16 - The Future for Indian Ocean Fisheries

Summary

Man has taken fish from nature for millennia and millions still rely on fishing and fish for their income and nutritional quality of their diet. However, without a concerted effort of the global community to improve fisheries management, the world is under imminent threat of a collapse of some of its main fisheries, endangering the livelihoods of these millions, reducing foreign exchange earnings of several developing countries, and ravaging the health of the oceans. Public and international awareness has been raised by an ever increasing stream of evidence that many of the world's fisheries are over fished, catches are declining, and fishers’ livelihoods are degrading along with natural ecosystems they exploit.

(The World Bank, Saving Fish and Fishers, 2004)

A central message emanating loud and clear from this volume is that ecologically sustainable and socially just development and management of Indian Ocean fisheries demand and deserve nothing less than a paradigm shift in terms of both perceptions and policies of major stakeholders. A major policy challenge in the Indian Ocean (“Ocean of the South”) is to identify a collective regional interest for fisheries and develop accordingly integrated management policies that link ecology and society, and which incorporate individuals, communities, agencies, states, and regimes into a holistic cooperative endeavour. This sense of urgency is being further reinforced both by growing scientific evidence of climate change, and various ethical as well as geopolitical considerations arising out of it.

Our overall intention in this chapter is to reflect briefly but critically on the problems and prospects of putting into place an Action Plan for sustainable Indian Ocean fisheries. All that we intend to do here is to visualize a new architecture of regional action plan with its major pillars resting on poverty reduction, equitable and socially just economic growth, and the protection of regional and global commons.