Africa's oceans - always overlooked?

Just a quick blog entry from me today. Often when looking at the relationship between food and water in Africa many overlook the oceans and the abundance of resources they provide. Academics tend to focus on irrigation potentials, water harvesting solution, trade links, virtual water etc. which are primarily to do with the land. In West Africa fish provide many people with their daily animal protein and the fishery sector provides employment and income for 7 million people (Belhabib et al).  Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 14 aims to ‘conserve and sustainably use the oceans, seas and marine resources for sustainable development’ but despite the importance of the fishery sector in West Africa, the region has seen fish stocks decline, driven by over-exploitation and illegal fishing (Daniels et al).  See the video below for a quick overview:

Fish decline has been especially prevalent in Ghana, where inland fisheries are being over exploited and illegal fishing is depleting the fish stocks of the country. In September President Akufo-Addo gave a speech where he stated the country is at risk of being fish deficient unless illegal fishing is curtailed and Ghana’s marine and inland fisheries are used in a more sustainable way. To combat these problems Akufo-Addo has instated a Fisheries Management Plan to reduce the pressure on marine stock by ‘strengthening participatory decision making, increasing effective legislation and meeting regional and international obligations’. While this sounds very nice in theory I believe that in reality it will be the local fisherman and local communities who will be the worst hit and the major industrial users will continue to exploit the waters.

In November 2017 the Environmental Justice Foundation of Ghana received delegates from the EU as part of a 3-year project called ‘Far Dwuma Nkɔdo’ or ‘Securing Sustainable Fisheries’ in English, in collaboration with local NGO ‘Hen Mpoano’. These delegates visited 2 districts (Egyaa and Gomoa Fetteh) which rely heavily on fishing for food and for income, but whose livelihoods are under threat from industrial activity which has led to conflict between local small-scale fishers and the large industrial vessels. The industrial boats compete for space in Ghana’s overfished waters and are increasingly entering zones reserved for artisanal fishers, negatively impacting communities and causing tension amongst the 2 groups. Although this project aims to empower communities and fishermen, increase the documentation and increase the prosecution of illegal fishing activities, in practice I think this will be hard to achieve due to a lack of funding. Despite the fact that the government has pledged to create a ‘Fisheries Management Plan’ the reality is that a local NGO is having to help fund separate projects as the government has ignored the communities worst hit by industrial fishing.

Greenpeace, in collaboration with Frontiers in Marine Science, estimate that West Africa loses $2.3 billion annually to illegal fishing because governments don’t communicate with each other and have inadequate monitoring systems due to high costs. Illegal fishing could amount to as much as 65% of the legal catch reported from West Africa and poses a serious concern not only for food security and but also species loss. The Madeiran sardine (Sardinella maderensis) is now listed as vulnerable according to the IUCN and the endangered Cassava Croaker (Pseudotolithus senegalensis) is estimated to have declined by 30-60% over the past 10 years primarily due to overfishing. Blatant violation of catch limits and safety precautions stall long-term economic growth and West Africa is especially vulnerable to illegal fishing because of inadequate monitoring systems. Corruption in certain countries allows illegal fishing to continue without sanctions, for example the director of a South Africa based fishing company ‘Hout Bay Fishing Industries’ was convicted of 301 charges of bribery of fisheries inspectors. Institutionalised corruption is able to trickle through agencies and illegal fishers are able to forge paper catch documents and bribe inspectors to accept entry or illegal fish as legal product (Hauck and Kroese).

How should West Africa deal with this? It’s obviously an incredibly complicated issue coupled with the fact that many West African countries lack the funding to implement global information systems which can monitor and track fish stock. I think a good first step to take would be for West African governments to share more information and inspection resources amongst them as in the majority of cases where illegal fishing vessels are caught there has been cooperation between authorities from several countries who have tracked vessels internationally and for long periods of time.

Unfortunately, unless West Africa start to take active steps to (a) reduce illegal fishing and (b) use their fisheries more sustainably, their fish stocks will continue to dwindle, endangering fish populations reducing employment opportunities and ultimately reducing food security.

(Okay maybe not such a quick entry!)