2010: Pacific Countries Might Start To Operate Like OPECff

Source: Written by Dr. Transform Agorau, Islands Business

2010 will see the establishment of the new Parties to the Nauru Agreement (PNA) (Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu) Office in Majuro, Marshall Islands.

Throughout 2009, various articles were written about PNA’s wish to operate like OPEC.

These thoughts may now become real with the creation of the PNA Office.

The impetus is PNA’s desire to assert control of, and secure greater rights to the region’s tuna fishery and new opportunities to explore innovative ways to maximize economic gains from the tuna resources.

These new possibilities have been enabled by changes to the fisheries dynamics, including the increasing importance of the Western and Central Pacific to the global tuna industry,
better compliance and increasing value of the tuna fishery.

These factors now provide PNA with the chance to explore different dimensions to their dealings with fishing states, and develop innovative ways to maximize economic gains from the tuna fisheries.

As Palau’s President Toribiong said to the 64th Regular Session of the UN General Assembly on 29 September 2009, “it is anomalous that Palau is experiencing economic difficulty while it sits in the middle of the richest waters in the world.

“We can no longer stand by while foreign vessels illicitly come to our waters to take our greatest resource, our tuna stocks, without regard to their conservation, and without regard for adequate compensation to islands states which rely on this resource.

“Palau believes that the best model for a regional effort to conserver our tuna resources and maximize the benefits to us, is the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). I therefore will work for the establishment of OTEC, Organization of Tuna Exporting Countries, and I now call upon our friends in OPEC to come forward and help us understand and obtain a fair value from our threatened resource and to make tuna fishing sustainable.”

It will be challenging for PNA. There are forces and institutions that have systematically undermined PNA’s endeavors. These include elements from distant water fishing nations and within the region bent on ensuring Small Islands Developing States (SIDS) remain subservient to the notion that SIDS can only do things if everyone else agree to it!

The PNA Office initiative is the first major step SIDS have made to maximize economic gains from their tuna resources without relying on foreign aid.

It is a significant step and one that for regional political observers represents a major shift from dependency and the vagaries of those pulling purse strings.

In 2010, the region will continue to work towards effectively managing the region’s tuna resources. At the heart of this is the increasing number of vessels being licensed to fish in the region.

There is a need to reduce these and have in place hard limits that constrain effort at levels that reduce further overfishing of bigeye tuna. Economic conditions in the longline fishery continue to make it difficult for frozen longline tuna operations to remain viable in the long-term.

There will obviously be a gradual, albeit, slow decline in this fishery as younger Japanese develop a taste for other food products.

There are still concerns about the state of bigeye and yellowfin with scientists calling for additional steps to reduce the level of fishing mortality on bigeye.

At last year’s Scientific Committee meeting of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC), concerns were raised that conservation measure 2008-01 adopted by the WCPFC in December 2008 is not enough to remove all of the estimated overfishing of bigeye tuna.

The Scientific Committee noted that “even if fully implemented and complied with, CMM-2008-01 is extremely unlikely to achieve its most important objective: that of reducing fishing mortality on the Western and Central Pacific Ocean bigeye tuna stock to at least 30% below the level experienced either in 2004 or the annual average of the period 2001-2004.

“Furthermore, if the high seas pockets closure results in effort being transferred to high seas areas to the East, where bigeye tuna generally form a greater proportion of the purse-seine catch, the objectives of CMM-2008-01 will be even less likely to be achieved.”

The Scientific Committee also noted that “the lack of effectiveness of CMM-2008-01 is broadly related to: 1) reductions in longline catch that do not result in the required reduction in fishing mortality; 2) increases in both purse seine effort allowed under the measure, and purse seine efficiency since 2001-2004; and 3) exclusion of archipelagic waters, which encompasses most of the fishing activity of the Indonesian domestic fisheries and some activity by the Philippines domestic fleets”.

There should be improvements in monitoring, control and surveillance (MCS) in 2010 with further development of the regional MCS Strategy.

It has been recognized that effective management requires a robust MCS framework with a greater regional focus that builds on national institutions.

The regional MCS Strategy will bring together service providers and fisheries managers to operate in a more integrated way.

It is likely that new MCS measures will be taken in 2010 which may include a higher degree of information exchange between Pacific countries.


This will be critical to ensuring that measures adopted by the WCPFC, Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency member countries, and PNA members are enforced.

Finally, 2010 will see a higher degree of accountability and transparency in the way regional organizations operate.

Aid donors who support regional organizations require a more vigorous reporting, monitoring and evaluation process. Terms such as Statement of Intent (SOI), high level outcomes, sub-outputs, risks management, results, M & E, are vogue in the parlance of the regional organization.

These requirements change every two to three years and are driven by international and regional processes. They are underwritten by such things as the Paris Declaration on Aid and now the Cairns Compact on Donor Coordination.

The bottom line is, as one official from an aid donor said, regional organizations “have no choice”. It is good practice, and if regional organizations want more money, they have to provide reports aid donors want.

It will be a challenge to provide core services to Pacific people while maintaining the increasingly rigorous reporting and constantly changing standards required by donors.
In conclusion, aid donors may well say “you have no choice”, but PNA has clearly demonstrated that in 2010, SIDS does have a choice; that SIDS can get together and do something for themselves by integrating the region’s tuna fisheries into their domestic economies.

* Dr. Transform Aqorau is a Solomon Islands national. He is the outgoing Deputy Director-General of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency. He has served as Legal Adviser to the Solomon Islands Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Legal Counsel to the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, and Legal Adviser to the Pacific Islands Forum Secretariat.