IATTC Crippled By Lack Of Consensusff

It was 1.00 AM on June 28th when the last IATTC meeting in Panama ended.

Major topic: conservation measures for 2008 and 2009 tuna fishing season in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean (EPO).

The issue: overfishing and fishing of juvenile bigeye and yellowfin tuna have lead to a poor catch in 2006 and 2007.

The proposal: twelve-week fishery closure period to allow fish stock recovery.

The decision: not favorable. Again.

The Inter-American-Tropical Tuna Commission (IATTC) was created in 1950 and currently has 16 member countries. The decisions need to be made in a full consensus to be put into effect, and when it comes to the tuna ban in the EPO area, that hasn’t been the case for the last four meetings.

According to IATTC’s own scientific reports, bigeye and yellowfin population are being reduced and the size of captured individuals is decreasing. Combined with the increasing fishing capacity, this can dramatically affect tuna stocks and the survival of the species in the EPO

The so obvious conclusion drawn by environmental institutions hasn’t been adopted by IATTC members and caused a global protest that reunited NGOs in a formal statement: “The world will never know if the watered down measures would have succeeded as the dice have been rolled once again in hopes that recovery will occur despite the ongoing absence of concerted action to stem tuna population declines”.

The consecutive failure in reaching decisions has debilitated IATTC’s authority and strength in face of the world. However, the fact that observers from conservation groups were allowed to participate in closed sessions this last meeting, appeared like IATTC itself is trying to show the world how countries economic disparities are making the decision making process nearly impossible.

The Vice President and Managing Director of the WWF Fisheries Program, Bill Fox, posted some of that reality on his blog, right after the Panama meeting: “Despite advances in international agreements during intervening years, such as the UN Agreement on Highly Migratory and Straddling Stocks, the IATTC and most Regional Fishery Management Organizations (RFMO) have become increasingly dysfunctional due to some fundamental flaws but largely to the increasing diversity of economic interests of sovereign member countries that makes virtually impossible the forging broadly applicable and sufficient conservation measures that are perceived as equitable”.

A proven fact of this is that many countries announced during the meeting that they had decided to take unilateral conservation measures, however none according to IATTC’s recommendations. To make things worse for the Commission, according to a reliable source, EU’s investigators have doubted the IATTC’s scientific reports and some countries are using this to put off the embargo of tuna fishing.

This questioning of the IATTC own scientific data is another reason that may prevent a decision to be made in the next IATTC’s meeting, on October. Since many countries claimed to be already taking conservation measures on their own, changes would be difficult to make at this point of the year.

In addition to that, some countries have stated that the “uncertainty” of the scientific information requires new estimations, with the previous knowledge that IATTC’s next scientific evaluations were scheduled to May 2009, so any action may be postponed to June of 2009.

The tuna ban on East Pacific Ocean is just a knot on the fragile cord holding IATTC’s authority together. The important thing to be remembered at all times is that a commission, by definition, means a group, not an individual. Therefore, it needs to be asked if decision making by consensus is the best way to move forward.