Fisheries experts on the CFP evaluation: “Implementation far from fulfilling its purpose”
The implementation of the EU Common Fisheries Policy is far from fulfilling its purpose, and there has been too little effort to achieve coherence between fisheries and environmental policy. This is a comment from the Baltic Sea Centre's experts in response to a Commission consultation on the evaluation of the policy.
The European Commission is currently evaluating how well the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) Regulation and its instruments and measures have been performing over the last decade. Not well, according to the fisheries experts at Stockholm University Baltic Sea Centre who, amongst close to 90 other organisations and associations, have provided their feedback.
Charles Berkow, Henrik Svedäng and Sara Söderström write in their comments that there has been an overreliance in the CFP on trying to achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield, MSY. Estimating MSY is much more difficult than some have thought, resulting in substantial uncertainties, and the attempts to capture the maximum of the (often overestimated) sustainable yield have contributed to the continued depletion of major Baltic stocks – which, according to the experts, was foreseeable.
"Managers and stakeholders appear to treat ICES estimates of current F in a stock and target Fmsy as certainties instead of the highly uncertain forecasts that they are”, the experts further elaborate. “Fishing quotas are then awarded to countries based on what, in retrospect, often turns out to be overestimates of yield. This has been particularly apparent in the Gulf of Bothnia, where fishers have not managed to fill their quotas for some years. Further, managers tend to ignore warnings from ICES about future impacts of e.g. low recruitment. Focus has instead been on short term profitability for fishers and processers."
Due to the current alarming situation, and the inherent uncertainties about stock development and environmental impacts, managers should base fishing opportunities on a lower level of the forecast MSY, for example at 50 per cent, suggest Charles Berkow, Henrik Svedäng and Sara Söderström.
Further, they add, the goal of restoring and maintaining stocks to robust levels should be made central in fisheries management, and in the longer term, management should focus on what is needed for more healthy ecosystems and food security.
Read the full comments from the Baltic Sea Centre to the evaluation of the CFP here.
Last updated: September 12, 2024
Source: Baltic Sea Centre