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The Industrialization of the Artisanal Fishing Sector PDF

42 Pages·2016·0.27 MB·English
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Wesleyan University The Honors College The Paradox of Chilean Fisheries Management: The Industrialization of the Artisanal Fishing Sector by Rachel Eisman Class of 2016 An essay submitted to the faculty of Wesleyan University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Bachelor of Arts with Departmental Honors in Romance Studies Middletown, Connecticut April, 2016 1 Introduction Contrary to popular belief that the oceans provide an endless supply of fish and seafood, fisheries around the world have rapidly diminished over recent decades. As the international community has hastened to respond to the threat of diminishing fish stocks, many maritime countries have adopted similar management structures that cap the total quantity of fish caught. In keeping with international trends and UN recommendations, many of these systems require fishers to purchase fishing rights and then allow these rights to be traded, essentially creating a market for fishing permits. While these systems have conservational aims, they have produced significant social consequences by unduly burdening small fishers and allowing industrial fishing corporations to thrive. Historically, the fishing industry was composed of primarily small, individual fishers. Recent decades, however, have seen a shift in the social structure of the fishing industry to one dominated by powerful private corporations. Chile, a maritime country with over 2,000 miles of coast, is one country that sets total allowable catch limits and auctions off fishing rights in accordance with UN guidelines. Unlike many other nations, however, Chile forbids the trading of fishing rights, thereby precluding the privatization of the fishing industry common to many other maritime nations. While there are other maritime countries that have not privatized their fishing industry, such as France, Chile is unique in the level of support it offers its small fishers. By legally defining industrial (large) and artisanal (small) fishers, Chile affords specific protections to its small fishers not seen in most other management regimes, and therefore serves as a model for social governance in 2 the current international context of fisheries management. Yet Chile’s system has had unforeseen consequences. Uneasy with a system perceived as favoring a corporate takeover of the fishing industry, Chile’s frustrated artisanal fishers adapted to survive in the new legal context by organizing, growing, and industrializing as a sector. Ultimately, the growth of the artisanal sector undermines the very purpose for which Chile’s fisheries management plan was implemented by eliminating the small, community-based fisher that has traditionally protected the environment more vigorously than the large, industrial fishing corporations. If Chile, with a fisheries management system that defines industrial and artisanal fishers and seeks to protect small fishers, has not seen a significant environmental improvement in its fisheries and faces the same social injustices as the typical maritime countries with privatized fisheries, this would suggest there are flaws in the fisheries management structure as currently implemented. Instead of working within the international framework that sees only slight variations among nations, management structures in Chile and worldwide should be better tailored to regional variations and should emphasize the artisanal fisher as the central player in the industry. The Decline of Fisheries Globally, fisheries have been showing signs of decline in recent years, making it harder for fishers to maintain their normal catch level. While there are many possible factors that contribute to the loss of species, such as warming waters or 3 nitrogen runoff from fertilizers, overfishing is undoubtedly part of the problem. 1 The oceans simply do not have enough fish to keep up with the overwhelming demand driving commercial fisheries. Since the 1980s, global fisheries have been in decline and a total collapse within the next few decades is a reasonable possibility. About 85% of fished species around the world come from continental shelves, which are areas of the ocean shallower than 200 meters. These shelves make up about seven percent of the entire ocean and are mostly contained within the economic jurisdiction of maritime countries, leaving them vulnerable to exploitation. The first significant fisheries catastrophe was the collapse of the Peruvian anchoveta fishery in 1972. Since then, fisheries have been in constant decline around the world, continuing through the 80s and 90s with the near collapse of New England and Canadian cod. In 1996, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations published a chronicle of global catches detailing the stocks that are rapidly depleting around the world.2 Perhaps the most obvious threat of overfishing is the loss of biodiversity caused by the removal of high volumes of specific species. Not only does this threaten certain species with extinction, but it also poses problems for the fish left behind, as it significantly alters their ecosystem. Most of the fish destined for human consumption, such as cod or mackerel, are high on the food chain. Removing these predators from an ecosystem leads to the increase of other species, which could themselves be marketable or could be poisonous, but which regardless alter the 1 Dabrowska and Mateos, “State of Global Fisheries – Management Policies,” 11-12. 2 Pauly, “Empty Nets,” 10. 4 structure of the marine ecosystem with significant consequences for the sustainability of fisheries. In addition to overfishing, the industrial fishing technique of trawling damages deep-water ocean populations by “plowing” nets through the ocean floor. This disturbs organisms living in the ocean floor and the fish that feed on them, creating a ripple effect into the entire ecosystem. Due to this practice, bottom water fisheries have tended to decline faster than open-water fisheries.3 If the only fish caught were the ones intended for market, the threats to marine ecosystems might be limited. Current fishing techniques, however, employ large nets to capture high volumes of fish at once, and do not differentiate well between intended and unintended species. This problem of bycatch, in which unwanted organisms are caught and thrown back into the ocean, further contributes to the disturbance of marine ecosystems by removing predators or prey, or by altering the population size of specific species. Furthermore, large animals, such as sea turtles, sharks, and sea mammals, are often caught in fishing nets and thrown back into the ocean already dead or too injured to recover. Besides the obvious issue of the unnecessary deaths caused by fishing, the prevalence of bycatch causes problems for the fishers themselves, since by injuring or killing young fish not yet ready for market, they diminish their future stock.4 Chile is not immune to the threats posed by overfishing, trawling, and bycatch. The prevalent fish off Chile’s coast are jack mackerel, common sardine, anchovy, and hake, all of which are fished for consumption. Unsurprisingly, the 3 Pauly, “Empty Nets,” 10. 4 Hall, Alverson, and Metuzals, “By-Catch: Problems and Solutions,” 206. 5 stocks have been depleted over recent decades, leading to a decline in total catch. In 1990, 4.5 million tons of jack mackerel were caught out of a total biomass of 22 million tons. By 2011, the catch was down to 2.5 million tons out of a total 230 thousand tons. Beginning in the 1940s, the Chilean hake fishery has been comprised of industrial trawlers, which use the nets described above, and artisanal longliners, which use a line with hooks attached to bait fish. Since then, the stock has known significant decadal fluctuations, collapsing in the 1960s, recovering in the 1980s and 1990s, and collapsing again in the early 2000s. Compared to a biomass of nearly 1.5 million tons in the 1990s, in 2004 a survey measured only 270 thousand tons. This extreme change resulted in a social and economic crisis for the hake fishery, leading to an 80% decrease of industrial fishers and a 50% decrease of artisanal fishers. The fluctuations may be explained in part by the presence of jumbo squid and in part by the inadequate enforcement of Chile’s Ley General de Pesca (General Fishing Law) of 1991, intended to limit total catch.5 While industrial fishing poses a significant environmental threat because of the scale of overfishing and bycatch it produces and the destructive techniques it employs, artisanal fishing is not completely without risk. In Chile, artisanal fishing is defined by the size of the boat, which means that an artisanal fisher is not using the large nets an industrial trawler might, and that the volume of total catch is much smaller. Despite the smaller capacity of artisanal boats, the growing size of the artisanal fleet makes its environmental impacts significant overall. Furthermore, 5 Neira and Arancibia, “Food Web and Fish Stock Changes in Central Chile: Comparing the Roles of Jumbo Squid (Dosidicus gigas) predation, the environment, and fisheries,” 104. 6 artisanal techniques, such as longlining, have been shown to pose environmental threats, such as the risk of incidental seabird mortality in the Chilean austral hake and Patagonian toothfish fisheries.6 In Chile, as in much of the international community, governing bodies have scrambled to come up with an adequate response to fisheries decline. A series of international agreements over the past three decades has sculpted the legislative framework of maritime countries around the world, with most using techniques such as catch limits and closed seasons to conserve fish stocks and protect the fishing industry. The Global Response Recent international trends in fisheries regulation have played a significant role in shaping the current legislative and social structures of fisheries management. In the face of increasing environmental and economic threats to fisheries, the United Nations has developed multiple agreements over the past three decades defining the basic structure of fisheries management. The primary agreement was a product of the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), which established economic zones of maritime countries and held the countries responsible for conservation within their zones. In 1995, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s non-binding Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries emphasized the need for conservation and offered more specific guidelines for fisheries management. More than 150 maritime countries acting in accordance with the 6 Moreno et. al., “Artisanal Longline Fisheries in Southern Chile: Lessons To Be Learned to Avoid Incidental Seabird Mortality,” 28. 7 agreements have adopted similar regulation techniques, such as total allowable catch limits, quotas, closed seasons, and closed areas. The 1982 UNCLOS agreement addressed the growing threat of exploitation of the seas. While its scope was much broader than merely fisheries, it has significantly influenced the development of current fisheries management structures, mainly by establishing Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZ) of maritime states and requiring states to manage the fish stocks within their jurisdiction. It also held states responsible for the management of all vessels flying their flag in international waters. Whereas previously states had been in control of twelve nautical miles off their coastline, they now had jurisdiction over 200 nautical miles.7 The agreement established the basic legal framework for conservation and management based on the area (EEZ or high seas) and type of stock. It emphasized the need for techniques such as total allowable catch limits (TAC); quotas, or portions of the TAC that get leased to individual fishers; closed seasons for specific fisheries; and setting a minimum fish size based on the best available scientific data to produce the maximum sustainable yield of the fishery.8 The voluntary 1995 Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries laid out more detailed guidelines for achieving appropriate fisheries management. Working within the framework of UNCLOS, it emphasized the importance of conservation and the need for the best available scientific data. It identified main objectives of regulation, such as ensuring that “the economic conditions under which fishing industries operate 7 Dabrowska and Mateos, “State of Global Fisheries – Management Policies,” 13. 8 Untied Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, “Agreement Relating to the Implementation of Part XI of the Convention,” December 10, 1982, Art. 62. http://www.un.org/Depts/los/convention_agreements/texts/unclos/closindx.htm 8 promote responsible fisheries,” “biodiversity of aquatic habitats and ecosystems is conserved and endangered species are protected,” and “the interests of fishers, including those engaged in subsistence, small-scale and artisanal fisheries, are taken into account.”9 In short, it addressed economic, environmental, and social aspects of fisheries management. Due to the mandatory UNCLOS agreement and the Code of Conduct recommendations, the fisheries management structures of over 150 participating maritime nations are relatively uniform. In Peru, for example, the Ministry of Production operates under a General Fishing Law to regulate Individual Vessel Quotas and Maximum Catch Limit to Vessels in a system very similar to Chilean management. In the European Union, the Common Fisheries Policy from 1983 established TACs for the entire EU, which are then divided into quotas among member states based on their historical share of the catch. This uniformity has caused visible trends in both the environmental efficacy of the management regimes and the social consequences for fishers, specifically small fishers engaged in traditional or subsistence fishing. Global Consequences of the Current Management Regime Until recently, the oceans were seen as an endless supply of a common resource: fish. Predictably, industrial and artisanal fishers alike have for years fished without restraint to maximize profits and keep up with a growing demand for fish. 9 Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, “Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries,” October 31, 1995, Art. 2. http://www.fao.org/3/a- v9878e/index.html#4 9 When it became clear that the oceans did not in fact offer an endless supply of fish, many governing bodies adopted the common strategy of “privatizing” fisheries to give fishers more of an incentive to protect their resources. Working within the construct of the UN recommendations, many maritime countries have adopted TACs and a quota system, which allots percentages of the TAC to individual fishers in a bidding process. In many cases, the quotas can be traded among fishers in what are known as Individual Transferable Quotas (ITQ). The process of bidding for and trading quotas creates a market for fishing rights, passing the responsibility of managing total catch onto the fishers themselves as opposed to a governing body.10 This privatization of fisheries has resulted in the consolidation of the fishing sector, decreasing the number of vessels involved and in turn decreasing employment. Fisheries from the mid-Atlantic region of the United States, British Columbia, and the Netherlands, for example, have experienced this consolidation in recent years. In addition, the quota system, along with fishing licenses or permits required to gain access to the fishery, places a high burden on smaller fishers with lower levels of capital. Larger industrial fishers, meanwhile, have an easier time buying the required permits and bidding on large percentages of the quota, leaving less room for the smaller fishers that have a harder time entering the market in the first place. Additionally, since the large fishers are able to buy the majority of the quota to begin 10 Olson, “Understanding and Contextualizing Social Impacts from the Privatization of Fisheries: An Overview,” 353-54. 10

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and then allow these rights to be traded, essentially creating a market for fishing permits. While these undermines the very purpose for which Chile's fisheries management plan was implemented by . fluctuations may be explained in part by the presence of jumbo squid and in part by the inadequate
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