Experts gathered in Bali last week to address the growing plight of small scale fishers, who are being excluded from key global markets, as policy makers tighten fisheries regulations in a bid to improve transparency and sustainability.
Hosted by Indonesia based fisheries NGO MDPI with support from the Walton Family Foundation, Wageningen University and USAID Oceans, the thinktank brought together professionals from across the sector.
Small scale fishers are responsible for around 50% of all marine catch – but it is far more difficult for them to tap into international supply chains than big industrial players that are set up to trade and can respond much more easily to the shifting policy landscape. Instead, artisanal catch is usually sold locally and/or provides subsistence for coastal communities.
The issue isn’t about waste, but rather economic exclusion. And ensuring sustainability cascades across the entire fisheries sector. “Most national and international fishery and trade rules are made with the industrial sector in mind,” says Karli Thomas, a consultant with MDPI. “Small scale fisheries are characterized by small vessels operating from the village and providing fish straight onto a family’s table or traded through the local market.”
According to Thomas, a fish is most valuable the moment it is caught. After that, its quality deteriorates as processes like catch method, bleeding, icing and exposure to sunlight take their toll. “One tuna company in the Philippines that exports tuna to Europe estimates just 3% of fish brought to its operation meets export standards,” she says. Export tuna is valued at 250 pesos (£8.30) per kilo whereas tuna sold locally is worth just 80 pesos (£1.20) per kilo – a six-fold loss in value.
For Indonesia, where six million small scale fishers are responsible for as much as 95% of fishery production, the material losses are huge – and they are mostly borne by the fishing communities themselves. Though the productivity of Indonesia’s fisheries has increased under current President Joko Widodo and fisheries minister Susi Pudjiastuti, it’s still a very small percentage of overall GDP, while industrial operators reap the rewards.
Increasing the value of catch should also ease pressures on marine ecosystems, as fishers could catch half as many fish as they do now and still double their incomes. And of course, they’d need to adhere to sustainability regulations.
But what are the practical steps towards connecting millions of unregulated fishers with global markets? According to Thomas, the first step is for researchers to try and figure out the extent of value loss across six to 10 species around the globe. “We’d then launch a platform where fishers, companies and researchers could post data for species from around the world.”
In the short to medium term, the Bali delegates agreed to work with fishing communities to develop a mobile app that would give them greater autonomy by providing simple tools based around financial planning. “Having this information available for fishers and allowing fisher households to plan what to spend their income on [also] has the potential to take pressure off fish resources,” says Momo Kochen, Director of Programmes & Research at MDPI.
On the macro scale, Kochen says there needs to be a paradigm shift in how we view fisheries. “Rather than looking at what is the Maximum Sustainable Yield we should be thinking about the Maximum Economic Benefit,” says Kochen. In other words, it’s not just about how many fish you can catch sustainably, but about maximising the value of the fish that are taken. The starting point is to provide funding to produce a ‘theory of change’ that can be translated into a global investment plan.
As the likes of Facebook and Google scale up efforts to connect the 4 billion humans that still don’t have access to the Internet (by beaming it from the stratosphere via solar powered drones and balloons, respectively) technology could prove to be the big game changer here. But there is a real urgency in taking steps towards empowering the millions of coastal dwellers that rely on small scale fishing as we face the spectre of climate change and the disruption it is going to bring. This Think Tank will hopefully provide a much needed catalyst.
- This article was amended on 31 July 2017. Karli Thomas no longer works for Greenpeace, she is a consultant for MDPI; and the export price for tuna is 250 pesos per kilo, not 550. These have been corrected.
