Following yesterday’s announcement by the UK authorities of consultation concerning the Joint Fisheries Statement, the NFFO describes it as a statement of intent – and the political context within which those intentions are taken forward can profoundly shape outcomes.
According to the NFFO, ill-considered amendments to the Fisheries Act were largely fought off as the legislation passed through Parliament.
‘The Act managed to retain its coherence and focus. Industry representative bodies, including the NFFO, briefed extensively through the whole process to ensure that parliamentarians across the political spectrum understood what was at stake,’ an NFFO representative said.
‘It will be important that the JFS is similarly protected as it passes through the consultative process and parliamentary scrutiny. There may be scope for some improvements, but the bigger risk comes from the one-dimensional “further, faster” school of naivety. It will be important to fight these off vigorously.’
The warnings are that displacement of fishing activities is briefly acknowledged in the JFS but the scale of potential unintended consequences implicit in the UK’s plans for offshore wind and marine protected areas is seriously understated.
‘Displacement has the potential to knock fisheries policy and the fishing sector sideways,’ the NFFO stated.
‘The scope for high level political interventions based on not much more than whim and good intentions, also has the potential to undermine the fishing industry and long-term sustainable fisheries management, whatever the Act and JFS say about evidence-based fisheries policy. Constant litigation is not a financially viable or attractive option for holding government to the binding obligations of the Act, JFS, or management plans, at least not for most industry organisations. Who is in government and their priorities will therefore remain a profoundly significant factor, whatever is in the JFS.’
The NFFO makes the point that a deeply disturbing aspect of the JFS is its relative silence on the role of the fishing industry in shaping its own destiny.
‘Co-management is given a notional mention but the lack of detail or serious attention speaks volumes. The people whose livelihoods are shaped by the policy statement are treated as just one more stakeholder – equivalent to those many groups who merely hold various opinions on fisheries,’ the NFFO states.
‘An unwelcome gap between the rulers and the ruled is opening, seen most vividly in relation to policy on highly protected marine areas, but showing also in the UK’s approach to international negotiations, where the industry is largely a bystander.’
