No fishy tale as Senegal’s rich underwater resources suffer from too much plundering

Date: 04/04/02

By Gareth Harding

IT IS only when you enter the Senegalese city of Mbour from the sea that you realise how dependent this poor West African country is on fish. Bobbing up and down in the harbour are 3,000 pirogues - small hand-made fishing boats - that supply the local population with its major source of protein.

Siré Sall is the owner of one of them. He lives in a two-room shack with his wife and nine children and relies on his daily catch to feed his family.

'It's getting more and more difficult to find fish,' he says. 'We can't compete with the big European boats out there.'

For the past four years heavily subsidised European fishing fleets have been plundering Senegal's rich offshore resources.

In return, the former French colony has received a paltry €12 million a year to help develop its homegrown industry.

Talks aimed at renewing the agreement have been chugging on for almost a year now.

But last week they ground to a halt after Dakar dared to suggest that the EU should dole out significantly more money for hoovering up its severely depleted fish stocks.

The breakdown in negotiations brings both good and bad news for Senegal's 600,000 fishermen, who provide the country with its biggest export earner.

The upside is that deep-sea fish stocks will have a chance to replenish and local boats will have a greater opportunity to land valuable catches such as tuna, shrimp and monkfish.

The downside is that one of the poorest countries in the world will lose a valuable source of income and that EU trawlers will simply be replaced by Russian, Korean and Japanese vessels.

The real question, though, is not how much the EU should be paying to fish in Senegalese waters, but whether it should be doing so in the first place.

A recent study by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) concluded that opening up Senegal's waters to outside fishing boats 'has had a devastating effect on some key stocks, especially those deep-living, coastal species favoured by European consumers'.

UNEP head Klaus Toepfer said that 'unless strict safeguards are in place' fishing agreements with third countries 'can be a costly mistake'.

Senegal is currently trying to work out whether it has lost more than it has gained by signing away its fishing rights to European fleets.

The European Commission argues that it only negotiates access to 'surplus' fishing opportunities. But try telling that to Sall who, like most other Senegalese fisherman, cannot even get to the fish that European boats are gobbling up.

Between 1993-97 the EU spent more than €1 billion of taxpayers' money on fisheries agreements with third countries and a good deal more subsidising European boats to plunder foreign waters.

But, as the Commission's green paper on the future of the Common Fisheries Policy points out, these deals leave a lot to be desired.

'The precautionary principle is rarely mentioned' and 'some fisheries agreements do not offer enough guarantees for the protection of small-scale coastal fisheries', it admits.

This runs counter to the UN International Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, which commits signatories to 'give priority to the nutritional needs of local communities'.

It also flies in the face of the EU treaty, which aims to integrate sustainable development concerns into all policy areas - including fisheries.

The EU has a proud record in the field of development - it is the largest aid donor in the world and the catalyst behind scrapping trade tariffs from the poorest countries. However, all too often, its development goals are compromised by farming and fisheries policies that have a devastating impact on developing countries.

As the EU gears up for a radical reform of both policies it should make sure that the world's poorest people stand to benefit alongside European taxpayers.

For the latter, phasing out farming and fisheries subsidies will shave a couple of euros off the weekly shopping bill.

But for the poor people of countries like Senegal it really is a matter of life and death.

Opinion article on the breakdown in talks at the beginning of April 2002 between the EU and Senegal concerning the renewal of a fishing rights accord which allowed European vessels to fish Senegalese waters.