New Delhi: For the first time in 59 years, India was appointed Friday as the first vice-chair of the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) Committee on Fisheries (COFI) Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management.
This comes at a time when numerous countries are calling out China’s illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing practices in international waters, often violating Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) of other states.
Between 2019 and 2021, China fished in EEZs of over 80 other countries for more than 3 million hours and spent nearly 10 million hours outside its own EEZ in the high-seas and the EEZs of other nations, according to a report by the Investigative Journalism Reportika.
Established in 1965, the COFI is an intergovernmental forum that addresses issues on international fishing and aquaculture, providing policy guidance on fisheries management, recognising global challenges, and promoting collective solutions to ensure the environmental, economic and social sustainability of the fishing industry.
The grouping also makes recommendations to the FAO Council or its Director-General. The Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management is a new sub-group formed under the COFI in 2022, during the 35th session of the FAO Committee on Fisheries (COFI), held in Rome. It will work closely with the two other COFI sub-committees, the Sub-Committee on Aquaculture and the Sub-Committee on Fish Trade.
India is one of the top fishing nations with over 28 million inland and marine fisheries. It is also one of the founding members of the FAO, whose headquarters is in Rome.
India’s embassy in Italy, which revealed the development on social media platform X, formerly Twitter, observed that the country’s inclusion as a member of the committee “would give much-needed balance & perspective to the global narratives concerning fisheries governance & management (especially for artisanal & small scale fisheries)”.
India got elected as the First Vice Chair of the FAO COFI Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management. Being one of the top fishing nations with over 28 million inland & marine fishers; India's role in this crucial Sub-Committee as the representative of Global South (1/2) @MEAIndia
— India in Italy (@IndiainItaly) January 19, 2024
At the opening of the meeting’s virtual plenary session this week, FAO director-general QU Dongyu said, ‘Improving global fisheries management remains crucial to restore ecosystems to a healthy and productive state and to protect the long-term supply of aquatic foods.”
“This improvement also includes eliminating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing and on addressing the impacts of the climate crisis, and biodiversity degradation that are also heavily impacting aquatic and coastal ecosystems and dependent communities,” he added.
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Growing dominance of Chinese fishing vessels
In October last year, the European Parliament released a report highlighting China’s distant-water fishing fleet, largest globally, and its Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) fishing practices. China is the leading country on the IUU rankings.
Over 60 percent of Beijing’s vessels are involved in IUU fishing worldwide. China also consumes around 36 percent of total global fish production and catches 15.2 million tonnes of marine life annually, a massive 20 percent of the world’s annual catch, based on UN data.
China ranked top of the top ten global capture producers in 2020 from marine sources, according to the FAO.
But there have also been growing instances of its involvement in friction in the high seas. In December, the Philippines accused Beijing of attacking its fishing vessels near the Scarborough Shoal, with water guns, in the South China Sea. A boat with the Filipino military chief on board was reportedly rammed by the Chinese coast guard in this episode.
The two countries are locked in a tense standoff over the past year, over Beijing’s sweeping claims in the South China Sea as well as the contested Second Thomas Shoal in the Spratly Islands.
(Edited by Tony Rai)
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