Seychelles hosts meeting to discuss draft fisheries framework agreement |05 July 2004

The objective of the two-day meeting, which opens Monday July 5 in the morning at the Plantation Club Hotel, is to consider the first draft of the Fisheries Framework Agreement (FFA) and to make modifications to it so that it can be presented to the next Eastern and Southern African (ESA) States Regional Negotiating Forum in Entebbe, Uganda on 19-20 July 2004 and then submitted to the ESA ministers as the negotiating position of the ESA region on ocean fisheries.

The ESA Draft FFA has been prepared as a result of the first meeting ( Berjaya Mahé Beach Hotel, April 2004 ) of the group of countries which have ocean fisheries industries and which have agreed to negotiate an Economic Partnership Agreement (EPA) with the European Union as part of the ESA Group.

According to a communiqué from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the ESA FFA is to be negotiated to protect the interests of the small ESA states like Seychelles and avoid a depletion of fish-stocks in the Western Indian Ocean and Red Sea, upon which many ESA coastal and island states are economically dependent, while at the same time preserving the sovereignty of ESA states to negotiate national access agreements with the EU.

The overarching objective of the ESA FFA, the communiqué says, is to promote effective conservation and management, an essential prerequisite for the sustainable development of the living marine resource in the EEZ and Territorial Sea (relevant jurisdiction) of ESA States, for the mutual social and economic benefit of the ESA group of countries and EU.

The FFA will not replace the current bilateral agreement with the European Union but rather should be seen as being a minimum set of conditions within which a fisheries agreement on access to fish stocks in each Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) will be negotiated by each country, says the communiqué.

Each country has access to different types of fish stocks. For example, Seychelles, Comoros and Mauritius are mainly concerned with access to tuna; Madagascar has a tuna fishing industry based on mainly foreign trawlers but also has a large shrimp industry; Eritrea exports mainly small pelagic (sardines, anchovies and Indian Mackerel), soft-bottom demersals (lizard fish and threadfin bream) and reef-based demersals (snappers, groupers, etc.); and Kenya, having a largely artisanal fishing industry fishing on the shelf area close to shore catching reef-based demersals and small pelagic species.

There is a large variation in the way fish are exploited in the different ESA countries.  In the EEZs of Seychelles, Comoros and Mauritius fishing is mainly for tuna by industrial fleets of purse-seiners and long-liners; in Madagascar more than half the production of shrimps and prawns are farmed; and in Eritrea and Kenya most fishing is done by the artisanal sector, although there is an increase in the number of trawlers active in the territorial waters of both countries.  This means that the FFA needs to be broad in scope to take account of the different requirements of the different ESA EPA countries and the ESA FFA should make a clear distinction between multi-species agreements and tuna agreements because of their different specificities.

According to the communiqué, the preservation and particular needs of the artisanal/subsistence fisheries will be given due recognisance in the framework agreement.