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Delivering economic benefits from the world’s largest tuna fishery to Pacific Small Island Developing States

GEF-UNDP-FFA Oceanic Fisheries Management Programme

By IW:LEARN

November 18^th, 2021

The small island developing states (SIDS) of the Western and Central Pacific manage a fishery that provides 60% of the world’s tuna, worth some US$7 billion to the fishers and $26 billion to consumers. Commercial fisheries have quadrupled in the past 40 years.

Under international law, the 9.5 million people living in the SIDS are responsible for cooperating with other countries through Regional Fisheries Management Organisations to ensure the effective management and conservation of their tuna stocks. But they certainly don’t directly receive all the economic benefits flowing from these fisheries. Most of the fishing fleets are owned by corporations and nations outside of the region.

For the past 20 years, GEF has funded a variety of oceanic fisheries management initiatives in the region with the overarching objective to ensure the conservation of this transboundary fishery and increase the sustainable benefits from the fishery, especially for the local region.

The latest science indicates that the Western and Central Pacific Ocean is now the only ocean where all major stocks of tuna are harvested at a sustainable level. The Oceanic Fisheries Management projects have played a key role in delivering the world’s first sustainable tuna fishery by supporting the regional and subregional partnerships of the Pacific Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Pacific Community (SPC). But are the SIDS deriving a greater economic benefit from the fishery?

Photo credit: FFA Media/FFA's TunaPacific

Small Island Developing States empowered to negotiate and make better economic decisions

An important aspect of the latest oceanic fisheries management project (OFMP2), which ran from 2016-2021, was to work with FFA to promote economic development and food security for the SIDS. Support here has borne fruit.

“The program has really helped us to build capacity within our countries, from setting up licensing and deriving economic benefits [from that], to implementing basic information or data collection systems, to the space where we’re now analysing what's happening in the fishery, including the economics,” says head of the Ministry of Marine Resources in Cook Islands, Pamela Maru.

The chief executive of the Fisheries Division in Samoa, Magele Etuarti Ropeti, agrees.

“Every time FFA countries talk about managing their fisheries, the program [OFMP2] supplies or helps to find the information we need that we have to base our decisions on. It has changed the way we make decisions,” he says.

Having access to the right data and information allowed countries to be “flexible and creative” in the ways they have solved fisheries problems, says Ms Maru.

“If you compare us to other developing countries where there are tuna fisheries, the amount of information that we hold in our hands here in the Pacific means that we now have a lot of negotiating power for anybody who wants to access those resources. We know what is required to access those resources. We know how to do it. We know what it costs. We know what we can derive from it. And we know what our neighbours are doing, so it provides us a really good picture of what's happening,” she explains.

The 15 SIDS talk up their cooperative approach as “our regional way”—and it has helped these tiny nations to meet their economic needs when negotiating fishing rights in their waters with some of the largest and most powerful nations.

With SIDS more empowered to make decisions and negotiate within the Western and Central Pacific Fishing Commission, access fees from foreign fishing vessels have risen from $420 million in 2015 to $550 million in 2019. Likewise direct employment by SIDS in fishing and processing has risen from 18,134 to 23,861 over the same time.

Marine Steward Certification for Pacific tuna increases revenue from markets and licence fees

In 2015, the free school purse seine skipjack tuna fishery received their marine steward certification (MSC). In 2019, more than 20,000 tonnes of MCS catch were supplied to the market and a further 115,000 tonnes of MSC processed products were produced. This resulted in licence and access fees reaching a new record in 2019 of $550 million, an increase in revenue of 21% since 2015.

MSC was achieved largely thanks to the Vessel Day Scheme (VDS), devised and run by eight of the SIDS through their Parties to Nauru Agreement (PNA): Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Republic of Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. They have an agreement with Tokelau which, in effect, extends the PNA licensing area.

The Vessel Day Scheme is one of the stand-out successes for island states that are managing the tuna fisheries of the Western and Central Pacific Ocean in a deliberately collaborative way. Every year, the signatories decide how much tuna fishing will be permitted in the waters of their exclusive economic zones (EEZs), a combined area of more than 14 million square kilometres. Most of the tuna that is fished in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean comes from here.

The PNA parties’ decision is based in part on keeping populations of tuna at healthy levels so that they are not overfished. They then sell licences that grant access to fishing for the year, to both local fishing fleets and enormous foreign operators, up to the annual limit.

OFMP2 provided ongoing support to PNA to undertake economic analysis and support the ongoing Marine Stewardship Council Certification of the PNA purse seine fishery.

Frozen carrier and longliner preparing to tranship catches in the high seas outside the control of coastal states (anonymous source, FFA Media/FFA's TunaPacific)

SIDS increasing their share of tuna catch and indirect economic benefits

The share of the catch taken by the islands’ FFA fleets increased from 24% of the total catch in 2015 to 29% in 2019 to reach a total value of $1.7 million. The value of exports from the region to the main markets of Thailand, European Union, United States and Japan rose by 53% from $600 million in 2015 to $928 million in 2019.

In addition, the economic benefits from domestic tuna harvest and processing activities, including from employment and sale of goods and services, rose from $736 million in 2015 to $896 million in 2019. Canned tuna is particularly important to local markets.

Samoa is an example of one country that recognises the benefits of OFMP support to developing its economy from tuna fisheries.

“In Samoa, we have experienced an increase in the number of vessels who are applying for shipment in our ports, and OFMP2 has helped us in working with a consultant to look into the contribution of the shipment into our economy,” Mr Ropeti explains.

“We’ve come to realise that there’s a lot of indirect benefits to the country. We’ve looked into better implementation of our monitoring at our ports.”

However, the gains are not evenly spread across the region. Revenue from tuna is heavily influenced by the location of the four species that are sought after, and by the method of fishing: purse-seine fishing has expanded rapidly, while longline fishing is stagnant, and in some areas barely economically viable. The next oceanic fisheries management project, starting in 2022, will look to research and manage economic and sustainability issues still facing Pacific SIDS.

About the Oceanic Fisheries Management Project II

Supported by the GEF, implemented by UNDP, and executed by the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), the Oceanic Fisheries Management Project (OFMP II) is designed to achieve systematic, sustained changes in fishing patterns and on-the-water behavior at regional, sub-regional and national levels. Achieving these changes will result in the conservation and sustainable use of the Western and Central Pacific Oceanic fisheries.

For more information on this project, please contact the Project Coordinator, Hugh Walton (hugh.walton@ffa.int). Additionally, please access the project website and the dedicated project page on iwlearn.net.