Fisheries Management - International Objectives

International Objectives

Fisheries objectives need to be expressed in concrete management rules. In most countries fisheries management rules should be based on the internationally agreed, though non-binding, Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, agreed at a meeting of the U.N.'s Food and Agriculture Organization FAO session in 1995. The precautionary approach it prescribes is typically implemented in concrete management rules as minimum spawning biomass, maximum fishing mortality rates, etc. In 2005 the Fisheries Centre at the University of British Columbia comprehensively reviewed the performance of the world's major fishing nations against the Code.

International agreements are required in order to regulate fisheries in international waters. The desire for agreement on this and other maritime issues led to three conferences on the Law of the Sea, and ultimately to the treaty known as the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS). Concepts such as exclusive economic zones (EEZ, extending 200 nautical miles (370 km) from a nation's coasts) allocate certain sovereign rights and responsibilities for resource management to individual countries.

Other situations need additional intergovernmental coordination. For example, in the Mediterranean Sea and other relatively narrow bodies of water, EEZ of 200 nautical miles (370 km) are irrelevant. International waters beyond 12-nautical-mile (22 km) from shore require explicit agreements.

Straddling fish stocks, which migrate through more than one EEZ also present challenges. Here sovereign responsibility must be agreed with neighbouring coastal states and fishing entities. Usually this is done through the medium of a regional organisation set up for the purpose of coordinating the management of that stock.

UNCLOS does not prescribe precisely how fisheries confined only to international waters should be managed. Several new fisheries (such as high seas bottom trawling fisheries) are not (yet) subject to international agreement across their entire range. In November 2004 the UN General Assembly issued a resolution on Fisheries that prepared for further development of international fisheries management law.