Last year TransparentSea implemented an ‘access to information survey’ in 12 African countries. Several publications are in the pipeline that discuss the implications of this survey and provide a discussion on related policy. However, the following document provides a brief summary of the methods and results.
“Access to information: Survey methods and results“
The “Cluster de Empresas Pesqueras en Países Terceros” has recently shared new data on the activities of its members in foreign countries. This is an industry organisation with 118 members with 321 boats operating in the seas of non-European countries. The data made available includes a list of the vessel names, the companies that they operate under in third countries, aggregated catch data and information on the number of people employed on these boats from the EU and from foreign countries. Continue reading
Last year TransparentSea implemented an access to information survey in 12 African countries. Many thanks to those who participated.
A short article describing the results and implications of the survey is being published by the International Collective in Support of Fishworkers in their journal “Samudra“. The article will appear in the next edition of Samudra in March, and I hope to publish a copy here very soon.
A longer article entitled ‘On access rights and the human rights approach to fisheries’, that draws on this survey, will be submitted to an international journal on fisheries this year. A draft version will be posted here shortly and anyone interested in this work can contact me directly.
Last year the Mauritanian government signed a controversial fisheries agreement with a Chinese state fishing company – Poly Hon Don Fisheries. the agreement allows up to 50 Chinese boats access to Mauritania’s waters for the next 25 years, with seemingly poor regulations to limit fishing intensity. In return the company has committed to investing 100 million dollars in Mauritania’s fishing sector. Continue reading
Following the request for documents held by DG-MARE last year on EU fisheries access agreements, ClientEarth and TransparentSea made a follow-up application. This time we narrowed the request to 6 evaluations to make life easier for DG-MARE and preempt their argument that our request was too time consuming to respond to (which was the case last time). Continue reading
I have recently published a report on transparency and fisheries in Africa. It provides a discussion on the problems associated with poor levels of access to information in fisheries management, and also the limits and limitations of transparency reforms. It concludes with some policy recommendations. A shorter ‘policy brief’ was also published after this report by U4, which considered the possibility of extending the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative to fisheries.
Transparentsea is currently undertaking research on donor spending in Africa for fisheries and marine conservation projects. The aim of the research is to provide the first global view of spending by multilateral and bi-lateral aid organisations and to analyse levels of transparency and accountability. The results of this project will be published towards the end of 2011. Continue reading
