Can Independent Monitoring help improve law enforcement of the fisheries sector?

Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing is one of the greatest threats to fisheries worldwide. While there are certainly difference between the fisheries and forestry sectors there are many commonalities when it comes to law enforcement and governance problems such as a lack of transparency, low investment in enforcement where it counts, imbalanced power relations between private and public sectors, out-of-date and impractical policies, absence of robust traceability mechanisms, and a lack of accountability within the senior echelons of government.

International efforts to counter the fishing sector problems include sustainability certification (Marine Stewardship Council), the establishment of Regional Fisheries Management Organisations, and, more recently, the passing of a new EU Directive on IUU fishing (EC1005/2008) that includes a certification scheme for legality. But a key gap in current initiatives is a process to fully understand the law enforcement and governance capacities of exporting countries. This is a serious problem because, under certification schemes such as the one proposed by the EC council regulation, certificates will have little credibility if little is known about the realities of law enforcement practices in a certain country. REM believes that our independent monitoring can help address this problem by providing credible and detailed information on specific enforcement and governance problems. For more details about our concept for an independent monitoring of fisheries law enforcement and governance (IM-FiLEG) download the concept note here.

REM currently has started an IM-FiLEG project through the DFID Civil Society Challenge Fund in Sri Lanka in November 2010.

If your organisation, government or company is involved in the fisheries sector and would like to discuss the development of an IM-FiLEG pilot programme in more detail, please contact us.

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