Since February 2021, CFFA is part of the EU Food Policy Coalition (EU FPC), a network of civil society organisations that is “working towards refining and advocating for a shared vision of sustainable food systems at the EU level”.
The EU seafood market is one of the biggest and the most lucrative market in the world for seafood products. However, it is often largely forgotten in EU strategies, policies and communications. For example, the current EU Farm to Fork strategy, which seeks to use its international cooperation to build global sustainable food systems, ignores seafood production in general.
In a recent publication, CFFA underscored the key comments from the EU FPC coalition with regards to the importance of taking into account fisheries, including the external dimension of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP), into the Farm to Fork strategy. The coalition stated that although “wild caught fisheries and aquaculture are key drivers of global biodiversity loss,” but cannot possibly be disregarded as they are both “key elements for a sustainable food system.”
The EU Food Policy coalition proposed several recommendations to promote sustainable fisheries in the external dimension of the F2F Strategy. For example, it called the EU to use international cooperation to build sustainable food systems in partner countries and to take the contribution of the artisanal fisheries sector into account. Indeed, this sector not only supplies food, but provides livelihoods for fishers and (women) fish processors, and is a source of hard currency from exports of fishery products.
Banner photo: Quinten de Graaf/Unsplash
Small pelagic stocks are shared across West African waters, yet their management remains largely national. In this article, the author argues that stronger regional management is not simply a matter of better policy or voluntary cooperation: it also flows from existing obligations under international law. These obligations require coastal states not only to conserve shared stocks, but to cooperate on issues such as fishing capacity and allocation of access, implement agreed measures and hold one another accountable where national decisions undermine a shared resource. Drawing on recent examples from West Africa, the article shows why effective regional governance is essential if national conservation efforts are to succeed.