Fisheries Exploitation in the Indian Ocean: Threats and Opportunities

16. The Future for Indian Ocean Fisheries

The Future for Indian Ocean Fisheries 325 16 THE FUTURE FOR INDIAN OCEAN FISHERIES Sanjay Chaturvedi, Vijay Sakhuja and Dennis Rumley Man has taken fish fr om nature for millennia and millions still r ely on fishing and fish for their income and nutritional quality of their diet. However, without a concerted effort of the global community to improve fisheries management, the world is under imminent thr eat of a collapse of some of its main fisheries, endangering the livelihoods of these millions, reducing foreign exchange earnings of several developing countries, and ravaging the health of the oceans. Public and international awar eness has been raised by an ever incr easing stream of evidence that many of the world’s fisheries ar e over fished, catches ar e declining, and fishers’ livelihoods are degrading along with natural ecosystems they exploit. (The World Bank, Saving Fish and Fishers, 2004) A central message emanating loud and clear fr om this volume is that ecologically sustainable and socially just development and management of Indian Ocean fisheries demand and deserve nothing less than a paradigm shift in terms of both per ceptions and policies of major stakeholders. A major policy challenge in the Indian Ocean (“Ocean of the South”) is to 16 Fisheries Exploitation 10/28/09, 12:47 PM 325 326 Sanjay Chaturvedi, Vijay Sakhuja and Dennis Rumley identify a collective regional interest for fisheries and develop accordingly integrated management policies that link ecology and society, and which incorporate individuals, communities, agencies, states, and regimes into a holistic cooperative endeavour. This sense of ur gency is being further reinforced both by gr owing scientific evidence of climate change, and various ethical as well as geopolitical considerations arising out of it. Our overall intention in this chapter is to r eflect briefly but critically on the problems and prospects of putting into place an Action Plan for sustainable Indian Ocean fisheries. All that we intend to do her e is to visualize a new architecture of regional action plan with its major pillars resting on poverty reduction, equitable and socially just economic gr owth, and the pr otection of r egional and global commons. Central to our endeavour is the argument that classical-traditional conceptualizations of sovereignty (along with its territorially trapped trinity of authority , legitimacy, effectiveness) are severely restricted in their capacity to “manage” or “govern” a resource that, by its very natur e, is boundary defying, and would increasingly be so as climate change unfolds in its various ramifications. What we particularly aim at in this chapter is to focus sharply on climate change and its enormous impact on fisheries r esource exploitation, as well as fisheries policy frameworks and directions in the Indian Ocean. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) too has issued a note of caution on the r epercussions of climate change on the fisheries and aquaculture within the br oader and deeper context of food security , especially for developing countries, where about 42 million people work directly in the sector, and 2.8 billion depend on fish pr oducts for 20 per cent of animal protein. Southeast Asia has almost one-third of the world’s mapped coral reefs, many of which are already undergoing rapid habitat destruction. The impacts of climate change will further exacerbate that trend, and impact on millions of people dependent on those reefs (Macchi 2008). Erosion of fringing reefs would disturb lagoon ecology as lagoons become less distinct from surrounding oceans. Mangrove habitats might also be damaged. Such changes could reduce fishing potential to alarming levels, especially in the absence of pr oactive policies and ef fective implementation at various levels. SEARCHING FOR A NEW PARADIGM: CHALLENGES BEFORE SUSTAINABLE INDIAN OCEAN FISHERIES As graphically br ought out in considerable detail by the W orld Bank Report entitled, Saving Fish and Fisheries: Towards Sustainable and Equitable 16 Fisheries Exploitation 10/28/09, 12:47 PM 326 The Future for Indian Ocean Fisheries 327 Governance of the Global Fishing Sector (2004), it is against the backdr op of fisheries having noticeably declined or collapsed over the last decade that the developed as well as developing countries have demonstrated increasing willingness to improve their fisheries management policies and practices. The nature and scope of the fishing crisis worldwide is amply supported by the following: (a) The evidence of overfishing is steadily and for cefully accumulating even as global fish-catching capacity in many countries...