Africa to Use Satellites to Reduce Illegal Fishing
On Friday, July 27, Ivory Coast Fisheries Minister Alphone Douati announced at the three-day-long meeting of the Ministerial Conference on Fishing Resources Cooperation among African States Bordering the Atlantic Ocean (Comhafat) that African countries with Atlantic coasts will use satellites to reduce illegal fishing. Apparently, the World Bank, the African Development Bank, and the European Union itself are interested in funding the US$ 20.5-27 million project. Fatima Zahra Rahmani will be managing the project for Comhafat, which has decided to use Collecte Localisation Satellite (CLS) for the project’s technical needs.
It is estimated that sub-Saharan Africa loses as much as US$1 billion yearly from illegal poaching. The fish poaching problem is best summarized by a CLS press release: “Tuna and tuna-like resources are either fully or over-exploited (annual captures of 1.5 million tonnes with associated value of €3 billion), with foreign fishing nations as the predominant actors. IUU (Illegal, Unregulated and Unreported) fishing accounts is for approximately 10% of large pelagic captures (tuna and tuna-like fish species).”
A World Bank report, an integrated safeguards data sheet on the West Africa Regional Fisheries Project, updated on June 27, 2007, states that one of the components for increasing the “overall wealth generated by the exploitation of the marine fisheries resources of West Africa” is reducing IUU fishing. The report declares: “This component would support the means to reduce the illegal fishing activities threatening the sustainable management of the marine fish resources. More specifically, the component would strengthen the monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) systems in each country and their adaptation to the needs of a regionally-coordinated approach.” This “regionally-coordinated approach” is exactly what Comhafat has in mind.
However, in a speech, “Combatting IUU Fishing in West Africa -- a Regional Approach,” to the European Parliament hearing on IUU fishing in February of this year, Austin Joko Jones claimed that there are many different factors hindering West Africa’s fight against IUU fishing. Some of these factors include lack of political interest, political instability, and lack of resources. Hopefully, Comhafat’s new project will overcome all of these issues. It seems as though the lack of political interest has already been somewhat overcome, as those at the Comhafat meeting also decided to pass new regulations to decrease poaching, including creating no-fishing zones, regulating fishing net size, and delineating certain fishing time periods.
Austin Joko Jones entire speech can be read at http://www.illegal-fishing.info/uploads/austin_joko_jones_speech_IUU_WAfrica.pdf.