The high-level conference, organised by FISH, Pew Environment Group and the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) as a joint OCEAN2012 and WWF event. The conference was organized in an effort to explore different possible paths for regionalisation under the future Common Fisheries Policy (CFP).
It is said that the purpose of the conference was to provide examples from different geographical levels and regions, in order to provide ideas, inform and stimulate further discussion, hopefully enabling stakeholders to reflect on these aspects in their response to the consultation on the Green Paper later this year. WWF and OCEAN2012 said that they believe that much can be learnt from examples both outside and within the EU.
The first session of the conference focused on what could be learned from the American experience, where a formal regionalisation of fisheries management has been in place for several decades now and a high-level process to formulate a new national ocean policy is underway. It is told that the US fisheries are managed by eight Regional Councils, working at the coastal state level.
Laura Cantral, a senior staff member with the Meridian Institute, and Lee Crockett, director of the Pew Environment Group’s Federal Fisheries Policy unit described to the conference how the US regionalisation process has worked. Next on the program were three examples of regionalisation at a more local scale within the EU:
The last session of presentations focused on initiatives on the international level trying to embrace both environmental protection and fisheries management. It is said that the day’s discussions where then launched with three scientists airing thoughts and opinions from the perspectives of the Mediterranean, the Baltic and the North Sea, respectively: Ramon Franquesa, a professor at Barcelona University; Henrik Österblom, a scientist at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, and David Symes, Reader Emeritus at the University of Hull, and currently a member of the Scottish Government’s inquiry into the future of fisheries management.
