Examination of Witnesses (Questions 41
- 59)
TUESDAY 22 OCTOBER 2002
DR EUAN
DUNN, MS
LOUISE HEAPS
AND MS
JULIE CATOR
Chairman
41. May I welcome you to the second part of
this morning's meeting. We have from the Royal Society for the
Protection of Birds (RSPB) Dr Euan Dunn, thank you very much,
and from the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) Louise Heaps and Julie
Cator, thank you very much indeed. You have been listening to,
I think, to the evidence which has just been given for you and
I suspect nodding quietly on some of the issues that have been
mentioned. Perhaps we could look first of all for at what we might
call the scope of the reform proposals which are being considered
at the moment. Do the Commission's proposals for reform in your
view go far enough in order to get this through to the sustainable
fisheries we are all looking for? In other words, are the proposals,
even as they are now, going to be enough in your view?
(Ms Cator) Thank you for the invitation
to give evidence this morning. I speak for the WWF. Yes, we are
broadly supportive of the Commission's proposals, many of which
the WWF has advocated in the past during the reform process which
has been going on now for four or five years but we do see them
as the minimum necessary to achieve any significant reform of
how fisheries is managed in Europe and as a way of moving away
from the current dire situation. In particular we welcome the
proposals on multi-annual management plans, as you discussed earlier,
to move away from this year-on-year crisis management towards
a more long-term management of fisheries tailored to specific
needs of the regions and to the stocks. We welcome the reform
of the subsidies regime, in particular the abolition of subsidies
for modernisation, apart from for health and safety reasons, for
building of new of vessels, and for the export of capacity to
third countries or to the high seas. Particularly we welcome,
inside the draft general framework regulation, the move towards
an ecosystem-based management of fisheries. A lot of work still
needs to be done on that but that it is actually in the framework
regulation is important. Finally, we welcome the move to introduce
regional Advisory Councils in the Common Fisheries Policy. However,
if you saw the Roadmap the Commission published in June there
are 13 or so proposals that are going to be published—I
think we have received five so far, a number remain to be published.
Only three of them are going to be legislative proposals. The
rest are going to be in non-binding action plans or strategies,
which in themselves are reasonably important but they need the
political will to make sure they are carried through. Also—it
has not been discussed yet—there are a couple of issues,
one in particular absent so far from the reform process,—and
that is the issue of the EU's external strategy, how EU vessels
operate outside European waters. 50 per cent or so of the fish
we consume in Europe comes from outside our waters, so it is a
significant part of the CFP process, and if we are going to see
a successful reform of the Common Fisheries Policy, we have to
take that into account.
(Dr Dunn) Thank you for inviting the RSPB to give
evidence today. I would broadly concur with my colleague from
WWF. I mean, a lot of the objectives for the Common Fisheries
policy are shared between our two NGOs, so I want to repeat what
Julie said and simply add this: in terms of environmental impact,
quite often we think of the direct mortality impact, the effects
of gears and nets and things, but I think we should not escape
the point that the single greatest relief that you can give to
the environmental pressure at large is the reduction of deployed
fishing effort. That will, across the board, relieve a whole raft
of adverse environmental impacts. I think that is by far the most
important goal of the Common Fisheries Policy reform. I think
it is important, as Julie said, to appreciate that the legislative
framework, just in terms of process, these three legislative documents
are the ones that are going to be concentrated on in the run-up
to Christmas and we expect to see the Common Fisheries Policy
reform process going on well into 2003. The Danish presidency
will not succeed in fulfilling its optimistic task at the beginning
of its presidency of maybe seeing through the whole process. The
legislative framework is going to be the main focus between now
and 31 December. I think the final point I would make in addition
to what Julie said is on environmental action plan. We very much
welcome the commitment to develop an ecosystem approach, but the
environmental action plan does not really at the moment present
a clear strategy for doing that and I think that is something
that is going to take more work.
Diana Organ
42. Obviously you want to see—and it makes
clear sense because of the nature of your organisations—very
much a reduced fishing effort. Because of where you are coming
from, in an ideal world for your organisations, you would want
to see only very small scale low level, low intervention fishing
effort. I mean, fishing effort in the European Union is not like
that at all, it is highly industrialised, highly mechanised, highly
efficient in some respects or inefficient if you consider the
amount of fraud and stuff that is thrown away. But the response
you have made to the Chairman's question is, I would say, an obvious
one. What would you say to my comment that you actually have not
been honest enough, because really what you want to see is a real
radical change to the amount of fishing effort that is carried
out in the EU—because your whole stance is about environment
and fish protection—and you are not too fussed about fishermen's
incomes and fishermen's livelihoods and fishing community. Would
you like to respond to that?
(Dr Dunn) I would sort of backwind a little bit and
say—and we will come on to this later—that we find
that the environment NGOs, and the fishermen, tend to share the
same goals, increasingly so now—much more so than we did
when I started this job many years ago. There has been quite a
revolution, really, a quiet revolution. Part of the problem has
been with the Common Fisheries Policy that it has divorced fish
stocks from the environmental dimensions of fisheries. You used
the word earlier "dysfunctional". That has been the
most dysfunctional perception of the Common Fisheries Policy,
because it separated off the fish stock issues as if they were
not part of the ecosystem. I think that has been totally to the
discredit of the CFP that it has taken that perspective and now
we are beginning to see a conjoining of those two ideas. As Mark
Tasker said, fish stocks are keystone predators. We have never,
ever removed wholesale a whole cohort of the ecosystem before.
You cannot think of fish stocks in one box and the rest of bio-diversity
in another; in other words, we cannot continue to think of the
North Sea and the rest of our community waters as just a production
unit for fish.
43. Would you want to see a moratorium on fishing
certain stocks?
(Dr Dunn) I think we have to wait and see what the
ICES advice is on particular fisheries. I think one of the things
that we have to get away from—and I am not suggesting for
a moment it is being alleged here—is the NGOs have never
sought a ban on fishing . We are not out to see fishing put out
of business. Sustainable fisheries and a sustainable marine ecosystem
has always been the goal of ourselves, as it is now mostly with
fishermen too. So I think there is common ground there.
Mr Mitchell
44. That is the fundamental core problem, is
it not? Can really the CFP deliver both those two objectives,
a sustainable marine environment and a fishing industry? Is it
actually possible for any set of proposals to be able to deliver
that?
(Dr Dunn) I do not want to hog this, but I will just
make one remark.
45. We will ask both of you.
(Dr Dunn) This obviously refers very much to our take
on the ecosystem approach and there is a feeling that the ecosystem
approach has rather come out of the woodwork as a quick fix to
a problem, but it has been around for a long time. As Andrea Carew
would tell you, in America the ecosystem approach has been around
for years and is now very, very well implemented, highly operational
and CCAMLR (the Convention on the Conservation of Antarctic Marine
Living Resources) covers a huge area of ocean, 24 million square
kilometres. CCAMLR has had an ecosystem approach since 1980 and
it is very well developed. It has harvesting rules for all the
target and non-target species. So, yes, to answer your question,
I think other fisheries management systems have already addressed
the entirety of the problem and are doing so with some considerable
success.
(Ms Heaps) Just to reiterate a lot of what Euan said,
WWF is also a sustainable development organisation and our primary
aim is to try to find a balance between the environment, social
and economic issues surrounding the use of our resources. So we
certainly do not have a view on a moratorium on fishing. In terms
of whether the CFP can deliver environment and sustainable fisheries
in the future, the answer to that would be that it absolutely
has to. Fishing and fishermen, we want to see them here in the
future. We think that the social aspects of fishing communities
around the UK and in the EU are absolutely imperative, are vital.
We think they are very important and we absolutely have to see
a Common Fisheries Policy that takes into consideration both,
but, in order to deliver that and to sustain viable fishing communities
in the future, you have to have a healthy environment and maintain
the integrity of that environment. So you have to consider all
the components of the ecosystem, including the fishing industry.
You cannot just separate the two. That is the whole point of this
ecosystem-based approach. Within that, we have to think about
new ways forward. The CFP, as it stands at the moment, will not
deliver that, no, and that is why we need this radical reform
and we have to think about new ways of managing our fisheries.
This would include more adaptive management mechanisms. So actually
taking the information, anecdotal information and scientific information,
and using it on a timely basis to respond to what is happening
in the environment at that time, thereby putting management mechanisms
in place on a timely basis.
Mr Mitchell
46. The ecosystem approach which has been enunciated
by yourselves and other organisations sounds quite promising.
Why is the reaction so cautious? Is it because it is new, or because
it is not quite clear what it involves, or what?
(Ms Heaps) I would say that there is a general lack
of understanding, not only from industry's perspective but possibly
also from scientists in some ways of what an ecosystem-based approach
actually is. I think you have to unravel it and simplify it and
start with some very basic, fundamental criteria of what we want
to achieve in the long term and how we can go about achieving
that. One of the ways in which we can do that is to start to consider
some of the by-catch species that we already know we catch and
that we know something about and we can start managing those with
a longer term view. We need also, as I say, to take a more adaptive
approach to the way we manage our ecosystems, getting the industry
involved in that management, making the log books better, getting
scientists actually to take information, more targeted information,
that we need. It is really looking at the whole system and the
information we already have, the information we are going to need
in the future, and putting some money behind that and making sure
that we have good management mechanisms that are appropriate to
the region that we are managing. We really do endorse a regionalised
management system.
47. We are getting into complex areas, are we
not? Dr Dunn mentioned the Americans were better, but, on the
other hand, there is a huge oil industry interest involved in
the ecosystem. There are big dredging operations and all that.
We are moving into a very complex area, are we not, where there
are strong vested interests.
(Dr Dunn) Yes. The European Union has a strong parallel
process to try and make a stab at integrating all human impacts
on Community waters through its developing marine strategy.
48. What you said about the CFP also applies
to the CAP and policies for the production, which depends upon
the relationship to the environment—or did not, until now.
(Dr Dunn) Yes. I agree with you, obviously there is
a whole raft of potential factors that could be affecting fish
stocks and environment change, all of the things which have been
alluded to earlier, but over-fishing emerges as the single most
potent threat to fish stocks, so what we have to do is to address
that. In answer to your original question, why has there been
resistance to an ecosystem approach, I think there are a couple
of points worth bearing in mind. One of them is that there is
a misconception amongst some that it implies managing the ecosystem
and that is clearly well beyond our capacity, just as it is going
to be a difficult thing to integrate all these different activities
you mention. We cannot play God, and if we do try to play God
with the ecosystem I am sure our failure will cascade through
it without a shadow of a doubt. All we can hope to do is to manage
the human impact and to manage the human impact of fishing on
the ecosystem is the primary goal. I think the second way of answer
your question as to why there is resistance to it, I think the
fishermen, quite understandably, are scared of further regulation.
They feel themselves, as you have said so many times yourself,
absolutely laden down with regulation and they do not want to
see any more. I can only then go back to the point that my colleague
made, that this in the end is an issue of sustainable development.
It is an issue where the fish stocks are part of the ecosystem
and the fishermen have to grasp the idea that the conserving of
fish stocks is part of conserving an ecosystem.
49. They are going to say that the whole weight
presses on them and there is the oil industry and the extraction
industry to be taken into account as well and the sanctions need
to be uniform, across the board, for other people who are damaging
the sustainable environment.
(Dr Dunn) Yes, the EU is recognising this. It has
a thematic marine strategy which is going to start looking at
these cross-cutting issues. It is, as you say, a multi-faceted
problem. But I would return to the point that if we can relieve
the fish stocks and the wider marine environment of over-fishing,
then we will have struck a huge blow for the restoration of the
ecosystem and that is the primary goal of CFP reform, I believe.
50. You say it is beyond the ability of anyone
to play God. It is certainly beyond the capacity of parliamentary
committees, but I want to play devil's advocate for a minute and
ask a question of the World Wildlife Fund. I think the effort
you have put into consultation with fishermen is commendable,
and their cooperation has been very successful, and I welcome
it, but, just to play devil's advocate, what representation did
they make to you on, for instance, seal culls as a threat to the
fish stocks, which are perhaps not as great as the fishing industry
but still considerable?
(Ms Heaps) Not surprisingly that is one particular
issue we try not to get too involved in because at the moment
the most important thing is setting the framework in place for
the Common Fisheries Policy. The industry approached us because
they wanted to talk about the common goals that we have. We work
very, very well together in trying to develop a joint approach
to how we want to see fishing in the future and how the industry
should be managed in the future. That has been done through a
series of participatory meetings. We are now setting up a project
called Invest in Fish, which is about what sort of management
measures we need to put in place and what the cost of that would
be on a regional basis in the future. In terms of seal culling
we are going to have discussions about that with the industry,
I am not prepared to discuss it now.
51. I ask out of interest. Let us move on to
effort reduction which you seem to agree is the key to reducing
the impact of fishing on the stocks. What scale of effort limitations
are you thinking of and how is that going to be achieved?
(Dr Dunn) I think it is useful to go back a few years
to the mid 90s when a very erudite committee, the Lassen Committee,
was asked to make a report for the Multi Annual Guidance Programme
number 4, which is the one now just coming to an end. The Lassen
Committee recommended a deployed fleet capacity with cuts off
40 per cent. It is worth remembering that this figure was so diluted
by the Council of Fisheries ministers that in the end we ended
up with an operational cut of 2 per cent to 3 per cent. The most
shaming thing for the whole process was that the Multi Annual
Guidance Programme number 4 targets, which were meant to run for
five years, were reached by the end of the first year of the plan.
In other words, it was a completely useless exercise and, of course,
it reflects back to your final question in the last session, the
political will was simply not there. I can only endorse what my
colleague from JNCC said, that across the board it is well recognised
that a 40 per cent cut in the European fleet are the kind of cuts
that will be required to restore the balance between fishing pressures
and the available resources. It is very, very difficult to get
away from that. Certain fisheries are obviously much more seriously
affected than others, beam trawling is very heavy still in the
central and southern North Sea, pelagic fisheries to the north
of the North Sea are in much better shape, so it is difficult
to be too prescriptive and it would a take a long time to divvy
them out. As a ballpark figure we are looking at something like
40 per cent. It is a figure that has never been countermanded
by any of the assessments that the Lassen Committee did. One last
point, the Lassen Committee appealed to the Member States to give
them data on this wonderful phrase the "technological creep
of the fleet" which is the way the fleet is increasing technical
efficiency to catch fish and undermines the rate at which you
remove capacity from the system, so you are running at a standstill.
None of the Member States came forward with data on technological
creep. The Lassen Committee's Report, to some extent, was made
more difficult by that. The technological progress has been continued
to be the bane of attempts to work out what at any particular
point in time should be the effort cut.
52. That technological process is used to increase
productivity, you also see technological changes used to minimise
environmental impact, benign technological changes as well as
malign technological changes.
(Dr Dunn) Even there it is interesting that in the
CFP reforms the Commission will accede to modernisation for vessel
safety. If you put a shelter deck on a boat it keeps the fishermen
from getting stung by the salt sea—as my grandfather used
to tell me, he was a fisherman—but as soon as you put in
those measures you can go into rougher weather and the fishermen
will always take the same risk. You have to be very careful about
what modernisation means, even under the guise of health and safety
it can often turn a vessel into a more efficient fishing machine.
53. You cannot stand against health and safety.
The question really was, are there benign technological improvements
which will minimise the impact on the environment by increasing
different methods of fishing?
(Dr Dunn) Absolutely. It is one of the more welcome
proposals in the Common Fisheries Policy reforms that there will
be proposed incentives to make small-scale coastal inshore fishing
environmentally friendly, it will lessen the impact on sensitive
sea bed habitats. There are all kinds of upsides to that as well.
Chairman
54. Do you want to comment on the technological
side?
(Ms Heaps) I would absolutely agree with that. I actually
sit on the FIFG Structural Fund Committee and there is definitely
a move within the United Kingdom government to start supporting
more of these—environmental incentives to move the industry
towards more sustainable fishing practices, which we would fully
support. We want to support it at a broader EU level as well.
In terms of effort limitation I agree with everything that Euan
has said. I also think that it is important to say that WWF feel
it is not for the NGOs to make a decision about whether the fleet
should consist of lots of small vessels or two or three large
vessels, that is something that has to be done at an industry
level. We feel the effort limitation should be looked at on a
regional basis so that you are making those decisions based on
the resources in that region, and the habitat and the environmental
characteristics of that region and the types of gear that you
use. All of those technical measures should be specific to that
region.
(Dr Dunn) I would just add to that that I agree with
Louise that it is not for the NGOs to say what sort of fleet we
have. It is an interesting debate, whether you get the same amount
of fishing effort out of a lot of small vessels or a super fleet
of a few big vessels. I think it is very important to bear in
mind that the dependency, the livelihoods of remote fishing communities
do depend on those small vessels, so we cannot promote a North
Sea run by six `Atlantic dawns', which might succeed in the grand
scheme of things, but would, of course, hugely disadvantage the
remote fishing communities of Ullapool, Whitby, if they have any
boats, and so on and so forth.
Diana Organ
55. You both broadly agree to the idea of a
40 per cent cut in fishing, I just wondered is that at all deliverable?
How do you go to the fishermen of Galicia and say, four out of
ten of you or we are only going to have four big ships coming
out of Grimsby or Shetland, and you talked about Ullapool, is
that really deliverable? We talked earlier about the political
will of ministers with the Common Fisheries Policy to do some
real progress on having sustainable fisheries for the future,
that is one thing, given the technological advances we now have
is the 40 per cent reduction of fishing effort really deliverable?
(Dr Dunn) I have a couple of things to say there.
The first thing is that you mentioned going to Galicia.
56. I just took that as an example because I
spent my summer holiday there and every second person seemed to
be fishing.
(Dr Dunn) A lot of Mediterranean countries, Greece,
Italy and Portugal have fleets of which 90 per cent of the fleet
vessels and under 12 metres. And as we heard these southern Member
States get most of the structural funds, so they will say, "what
is going to happen to our small fishermen if you take away these
subsidies?" The fact is, and it is not so widely known, these
fishermen do not benefit from structural funds to the extent that
we think, the government do not pass it on to them. It is a false
argument that these countries are pleading for their small fishermen
because they are not as helpful to them as one would like. The
bulk of the structural funding of the southern Member States goes
to the big offshore trawlers, and that is a fact. I think the
second point to make is that we are not going to see in the delivery
of the CFP a wholesale 40 per cent cut. The whole thing is going
to be driven, as we heard, by multi annual management plans. The
nice thing about multi annual management plans is they start with
an assessment of each stock and based on that there will be some
deliberation on how many boats can fish, for how long, where and
with what gear. That is how you will mediate the reductions. It
may average out at 40 per cent but to me it seems an easier argument
to deliver to the fishing industry to do it that way than to say
bluntly 40 per cent of you can pack your bags and take up football,
or whatever.
Mr Borrow
57. Can I move to regional advisory committees.
I am interested in your organisation's perception of the advantages
and disadvantages and how we could ensure you were not simply
a talking shop or if you were a talking shop is that an advantage?
(Ms Heaps) We advocate regional advisory committees.
One of the outcomes is to start this stage of the consultation
process on a regional level and to really see whether that actually
works. I think when these regional advisory committees come into
play it will be useful to pilot them initially to identify what
process is needed, who should be involved with the council and
of work it up slowly initially in a pilot way. WWF are doing that.
The government are also doing so the through the Irish Sea pilot
study. I see this as the only way forward for the future management
of the European fisheries. True real stakeholder participation
involvement, getting scientists and fishermen and NGOs and all
of the relevant bodies together and talking together about how
they should manage their own resources so that you have a real
engagement with what is involved with managing that fishery and
understanding why fishing-free zones, for example, might be a
useful method for managing the fishery or why other technical
measures should be taken on board.
(Dr Dunn) I agree with all of that. Perhaps I can
just add a couple of things. I think that in terms of developing
an ecosystem approach I feel that regional advisory committees
are a prerequisite for the successful delivery of an ecosystem
approach. We have to begin to disaggregate the community waters
into areas which have ecosystem relevance. We have heard from
JNCC there is a very valuable pilot study going on in the Irish
Sea, that would be seen as a regional sea. I think the second
thing to say, and it reflects back to a question from Diana Organ
to the JNCC, is there a danger they will become a bureaucracy,
this is why RSPB feels at least in the first instance regional
advisory committees should be advisory rather than have executive
decision- making powers. It may be that there is an incremental
move towards a greater involvement in the decision-making process
but as with all of these committees see how they work, iron out
the problems, make sure they do not become talking shops and when
they prove themselves they earn the right to have a greater say
in the executive process. I feel that that is the prototype we
would like to see, it is the one, incidentally, which again has
been replicated in other parts of the world. We have very valuable
precedents here, in Canada there are regional fishery management
committees and similarly in other parts of the world, in Australia.
We are not starting to go where no one has gone before, we have
help here.
Diana Organ
58. In your comment about setting it up, see
if it works, if it does prove itself you then sort of left it
hanging in the air, are you then saying ideally your organisation
would wish it to move on from being advisory, that it moves more
like the ones in Canada, where it has a little bit more executive
power. Is that what you want to see developing forward?
(Dr Dunn) In Canada I understand they do have an advisory
function rather than an executive function. I think it is an interrelated
process. I think the Fishermens' Organisations themselves, as
you will probably hear, also feel it is an evolutionary process.
I think people are happy to walk before they can run with this.
Mr Borrow
59. I am interested in how we can ensure that
the fishing community itself has some ownership or feels that
it is a genuine partner in the process. If the regional advisory
committees remain advisory rather than have executive powers the
key thing is whether or not participants in that advisory council
feel that the recommendations that they make and the views they
come to collectively actually make a difference, otherwise people
who do not participate in organisations do not have an influence
on the executive decision. I would be interested in your argument
as to how we ensure that that happens and that the fishing organisations
themselves feel it is a genuine process rather than a charade
that is gone through simply to make them feel nice? Again, is
it going to be people behind closed doors making decisions?
(Ms Heaps) When setting up any new structure there
is going to be some concern about it. Over the last 10 years or
so WWF and scientists and fishermen have started to talk to each
other more and more. We are starting to work more together and
to develop ideas together and to come to common agendas together.
This has been very clear to me, particularly over the last two
or three years in the United Kingdom where we really do want to
see this reform process happening. In terms of the regional advisory
committees I think that most of the industry that I have talked
to have also said that they see them as being initially a sort
of piloting or advisory role. I think just sitting down and talking
with the industry, with the other important people on these committees
and making decisions about what level of advice they want to be
involved in and this process of becoming more of a decision-making
body is a good idea. Those regional advisory committees and lobbying
organisations should move that agenda forward, as they appear
to be, in the most appropriate way. That decision would have to
be made. It will be a process rather than making that decision
now. We just do not know. We think it is the better way to go,
it appears to be the better way to go. The stakeholder participation
that we have been going through within WWF is really working and
that feels that like the best way we can manage our fisheries
in the future. As I say, it is the process but as long as everyone
is involved in regional advisory committees and understands that
it is a process then we can move to make that an actual decision
making body over time. Whether you want to target the time and
say in five years' time I do not know, I do not have a view on
that. I really do think that over time we should be moving towards
becoming more decision making bodies from a WWF perspective.
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