conservation of
wild birds and their environment. We are Europe's largest wildlife
conservation charity with over one million members. We manage
one of the largest conservation estates in the UK, totalling more
than 100,000 hectares.
2. Fishing is widely regarded as the single
most influential human activity on marine ecosystems. This year's
reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) may be the last chance
to restore the balance in European Community waters between fish
stocks, fishing effort and the marine environment. Failure to
act decisively now will accelerate collapse of fish stocks, degradation
of marine ecosystems, and decline of the sector, with no guarantee
of recovery.
3. The UK is internationally important for
its populations of breeding seabirds, and a number of the RSPB's
reserves are of major importance for their seabird colonies. Seabirds
are affected by fishing both directly (ie mortality, for example
as a result of longline fishing) and indirectly (through alterations
in the food chain, for example by discarding and industrial fishing).
Some impacts on seabirds, such as longline by-catch, call for
specific remedial measures. But common to all impacts is the prime
burden imposed by overfishing: significant and permanent reduction
of fishing effort is the single greatest improvement in the CFP
that would help lessen a wide range of direct and indirect environmental
impacts.
THE PROCESS
OF REFORM
4. Following the European Commission's first
package of CFP reform proposals, the Danish Presidency has set
itself an ambitious agenda. However, from the reactions of Member
States so far, it will clearly be difficult to reach agreement
this year without significant compromise. The "Friends of
Fishing" coalition (Spain, Portugal, France, Ireland, Italy
and Greece) is opposed to multi-annual plans, fleet capacity reduction
and removal of subsidies. Belgium and the Netherlands also appear
to be shifting towards that coalition but most of the northern
Member States (UK, Denmark, Germany, Sweden, Finland) generally
support the Commission's proposals.
5. Negotiations in the Fisheries Council
are due to commence on October 14. Meanwhile, the Commission is
preparing the next round of proposals, including a Mediterranean
action plan and a Communication on improving scientific and technical
advice.
THE COMMISSION'S
REFORM PROPOSALS
6. In general, while the RSPB has specific
concerns about the detail of the Commission's proposals, we welcome
the broad thrust of the following:
— multi-annual plans as a measure for
balancing effort and resources;
— reducing fleet capacity and effort;
— abolition of public subsidies for
building and modernising vessels;
— re-directing funds for scrapping
vessels and for social support;
— commitment to develop an ecosystem
approach to fisheries management;
— greater stakeholder participation
through Regional Advisory Councils;
— maintenance of access restrictions;
— Member State control of all vessels
in its waters up to 12 nautical miles.
THE ROAD
MAP AND
THE FRAMEWORK
REGULATION
7. Compared with the current CFP, the proposed
new Regulation is much more explicit about environmental protection.
Critically, it requires exploitation to be compatible with "sustainable
development", a linkage lacking in Regulation 3760/92. It
commits to measures for limiting the environmental impact of fishing,
including incentives for more selective fishing.
8. The Green Paper recognised that a "lack
of precision" in the CFP's objectives had been one of its
major problems. The RSPB welcomes the prioritisation of the precautionary
principle and an ecosystem-based approach in Article 2(1) of the
proposed framework Regulation and urges retention of this text.
9. Multi-annual management plans, effort
reduction and removal of subsidies: The Commission proposes that
multi-annual management plans will in future drive fleet capacity
reductions. Based on stock assessments, these plans will specify
how many vessels may fish for how many days, where and with what
kind of gear. In other words, fixing fishing effort will be at
the heart of future policy. This is a welcome broadening of the
CFP's management tools from the purely output controls of the
existing total allowable catches regime. In addition, such long-term
planning shifts greater influence to the Commission while moving
away from annual and politically-charged quota-setting by the
Fisheries Council. The Commission anticipates reductions of effort
by up to 60 per cent on the most depleted stocks, such as cod.
Fishermen will be allowed fewer days at sea to fish such stocks,
and the more fishermen have to share days at sea, the less profitable
the fishery becomes. By this pressure, the Commission anticipates
that market forces will ultimately adjust fishing effort to fish
stocks.
10. Given the proposed flexibility to achieve
effort reduction through decommissioning or tie-up schemes, the
RSPB favours the decommissioning option. Not only will it generally
be more viable to scrap vessels than to keep them tied up at port
and face demands for compensation, but experience shows that fleets
generally respond to loss of fishing opportunities by increasing
efficiency when they are allowed to operate at sea, thus undermining
the intention of effort control. In addition, discretion between
Member States on how effort control is exerted is bound to lead
to tie-up schemes being applied unevenly across the EU, inviting
the usual claims of discrimination.
11. The RSPB supports the logic that significant
and permanent reduction of fleet capacity will improve the viability
of those vessels remaining in the fishery. The removal of subsidies
can only assist this. Each subsidised fishing vessel reduces the
productivity and profitability of every other vessel in the fishery
concerned. Subsidised and unsubsidised vessels share the same
fishing grounds and markets, so competition is distorted.
12. While it is argued by the southern Member
States in particular that loss of public aid will disadvantage
their large fleet of small coastal vessels, it is important to
note that this fleet segment has benefited little in the past
from structural funds. Around 90 per cent of Portuguese fishing
vessels, for example, are small (less than 12 metres) and their
fishermen generally have not benefited from public aid for new
build or vessel modernisation. Potentially, the Commission's plan
to redirect these funds as socio-economic aid could be more beneficial
than it seems.
13. Access restrictions. Given that the
access restriction proposed in the framework Regulation is a derogation
from open access, it is important that Council gives high priority
to reinstating the restriction by the end of 2002. The RSPB also
sees a strong case for placing the access restriction on a permanent
footing. As argued in the BirdLife International report (2000)
Managing EC Inshore Fisheries: Time for Change, this would
provide the basis for a more strategic approach to inshore management,
benefiting the sector and the environment.
14. Extending Member State control. From
the start of the CFP reform process, the RSPB has actively advocated
extension of Member State control of fishing activities of all
vessels out to 12 nautical miles (ie extending the current regime
from six to 12 nautical miles). The Commission's proposal for
this change would set the scene for more coherent, environmentally-sensitive
management of inshore waters (see Managing EC Inshore Fisheries:
Time for Change). An obvious example of this is the potential
to create a level playing field for fisheries measures out to
12 nautical miles and thus facilitate management schemes for Natura
2000 sites.
15. Regional Advisory Councils (RACs). The
proposal to set up RACs to give a much-needed voice to fisheries
stakeholders is welcome. The RSPB supports the view that, initially
at least, RACs should be advisory and not have executive decision-making
powers. Nevertheless, these Councils must carry due weight in
decision-making over fisheries management. We consider that the
remit of RACs needs clarifying if they are not to be just another
talking shop.
16. International fisheries. The Roadmap
(p 17) argues that "access to the waters of third countries
will be limited to surplus stocks as defined by UNCLOS (Article
62)." The Commission is aware that a "surplus"
is not always clearly demonstrated and lack of a surplus clearly
acts against the EU's economic interests. However, as in the case
of the Mauritanian cephalopod fishery, it can be even more damaging
to the livelihoods of the coastal community and markets in third
country waters if an EU fisheries agreement is struck on the basis
of a surplus which is small or non-existent. This demands a precautionary
approach to stock assessment and the need to give priority to
the sustainability of the third country fisheries and their dependent
local communities.
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
ACTION PLAN
17. The RSPB greatly welcomes the intention
behind the `Action Plan to integrate environmental protection
requirements into the Common Fisheries Policy' and the deadlines
it sets in the Annex, including the proposal to "Implement
Community Action Plans to . . . protect seabirds in the context
of the FAO International Plans of Action—Propose legislation
before end of 2003".
18. However, we are concerned that the Action
Plan will not deliver the wider commitment to an ecosystem approach
for the following reasons:
(i) the measures are proposed in a non-binding
Communication which confers weaker status;
(ii) it does not present a clear strategy
for progressive implementation of an ecosystem-based approach,
eg there is no focus on the supporting research and development
required. An objective needs to be included in the Action Plan
to define, understand, research and implement an ecosystem-based
approach to fisheries management;
(iii) the Annex, unlike the Illegal, Unreported
and Unregulated Action Plan, lacks specific objectives. Nor is
the Annex sufficiently coherent with other EU targets, eg with
the EU Sustainable Development Strategy "to protect and restore
habitats and natural systems and halt the loss of biodiversity
by 2010";
(iv) lack of any requirement for Environmental
Impact Assessment (EIA) or Strategic Environmental Assessment
(SEA) of existing or new fisheries. This serious omission explains
why the CFP response to environmental damage is always reactive
(eg to cetacean by-catch in pair-trawls or to seabird by-catch
on longlines) rather than proactive. Such firefighting is at odds
with a systematic "ecosystem approach".
19. The lack of requirement for environmental
assessments raises other issues. For example, the proposal (COM
(2002) 187) for amending the Regulation on structural assistance
to the sector specifies that "support for measures to assist
small-scale coastal fishing should be granted on condition that
such measures do not increase fishing effort in fragile coastal
marine ecosystems, or that they help to reduce the impact of towed
gear on the flora and fauna of the seabed". This raises questions
about how Member States, without a mandate on Environmental Impact
Assessment from the CFP, are to monitor the environmental impacts
of small-scale fishing, and deploy structural funds accordingly.
20. Such assessment is a logical locus for
the forthcoming proposal of an Action Plan for the improvement
of scientific advice for fisheries management which, as the Roadmap
points out, will call for the collection of data on environmental
impacts.
INDUSTRIAL FISHERIES
21. The RSPB welcomes the proposal (Roadmap)
to invite the International Council for Exploration of the Sea
(ICES) to conduct a study into the impact of industrial fishing
on marine ecosystems. However, we are concerned that the complex
linkage between industrial fisheries, wild capture fisheries and
aquaculture/mariculture is not fully appreciated and will be omitted
from the equation.
22. Industrial fisheries—especially
for sandeels, the single biggest fishery in the North Sea—provide
one of the main sources of food for farmed fish in aquaculture,
but commercial species for human consumption, such as cod and
mackerel, also eat significant quantities of these industrial
species, as do many seabirds. A recent paper in an ICES journal
concludes that "a future recovery of mackerel or gadoid stocks
would be likely to severely compete with sandeel-dependent wildlife,
as well as threatening the sustainability of the present industrial
fishery". The RSPB considers it important to prioritise the
sandeel dependency of human consumption fisheries and wildlife.
23. To add to this complexity, it takes
about three tonnes of sandeels to make one tonne of pellets for
feeding farmed fish so the anticipated growth in aquaculture may
threaten the sustainability of sandeel stocks and the food chain
they support. The RSPB believes the ICES remit needs to be comprehensive
enough to capture all these aspects.
ILLEGAL, UNREPORTED
AND UNREGULATED
(IUU) FISHING
24. The RSPB regrets that the first objective
of the Commission's Action Plan is merely "to discourage"
(rather than prevent) Member States from flagging their vessels
to States with proven weak control of IUU fishing.
25. We particularly welcome the proposal
to ban Member States chartering vessels involved in IUU fishing,
and to ban trade in IUU products. However, we believe that "involved
in fishing" should be clarified to include any support activity
for IUU fishing, such as trans-shipping, fuel supply etc. In doing
this, the EU would significantly strengthen its existing commitment
to the FAO International Plan of Action on IUU which failed consistently
to extend its scope to combat the involvement of such support
vessels.
26. We support the proposal to make any
IUU-related business an infringement. It is not clear, however,
what sanctions should follow. This is significant, as those negotiating
the FAO Action Plan in Rome 2001 rejected text requiring severe
sanctions against trade in IUU fish, leaving measures amounting
to no more than a slap on the wrist. The reformed CFP should remedy
this failure as far as Community waters are concerned.
STRATEGY FOR
AQUACULTURE
27. As wild capture fisheries decline globally,
aquaculture is seen as the breadbasket of the future. According
to the FAO's The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2000,
aquaculture will dominate fish supplies by 2030 such that less
than half the fish consumed is likely to originate in capture
fisheries. In keeping with this, the Commission's broad strategy
objective is clearly to promote further development of aquaculture
across Europe, envisaging a 15 per cent increase of 10,000 new
jobs in the sector by 2008.
28. A major element not specifically flagged
up in the strategy is the Accession countries in which freshwater
aquaculture is already highly developed. Here there are serious
environmental problems, particularly from intensification. In
this regard, the proposals on Extensive fish culture (p 20) are
especially relevant. Critical to extensification will be direct
support, whether through rural development or the Financial Instrument
for Fisheries Guidance, marketing initiatives and eco-labelling.
Incentives such as agri-environment-type schemes should also be
explored.
29. In addition to the one described on
linkage with industrial fisheries, the RSPB has the following
specific concerns about the strategy:
(i) there is no real assessment of whether
our coastal waters have the "carrying capacity" for
the anticipated increase in production and whether the environment
can accommodate it;
(ii) there is lack of precaution towards
the development and farming of so-called "new" fish
species which could have environmental costs; introduction of
new species is addressed only in the context of operational management
implications;
(iii) there is insufficient strategic linkage
with wild capture fisheries, eg potential for competition between
wild-caught and farmed products is not addressed.
27 September 2002
| 
