Previous Page Table of Contents Next Page


ANNEX 3
Opening address by Kenneth C. Lucas
Assistant Director-General, Fisheries Department, FAO

Inland Fisheries - The Rediscovered Resources

First let me say that it is with a distinct sense of délà vu that I find myself in this gathering, concentrating on the topic of the allocation of inland fishery resources. Even after 16 months at FAO the problems of the fisheries of the industrialized nations. and very specifically the items on this agenda have a very familiar ring. In fact if I had not had a full night's sleep last night, there might be a danger that I would find myself giving an address on British Columbia Salmon Enhancement, on salmon fishery closures in Eastern Canada, or other preoccupations of the job I had before this one.

Before going any further, let me transmit to you the best wishes of Mr Edouard Saouma, Director-General of the Food and Agriculture Organization on whose behalf I am here today. And let me express too, on behalf of all the delegates here assembled, our appreciation to our host, the Government of France, for welcoming us here and for their generous hospitality. I also want to say a special word of thanks to the Conseil Supérieur de la Pêche, the Fédération de Pêche de l'Allier and the National Angling Club for the very efficient arrangements they have made which are obviously the result of a great deal of hard work.

I also want to welcome the representatives of national and international recreational and commercial fishing organizations who have come here from North America, from France and other parts of Europe, and even from Latin America. Your involvement with this gathering is essential to our success. We need your help.

I think we also owe a special vote of thanks to the person or persons who chose Vichy as the site for this meeting. If we wanted to find the one milieu in which we could discover all the right symbols and examples of the challenges, opportunities and problems of managing inland fisheries we could not have come up with a better location than this.

To begin with the geography itself is instructive. Here, several hundred kilometres from sea water, we are nevertheless in the presence of an important element of the marine fisheries. At this time of the year I am told we can go to the Allier River and find fish which spend a considerable part of their lives in the ocean - the Atlantic salmon. The message of geography, in this instance, is one that not only laymen but fish managers, would do well to keep in mind. Marine and inland fisheries are not two separate worlds.

Also, the Allier is a living example of the opportunities and, unhappily, of many of the problems besetting the world's inland fisheries. Before coming to Vichy for this event, I was fortunate enough to happen on an interesting paper about the Allier River and its salmon, written by one of your panel leaders, Mr Robin Cuinat of the Conseil Supérieur de la Pêche, the organization which has fought so valiantly and so well to protect the salmon in this region. Mr Cuinat tells a story which will strike a responsive chord in anyone, on this side of the Atlantic or the other, whose professional role has been to defend the inland fisheries. A hundred years ago, annual salmon runs in the Loire-Allier River system were about 100 000 fish. Today they are down to between 1 000 and 2 000, and in spite of the dedicated efforts of the Conseil Supérieur de la Pêche, the salmon of these waters are still in a state of siege, still an embattled species.

The salmon have dwindled in these waters for reasons that can roughly be divided into two classes: national and international.

In France, as in the United States, as in Canada, as in so many other industrialized countries, not only the salmon, but the inland fisheries have found themselves squeezed by what some people define as competing uses for water.

Another cause of the decline of salmon in the Allier is overfishing. Not just in French rivers and streams, not just in France's new exclusive economic zones, but - as Mr Cuinat demonstrates in his paper - overfishing, on the other side of the Atlantic, off West Greenland. And in those waters, of course, the problems of the Allier literally meet and overlap with those of the salmon of eastern Canada and the northeastern United States. These are serious challenges. But perhaps they serve a useful purpose in imposing upon us the discipline of expanding our thinking beyond traditional boundaries: national, provincial, state, departmental - and beyond those other unhelpful imaginary lines drawn in the past between ocean fisheries and inland fisheries.

In FAO in very recent times, as I am sure you all know, our focus of attention has been directed on the radically new situation created in world marine fisheries by the adoption of 200-mi fishing zones by over 90 nations over the past couple of years. Today an area two thirds of the land surface of the earth has changed its status from “international” to “national” in terms of who owns the fish and, very important, who is responsible for managing the fish. Ninety-nine percent of the world's ocean fisheries - 99 percent of the fish now being exploited - are contained within these new zones of national fisheries jurisdiction.

It is useful for anyone interested in the future prospects of the inland fisheries to keep in mind the implications of this seaward expansion of national sovereignty over the fisheries. These revolutionary changes in world fisheries jurisdiction have come about in the setting of a consensus reached at the current UN Law of the Sea Conference. It is important to remember, though, that what gives the extension of fisheries jurisdiction its acceptance, one might even say its respectability, is the demonstrated critical need to manage the fisheries in these waters. This was not a matter of some resource imperialists deciding that it was time to pull off a spectacular sea grab. If that were the justification, given the balance of forces at play, it is highly unlikely that the idea of the 200-mi zone would have the support it now enjoys. Extended fisheries jurisdiction has come about because of a crisis in the fisheries brought about by the converging impact of high demand for fish, and modern, highly efficient fishing technology. Given the clout of today's fishing fleets, given the capacity to decimate even the largest and most resilient of stocks, it was clear that the fisheries could not survive if they were left to manage themselves. Nations sat up and understood that a valuable, finite resource was slipping away. They woke up to the value of that resource. They began, in some cases for the first time, to think about the economic and social implications of perhaps losing the fisheries.

What does all this have to do with inland fisheries? A great deal.

Speaking not only to the specialized and knowledgeable audience gathered in this hall, but to the much larger audience beyond - the decision-makers and the publics of the countries represented - I think it is a good time to point something out. The same logic which dictates assessing the value of marine fisheries, the same reasoning which justifies protecting them from devastation whether by overfishing or by loss of their habitats, applies to the freshwater fisheries of the world. They are both components of the national heritage. They both require stewardship. Although they may differ in detail, the problems of marine and fresh water fisheries are essentially the same - they are problems of mismanagement, or to use a less specialized word, problems of neglect. One can reasonably hope that these governments, these publics, these shapers of national will, will see that not just the fisheries of 200-mi zones, but the fisheries of lakes, and rivers and streams urgently need and obviously merit, a higher place in the scheme of national priorities.

The extended fishing zone revolution has implications for the theoreticians of fisheries management. Until very recently little serious effort had been made to integrate analyses of commercial and sport fisheries and so construct the common base of theory we must have if we are going to manage two activities growing out of a common resource base. Now with marine commercial fisheries becoming national property on a vastly expanded scale, and so assuming most of the characteristics and management parameters of inland fisheries, the theoretical models you are developing will have a growing relevance to the problems of marine fishery management. These growing similarities will lead to a more serious integration of the theoretical base for the management of both sectors. The experience gained, some of it painfully, in the inland fisheries, may well be useful to countries beginning the complicated task of managing their new 200-mi zones, particularly as they set about making the multitude of choices and decisions inherent in managing resources for optimum economic and social benefit. Marine fishery managers in these countries must resolve problems of allocation not only between individual fisheries but within fisheries. They too need to formulate the principles on which to resolve - for the best benefit of society - competition for the use of fisheries habitat between the fisheries and other sectors. These are all matters that have been the preoccupation, in the inland fishery sectory, of many of the fields of expertise represented here in this meeting.

Recent developments on both sides of the Atlantic allow us to hope that at the same time as these sweeping changes are taking place off the coasts, we are building up the necessary momentum for comprehensive management of the inland fisheries. With the Law of the Sea Conference apparently at last in sight of its final port of call, there is a real chance for a world convention which would protect the salmon from high-seas fishing. We see, in France, in Canada and in the United States, plans for large enhancement programmes for salmon - ambitious but nevertheless totally realistic schemes based on a careful weighing of costs and benefits and opportunities. In these countries and in others we can detect signs of greater public awareness of the value of these natural assets and a greater sense of activism about protecting them.

We can also see an improvement in communication between those who must cooperate in the development and management of inland fisheries - governments, scientists, fishermen, consumers and others. This meeting is itself a manifestation of that very healthy trend. It can help maintain the momentum already built up and more important, give it a more precise, scientific focus.

I am going to end with a shopping list from FAO and EIFAC. Out of this meeting we hope will come answers to some critical questions and we want to specify a few.

-   we want to know how to get good, reliable and comparable data on which to base decisions about inland fisheries;

-   we want to know how to develop a serviceable policy model of economic and social factors on which societies can make the right choices about the best uses of inland fish and water resources;

-   we want to know how and when fisheries managers can develop sensible policies for the integrated management and development of sport and commercial fisheries, and

-   we want specific proposals for programmes to acquire this information and achieve these objectives.

It is a challenging set of requirements and the time is short, so I will let you get on with it.

Good luck in your endeavours.


Previous Page Top of Page Next Page