In view of the global evaluation of the Sustainable Fisheries Partnership Agreements (SFPAs) that will be carried out by the Commission in 2021, the author highlights the key points which will need to be assessed from the perspective of the impacts on African coastal communities. The author also suggests essential improvements to be made for the future of SFPAs so that they better respond to the needs of these communities.
The strategy of transforming seafood industry through voluntary partnerships and market-based incentives is the approach currently favoured by many environmental NGOs and donors. The case of Mauritania reduction fisheries “Fisheries Improvement Project” highlights the fundamental flaws with the corporate friendly approach and the urgent need to resist this model becoming normalised.
The PESCAO programme for the improvement of fisheries governance in West Africa, financed by the EU from the 11th EDF Regional funds, started in June 2017 and will end in June 2024. After nearly 4 years, an evaluation is underway to assess the results obtained and to see how to improve its implementation, in a context where the countries of the ECOWAS region are focusing on the development of a blue economy strategy.
Efforts to make blue economy sustainable have led to increasing calls for better regulations on investments. The European Commission has provided funding for the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) to launch the Blue Economy Finance Initiative (BEFI). The BEFI has been celebrated in international conferences about blue economy, however, this article highlights the inherent weaknesses of voluntary guidelines in mitigating the threats financial investors pose to the destruction of the planet.
This second article of our series on financialisation and the blue economy covers TNC’s recent debt-for-ocean swap in Belize, news about TNC’s “audacious plan” of other debt swaps in other countries, the history of debt swaps and how the recent swaps reflect the financialisaton of conservation and finally, why these debt swaps are worrying for small-scale fisheries.
In view of the summit that will bring together the leaders of the European Union and the African Union in Brussels on 17th and 18th February 2022 and in the context of the International Year of Artisanal Fisheries and Aquaculture (IYAFA), six civil society and professional organisations call the EU and AU to take concrete action in three key areas. Click on the link to read more.
In this declaration on the occasion of World Fisheries Day, CFFA calls on the European Union to integrate the FAO Guidelines for Securing Sustainable Small-scale fisheries into all its policies that have an impact on this sector, particularly in the Blue Economy and Farm to Fork strategies and in its external action.
This position paper explores the false promises of industrial aquaculture, highlights the key sustainability issues of promoting farming of carnivorous fish species, such as salmon, underscores the environmental and social impacts throughout the whole value chain and explains why the EU should stop promoting seafood coming from industrial aquaculture and instead focus on promoting sustainable small-scale and low impact fisheries and aquaculture.
The launch on Friday of the report on oceans by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change is an opportunity to challenge the ecological credentials of the ‘blue growth’ concept. This dangerously claims that economic growth in ocean industries can be done in a sustainable way. However it is now urgent that this unproven claim is scrutinised, and alternatives to economic growth for ocean economies are given more serious attention.
