A call for the EU to take its role seriously in climate change and biodiversity policies of fisheries management. [Promoted content]

The EU has an obligation to pro-actively enhance climate change and biodiversity policies at the International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT) by endorsing its Plan of Action & establishing a dedicated working group this fall. This would bring the EU’s approach at  Regional Fisheries Management Organizations (RFMOs) up to par with statements and speeches shared at multilateral organizations like COFI, UNFSA, and other international fora. If the EU does not champion climate change adaptation at ICCAT, they would prove to only be providing lip service and their agreements, mere paper tigers.

Steven Adolf is a senior advisor at Accountability.Fish.

This is a matter of broader urgency. We are witnessing growing momentum for the inclusion and operationalisation of climate and biodiversity policies as pillars of sound fisheries management. The RFMOs play central roles in this and without significant reforms to existing practice, relevant science, and the transparency, accountability, and greater inclusivity of all stakeholders involved in the decision-making structure, many of the obligations that states have promised will crumble in the current form of RFMO governance. Largely RFMO member states favour the demands of their fishing industry over broader, more urgent sustainability needs. Without the systematic backdrop of transparency and accountability in RFMO political processes, upholding obligations for climate and biodiversity cannot exist.

Take the case of how the EU supports the United Nations Agreement on Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) which seeks to promote conservation in the high seas. These efforts need to be coordinated with RFMOs and will have implications for incorporating climate change into an ecosystem approach to fisheries management (EAFM). This is a principle highlighted in the ICCAT climate change plan of action that the EU consequently also should support. EAFM guided by data based ecological objectives protects the structure of food webs and maintains resilience to environmental stressors such as climate change, rather than only harvesting as much of one stock as possible. Scientists, including those from ICCAT, have also demonstrated that Management strategy evaluation (MSE) can be an important tool for implementation of EAFM. Developing management procedures through MSE can account for a wide range of environmental scenarios. For example, the North Atlantic swordfish and western Atlantic skipjack MSEs will include climate change testing in its development of a management procedure to be adopted at the Commission meeting in 2024. Such management procedures inform catch limits and enable pre-agreement on indicators to improve management system responsiveness to a changing ocean.

The ICCAT Plan of Action is a commitment to scale up these tools that are in development to address climate change and help secure sustainable, climate-ready fisheries in the Atlantic. More-over this is not a stand-alone development. Similar work is advancing in other RFMOs, such as the IATTC, the RFMO that manages tuna fisheries in the eastern Pacific Ocean. IATTC staff has developed a more comprehensive workplan that reviews tools and frameworks developed by various countries and international organizations to ensure that fisheries under the Antigua Convention are climate-ready and climate change resilient in the nearest future. WCPFC is undertaking a parallel exercise to review climate change implications of their conservation and management measures.

So why isn’t the EU supporting these efforts at ICCAT? So far, the EU has decreased ambition of the ICCAT plan of action and placed tasks solely on the scientists with minimal input from fisheries managers. Both parties are necessary to incorporate climate change into fisheries management and the operations of the Commission. Guidance is needed from the managers to prioritize areas of scientific focus for climate change in fisheries. To that end, the UK proposed a standing working group on climate change at the 2023 Commission meeting. This working group is key to implement the and revise plan of action (as needed) and to scale the tools that ICCAT is beginning to develop. But the proposal was not supported by the EU and a handful of countries which led to no adoption of a workplan nor a working group at the 2023 Commission meeting.

The EU’s stance at ICCAT is in contradiction with the fulfilment of obligations arising from agreements and other climate change fora such as the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). The EU has repeatedly plead for dialogue to strengthen ocean-based action in relation to the UNFCCC, to facilitate enhanced action tackling climate change and its negative impacts in accordance with the goals of the Paris Agreement and advancing a healthy ocean, consistent with the 2030 Agenda on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and more specifically SDGs 13 and 14.

At the meeting of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI) earlier this month the EU delegation once more expressed its support for new approaches on climate change and biodiversity in fisheries management. These serious commitments must be followed by transparent and consistent support for climate change action at ICCAT – the absence of which calls into question the ability for the EU to be accountable to its words.

So far, the EU is seriously failing to implement the topics of the agreed dialogue for action on climate change and biodiversity in the international bodies responsible for one of the core tasks of ocean management, namely the RFMOs. RFMOs ensure sustainable management of the most important global fish stocks and the associated management of biodiversity and climate targets in the oceans and therefore are of substantial relevance for multilateral deliberations in the fields of ocean and maritime, climate and biodiversity. At the recent COFI meeting the EU, together with most of the other country delegations, made a strong commitment to enforce the management of the RFMOs regarding these issues. This creates a good momentum to really bring forward fisheries and ocean management in a transparent, inclusive, and accountable way. Endorsing the ICCAT Plan of Action on climate change should be the first step for pro-actively supporting  likewise plans in other RFMOs and work on developing the necessary changes RFMO related multilateral bodies.

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Steven Adolf is consultant on sustainable fisheries and ocean policies and author of the book Tuna Wars. Accountability.Fish is an NGO that advocates transparency, inclusiveness an accountability in the Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs).