Addressing Illegal Unreported And Unregulated Fishing

Analyses the concept of illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing and the international instruments which provide the legal and policy framework to combat IUU fishing. Palma, Tsamenyi and Edeson, University of Wollongong, Australia.

The Magnuson-Stevens Fishery Conservation and Management Reauthorization Act (MSRA) was adopted by the U.S. Congress and signed into law by the U.S. President in January 2007. This Act contains a number of new provisions that will significantly shape the focus of fisheries management in the coming years. Importantly, the MSRA pays an unprecedented level of attention to international fisheries. The overarching approach is a call for the Secretary of Commerce to work multilaterally through various fora, such as Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMOs), to address illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing. This book consists of public documents which have been located, gathered, combined, reformatted, and enhanced with a subject index, selectively edited and bound to provide easy access.

This book gathers the proceedings of an OECD Workshop that took place in April 2004 in Paris, on Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing -- a worldwide problem which is increasing in scale.

Essay from the year 2023 in the subject Law - Miscellaneous, grade: 2.0, Göteborg University (Rechtswissenschaften), course: Maritime Environmental Law, language: English, abstract: The impact of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated fishing, shortly IUU fishing, has become an increased significance these days. The global community has already reached a critical point when is comes to global fish stocks. As of 2014, almost 30 % of the global fish stocks are considered to be in an overfished condition, according to the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). 2018, the estimated number already increased up to 33.1 %. This emphasizes the urgency of actions combating IUU fishing. Since the 1990s, IUU fishing is a further growing issue for the community of international fisheries and thus, this behaviour is not a new issue in marine capture fisheries. According to estimations, the total value of current IUU fishing worldwide is between $ 10 bn and $ 23,5 bn annually which is a total amount between 11 and 26 million tonnes of fish. The first appearance of this term can be dated on 1997 to the 16th annual meeting of the Commission for the Conservation of Antarctic Marine Living Resources (CCAMLR). The fisheriessector developed more and more in a commercial direction and thus got dominated by economic interests. By fading out all the problems and consequences of IUU fishing, large companies only focus on expanding their profit. This leads to different problems, especially regarding to the environment. One of the main problems is to extinguish certain fish stocks. The key word of is issue is biodiversity which plays a large role in this context. On a scientific view, there is a specific level which sets the optimum for reproduction of fish stocks. Overfishing means hereby that the reproduction is limited and in the worst case, it can lead to completely loosing types of fish. Not to overextend a certain amount of fishing, it is important to have control entities which sets the level of fishing to reach this optimum point. The challenge now is that unreported fishing cannot be taken into account of those calculations how much fishing can be practiced, so that it is very difficult to estimate the truly size of the fish stock. Unreported fishing thus leads because of bypassing those control entities to many problems. This challenges the whole system because it gets less concrete. Additionally, unregulated fishing itself can wipe out a species of fish, or at least limit the reproduction drastically.

The IOPA-IUU is a voluntary instrument that applies to all States and entities and to all fishers. Following the IPOA's introduction, the nature and scope of IUU fishing is addressed. This is followed by the IPOA's objective and principles and the implementation of measures to prevent, deter and eliminate IUU fishing. These measures focus on all State responsibilities, flag State responsibilities, coastal State measures, port State measures, internationally agreed market-related measures, research and regional fisheries management organizations. Special requirements of developing countries are then considered, followed by reporting requirements and the role of FAO.

This book provides a comprehensive examination of the different aspects of IUU fishing and the various measures embodied in international fisheries and related instruments, and those adopted by regional fisheries management organisations and individual States to combat IUU fishing.

This booklet describes, in a non-technical manner, some important aspects of the International Plan of Action to Prevent, Deter and Eliminate Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing. The purpose of this booklet is to help familiarize FAO Members and others with the tools for use in dealing with IUU fishing, to suggest which tools to use in particular circumstances and to provide guidance on how to use these tools effectively.

Fisheries law enforcement, from investigation to judgement, continues to be an expensive and lengthy process in many jurisdictions. Many countries - particularly developing countries - experience such a significant backlog of pending trials for conventional criminal offences that dealing with fisheries offences is not a priority. This study suggests considering the use of administrative sanctions as a direct response to the problem and examines the administrative systems for dealing with fisheries offences in a diverse range of countries from different legal systems. It is intended to assist states in identifying the issues they need to take into account when considering the adoption of such a scheme. It is expected that the study will be especially valuable to developing states seeking to adopt a cost effective means of dealing with illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing, but which nonetheless wish to ensure that the basic individual rights of the accused are protected.

This publication contains the proceedings of an OECD workshop on illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing, held in April 2004 in Paris. IUU fishing is a worldwide problem which is increasing in scale, and effective strategies are required to deal with this issue in order to ensure the sustainability of the world's fisheries resources. The aim of the workshop was to examine the social and economic factors that drive it, as well as the costs and benefits of alternative strategies to address this often concealed, cross-border activity, with the aim of identifying new more effective methods to deal with it.