Island Achievers
Command Change at FFA
Setting a Conservation Agenda for Pacific Fisheries
Tuvalu’s former attorney general, Feleti Teo, has succeeded Victorio Uherbelau, of Palau, as the Forum Fisheries Agency’s director while Dr. Barry Pollock, an Australian, succeeded Ian Cartwright as deputy director. It’s a critical time for the FFA as it prepares to work with an embryonic new high seas fisheries agency.
Teo joined the agency late last year, as five years of international negotiations were climaxing in an agreement for a commission to regulate fishing in the western and central Pacific high sea areas outside the exclusive economic zones controlled by the Forum’s 16-member countries.
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Teo, 38, took a law degree from the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and a post graduate law degree from the Australian National University. Five years experience with the FFA’s committee involved him in these complex negotiations among nearly 30 countries.
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The FFA has a critical role to play since the new commission would include distant water fishing nations who would be involved in designing fisheries management and conservation measures, Teo said.
Since FFA and tuna commission work could overlap he is anxious to avoid duplication. "Management and conservation will, I think, set the theme for the next four or five years. The commission will regulate international waters so the major task for the FFA will be to help its members develop their own in-zone management and conservation measures, because there is a need for some compatibility between high seas and in-zone regimes. If we are able to get our members’ regimes in order then as we develop the regime for the international waters there will be only one regime to be compatible with."
