Tough choices coming
Posted by Andrew via Email at 12:40 PM, July 29, 2004
 |
| (C) Greenpeace/Natalie Behring |
"True, the good old days have all gone now, and the fish is harder to get," Johnny Kirata, Deputy Director of the Kiribati Fisheries Division, says a little sadly. "We have to not deteriorate that condition further."
His office has fish posters and painted pictures of Kiribati islands on the walls each with vital statistics taped underneath. The desk is piled high with documents. Outside the blue Ministry of Natural Resources Development building, a lone satellite dish sits in high grass. Kirata continues, "We have already placed a 60 mile closed area for all fishing vessels around the capital Tarawa, around Christmas Island, around all those populated islands in Kiribati."
Larger photo
He is talking about large commercial fishing vessels. Twenty percent of Kiribati's GDP comes from the long liners, purse seiners, and the last pole and line fishing fleet in the world fishing in its waters. But their citizens rarely work on or own these ships, and they don't have the shore-based facilities to support them - so only this small portion of the money made from Kiribati fish stocks is ever seen by its people.
Although small compared to the profits being made by overseas companies, the licensing money amounts to between 30 and 50 percent of government expenditures. So even though the need to manage the fish stocks sustainably is clearly recognized, there is also enormous pressure on the government to get as much money as possible out of Kiribati's main resource.
"As you can see, the resource itself is an important one, yet we also have a government that needs hard cash," says Kirata. "There must be a balance in trying to manage and conserve the resource, and at the same time reap the maximum benefit from it."
Unfortunately, only so many fish can be taken out before the stocks drop dangerously low. Local artisanal fishermen, who use small boats to fish around the coast, have told us that the big commercial vessels used to overfish close to shore. They say there are still fewer fish, and that the fish they are catching are smaller, despite the government's current policy of keeping the industrial scale vessels away from inhabited islands.
At 3.5 million square kilometres (2.2 million sq miles), there is plenty of ocean in Kiribati's Exclusive Economic Zone for everyone. The real question though is, "Are there enough fish?" and the answer may not be what everyone wants to hear.
"The Standing Committee on Tuna reports, maybe an over-exploitation of Big Eye stocks, and probably a full exploitation of Yellow Fin stocks." Explains Kirata, "There's a real concern, especially because most of the vessels that we have in our waters are long liners, and according to the findings, as well, the biggest negative impact comes from the long line vessels. Also, purse seining, but mostly because of the big size in fish that they take."
Caught between economic imperatives, and biological realities, what is a cash strapped nation with a growing population to do? One idea they are considering is for Kiribati to have its own long line fishing fleet as a way to keep more of the profits in the country. Naturally, this raises its own problems. Such as, where to get the large capital investment needed. Kirata acknowledges that because economic conditions and infrastructure are better elsewhere, it may not be easy to attract foreign investment to Kiribati, unless incentives like lower license fees and tax havens are offered.
Also to be considered, are the local artisanal fishermen, which in Kiribati is pretty much everyone and their brother. And most of the ones we spoke to were wary of the big commercial ships. They worry, for example, that the ships would flood the local market with cheap fish, making it impossible for them to compete.
"Such big scale development has to target overseas markets because it is true the fishermen have a livelihood to maintain. The companies can not just come in and over saturate the local market with their catch", assures Kirata. However, he also concedes, "But then when you have these kind of developments they [local fishermen] may not be working for themselves, they may be working for others instead. So they have mixed feelings on it."
A management plan, developed by the Fisheries Division, that covers these issues has been presented to the government. It contains a range of options, which the government will have to choose between to move forward. No one knows what the right choices are, only that they will effect many generations, of fish and men, to come.
