At the meeting to launch their activities in the framework of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA), the Federation of Artisanal Fishermen of the Indian Ocean (FPAOI), which includes 36 artisanal fisheries organisations from the Comoros, Madagascar, Mauritius, Seychelles and Reunion, highlighted the importance of transparency for the sustainable management of fisheries in the Western Indian Ocean region.
However, participants lamented that transparency is not always a priority: "many governments do not even disclose basic information on fisheries, such as laws, licences, fishing agreements, stock assessments, financial contributions, catch data and subsidies...". Similarly, "not all companies report reliably on catches, fishing practices. Furthermore, the data available to the public is too often incomplete, dated, unverified or difficult to access.”
For FPAOI, this not only affects the ability of governments to manage their fisheries sustainably, but incomplete or inaccurate data can lead to the marginalisation of small-scale fishers as well as the undervaluing of the role of women in fisheries supply chains: "greater transparency would allow for more accurate data on the important contributions of artisanal fisheries, giving artisanal fishers a better understanding of their value, and giving artisanal fisheries the visibility they deserve in national debates on fisheries management.”
The FPAOI also highlights the regional and international dimension of this issue. Sharing information between states promotes sustainable management of migratory fish stocks, such as tuna.
Tangible progress in transparency has been made in recent years, in particular with the publication by the Seychelles, a country committed to the FiTI initiative, of the first two national transparency reports for its fisheries sector in 2021. These reports made public foreign fishing access agreements, a register of large-scale fishing vessels and their licensing information, catch data, etc. Following the Seychelles, Madagascar has recently joined the FiTI initiative. This decision was welcomed by FPAOI, which subsequently urged the governments of Mauritius and Comoros to join FiTI and called on businesses, civil society, international partners and donors to actively promote FiTI in the Western Indian Ocean.
Header photo: Traditional fishermen in Madagascar, through Canva Pro.
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