TUVALU’S Minister for Natural Resources Development, Sa’aga Talu Teafa has highlighted that the Pacific region comprises 96 per-cent of ocean and therefore the vitalness of its fisheries resources for food security.
Minister Teafa was delivering his opening remarks on “Climate Change and Fisheries: Impacts and Innovative Solutions” on the case of Tuvalu at a side event of Honiara Summit on Tuesday.
“This helps to put into context just how vital our fisheries resources are for food security, livelihoods, employment and as a key driver for economic development. Our region is also the world’s largest tuna fishery. It is also the world’s healthiest tuna fishery.
“So, the long-term sustainability of the fisheries is paramount. The work of the region through the Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) and the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission must ensure that our fish stocks are sustainable in the long term in order to safeguard the livelihoods of our people,” Minister Teafa said.
He added that on Climate Change, Pacific Islands Forum (PIF) Leaders in 2018 recognised that climate change presents the single greatest threat to the livelihood, security and wellbeing of Pacific people and thereby reaffirmed the importance of immediate urgent action to combat climate change.
“Putting it into context, Tuvalu is approximately 25 square kilometres of land in total across nine atoll islands. Much of Tuvalu is less than one meter above high spring tide levels making the threat of sea level rise very real for the residents of Tuvalu. It is currently forecast that over half of Tuvalu’s capital will be flooded by 2050 due to sea level rise putting the survival of Tuvalu and our people, at risk.
“Tuvalu’s fisheries can be divided into the large-scale commercial fishery in our Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), mostly purse seine fishing for tuna, which generates most of our revenue; and the small-scale artisanal fishery around each island which is crucial for our food security. The small-scale fishery catches reef and lagoon species, particularly for subsistence; but around 60% of the catch is also tuna caught in the open ocean,” Minister Teafa said.
He said climate change is having an impact on both of these fisheries.
“Very briefly the centre of the tuna fishery is moving to the east. In the short term this may work to our advantage as fish availability may increase for a few years.
“In the longer term, though, our EEZ will become less attractive and more fish will be found in the high seas to the East of us. For our inshore reef and lagoon fisheries the picture is even worse.
“These are being depleted due to the destruction of our coral reefs by the warmer and more acid ocean conditions,” he said.
But Minister Teafa said there are solutions to these damaging changes.
“For the oceanic fishery, we believe that the allocation of fishing rights on the high seas must favour the small island developing states who are impacted by the reduction of fishing opportunities in their EEZs.
“We do not have much confidence that the distant water fishing nations will agree to this because they feel sorry for us, so we coastal states must work together to develop ways of extending our control of our EEZs into the high seas. One obvious way to do this is to develop our national fleets and progressively displace the distant water operators,” Minister Teafa said.
On inshore marine resources, Minister Teafa said, “we have developed community-based management plans for each of our islands which aim to maintain stocks through simple management measures.
“These include protected areas, which perhaps have the best chance of resisting climate change impacts, as well as other measures such as size limits for key species. At the same time, helping our fishers to safely access oceanic fish instead of inshore species can maintain fish supplies while reducing pressure on inshore stocks.
“Our programmes to support this include the free distribution of sea safety grab bags – which have already saved a number of lives – as well as deploying inshore Fish Aggregating Devices (FADs) to make tuna and similar species more easily available.”
By AGNES MENANOPO
Solomon Star, Honiara
