Integrating fisheries into the development discourse

On 18 September 2000, the 55th Session of the General Assembly issued the United Nations Millennium Declaration. As well as fundamental shared values such as freedom, equality, tolerance and a respect for nature there was a pledge to free “our fellow men, women and children from the abject and dehumanizing conditions of extreme poverty” (UN, 2000:4). To this end a series of objectives, more commonly referred to as the Millennium Development Goals (MDG), was articulated, with the greatest prominence given to the commitment to halve by 2015 the proportion of the world’s population subsisting on an income of less than US$1 a day.1 Two years later, the World Summit on Sustainable Development (WSSD) held in Johannesburg not only reiterated the imperative to eradicate poverty across the developing world, but also signalled the importance of the Earth’s oceans, seas, islands and coastal regions in sustaining economic prosperity and contributing to global food security. Integrated, multidisciplinary and multisectoral national programmes of coastal and ocean management, reinforced by strengthened regional cooperation and coordination mechanisms, were seen as fundamental in protecting natural resources and contributing to economic growth and poverty eradication (UN, 2002:14f f). This is particularly so in Asia and the Pacific region, where capture fisheries and/or aquaculture production are important contributors to GDP in many states where fisheries products are highly traded commodities and per capita fish consumption levels are very high. At the same time, trawl surveys indicate substantive degradation and overfishing of coastal stocks (Sugiyama, Staples and Funge-Smith, 2004: 1ff).