Cover Story
Japan on a War Path Over Fisheries Treaty
But islanders say enough is enough
Japan is running an international campaign of attack on a treaty that Pacific Island countries hope will avert the destruction of their US$2000 million tuna fishing industry by overfishing in the high seas beyond their national fishing zones.
It is targetting individual island countries. It has frozen co-operation with the Pacific Community¹s Oceanic Fisheries Programme in Noumea, and is attacking the treaty at international fisheries meetings. What the Japanese don¹t like, according to regional fisheries officials, is that the treaty, which won¹t begin operating for about five years, will block Japanese fishing boats from fishing as they like. Their boats would be controlled by a planned new fisheries agency. They would have to carry position fixing transmitters so that they could be tracked.
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They would operate under catch limits, their fishing equipment would be prescribed, they would be open to inspection by observers and they could be boarded and arrested for breaking the rules.
Japan, which is fighting also to block whaling bans and bluefin tuna catch limits, hates the thought of being unable to fish the Pacific Ocean as freely as it has in the past.
After complex negotiations, the text of a Convention for the Conservation and Management of Highly Migratory Fish Stocks in the Western and Central Pacific Ocean, was settled at Honolulu in September last year. But at the last session, Japan arrived with an almost entirely new delegation led by Miyako Komatsu, the fisheries ministry official, who headed attacks on whaling and bluefin tuna fishing restrictions.
The Japanese, who take about half the tuna caught in the Pacific, raised so many objections to the convention that basically they were pressing for a renegotiation of the entire text, according to regional fisheries officials. "They were difficult at the last session and have been difficult since," Pacific Magazine was told. "They don't want a framework that facilitates regulated fishing.
They are used to a system where they dominate; where they fish basically how they please. "We tried to do the right thing and protect our resources before they get over-exploited. "It is not fair because the Pacific Islands don¹t have other resources and all we are trying to do is safeguard fish for future generations. "Japan is now going out in a very big way to undermine and rubbish the convention in other international fisheries forums like the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, the Inter-American Tropical Commission and the Food and Agricultural Organsation." The Pacific Community's fisheries research agency in Noumea has the primary responsibility for watching the effect of fishing on fish stocks. Now, the Japanese have halted the supply of data and participation in a standing committee on tuna and billfish. "It is all part of a concerted effort," Pacific Magazine was told. "What they are also doing is having bilateral talks with Forum Fisheries Agency member countries, inviting them to Japan and encouraging them not to ratify the convention. It is definitely being done. It is bad faith and is being destructive." According to a Japanese Ministry of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries paper on the issue, obtained by Pacific Magazine, the convention is so riddled with faults that it unfairly excluded the views of countries to be affected by it, including the European Union, Russia, Indonesia and Latin American states.
Opposition had come also from Korea, while China, France and Tonga, had abstained from voting for the adoption of the convention. It had been negotiated with the participation of states with a "real interest" including Russia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam, and was criticised by a number of countries at the 120th Food and Agricultural Organisation council meeting held last June.
Negotiations had been "undemocratic" and had violated the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea. The Japanese document attacked provisions for the arbitrary boarding of fishing vessels by foreign patrol ships and for on-board observers as something to cause "serious impacts on sustainable fishing" and lead to leakage of commercial confidential information. Catch limit rules would put "excessive burdens" on fishermen. A captain¹s obligation to accept observers on ships and cooperate with them was "contrary" to common sense.
"The convention can only work effectively with the understanding and participation of Asian states, which account for 70 percent of the total catch in the convention area," the document insists. The convention has been signed by 15 of the 16 Forum Fisheries Agency member countries. It needs to be ratified by three signatories north of 20 degrees North and seven countries south of 20 degrees south. It would cover an enormous area from south of Australia, as far eastwards as French Polynesia and Pitcairn Island, and as far north as Hawaii, and westwards to cover the 130th line of longitude west of Papua New Guinea. Under the United Nations Convention on Law of the Sea, countries are allowed to claim ownership and control of fish and other resources in the zone 380 kilometres from their shores. This gives widely scattered island countries like Kiribati, huge zones of more than 3 million square kilometres. Where zones overlap countries agree on boundaries. But there are large areas of ocean, high seas regions, not covered by the 380-kilometre limits. Fishing in these areas is not controlled. The convention would end that freedom. The point is that since tuna and some other species are highly migratory, overfishing, which is happening in the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, leads to the depletion of stocks moving through the 380-kilometre zone.
Several years of meetings to agree on the structure of a supervisory commission, to be located in a place not yet decided, are needed. Membership of the convention is open to all Pacific Islands countries, Australia, New Zealand, the United States, China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Indonesia, Korea, Taiwan, Britain (for Pitcairn Island) and France (for its Pacific territories). There is provision to admit other countries later.
A Forum Fisheries Agency official believes that member countries need to make a strong stand against the Japanese campaign against the convention.
"It is very clearly not for renegotiation," one regional fisheries expert said.
"We negotiated in good faith and in a spirit of cooperation. We are trying our best to accommodate Japanese interests. Many of these matters can only be discussed at the negotiating table.
"There are conditions we are not happy with. We agreed to a much weaker formula for decision making than we would have liked.
"The Pacific Islands agreed on voting concessions demanded by countries worried that they would use their numerical strength to dominate decision-making.
"The Japanese are not the only ones to feel aggrieved," Pacific Magazine was told.
"Basically we say Japan can't treat us like it behaves in other fishing grounds of the world. How they operate elsewhere is not working. Many stocks are depleted and bilateral means of decision-making in international fisheries bodies have failed.
"The Japanese say they don't like the convention because it excludes the European Union.
"The irony is that in September 1999, Japan proposed that we should not license more fleets in the region because basically they wanted to keep it dominated by their own fleet.
"Now, they say they want other people to come in."
While the Komatsu-led Japanese assault team is showing a hard line, Forum Fisheries Agency officials say there is another more conciliatory Japanese body of opinion that believes that Japan could lose access to much of the area of its south and central Pacific fishing grounds, by pushing the official line too far.
