SU’A N.F. TANIELU - FFA Director General, Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency  





This year the importance of what we do here at the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) is underlined by the challenging times we live in.
The global economic crisis has created scarce resources and economic pressures which will impact on the sustainable development, management and control of tuna—our key resource here in the Pacific Islands and worth $4 billion a year.
At the same time, the region has an increasingly layered fisheries management regime—with the participation of the Pacific Islands at the sub-regional level with arrangements and treaties, at FFC, at the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission and the international consultations on the establishment of a South Pacific Regional Fisheries Management Organisation, among others.
The ongoing burden on Pacific Islands of participating in and nationally implementing management decisions through legislative and policy responses, remain risks that we must manage to ensure Pacific Islands interests are protected in the broader fisheries management regime. Implementation of the latest WCPFC decisions by small islands developing states, presents a major challenge.
However, despite the challenges of the economic crisis and increasing implementation demands, in several ways I am optimistic that fisheries is in a stronger position than many other areas to weather economic storms. I think our work as members of the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA) puts us in a strong position to respond creatively and constructively to the challenges we face.
Why do I think this? Well, first, we have a major strength and that is regional solidarity.
FFA this year celebrates our 30th anniversary—we acknowledge the long history of solidarity we have and the many people that have made it possible along the way, including our leaders who had the vision to create a regional organisation to be the custodian of our fisheries resources and the commitment to follow it through.
We stated this more recently in the Vav’au Declaration and in the Leaders Communiqué in 2008 and we provided evidence of it in our implementation of the Pacific Plan and other significant regional decisions.
Most recently, we showed our regional solidarity through our successes at the WCPFC in relation to bigeye/yellowfin tuna, addressing illegal fishing and the special needs of small islands developing states—not an easy undertaking when dealing with 32 different Commission members, many under heavy pressure from their national industries not to take any measures which may limit their capacity to fish.
I would like to thank all the leaders for their direction during these times and their individual and collective roles in strengthening regional solidarity.
Secondly, we have ongoing funding support and I want to use this opportunity to express our collective appreciation for the support of our major aid donors, particularly Australia and New Zealand, as well as the Global Environment Facility of the United Nations Development Programme (for their funding of the Oceanic Fisheries Management Project), the European Union (for their funding of the DevFish project), the Overseas Fishery Cooperation Foundation (OFCF) of Japan, Taiwan, the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) which provide the relevant support we need to build national capacity and regional solidarity for sustainable tuna fisheries.
Finally, I think FFA has an increasingly strategic focus to our discussions here and the work of the Secretariat. And it is the strategic thinking we do through initiatives like the Regional Tuna Management and Development Strategy and the Monitoring, Control and Surveillance Strategy and our new initiatives around fisheries development that help us identify emerging threats and prepare for them in future.
We are in the midst of a global economic crisis but Pacific Islands can strengthen our position to weather the economic crisis by standing together as many small islands developing states, rather than each trying to withstand the effects alone.
We come together as FFA members with different perspectives and various opinions about how to go forward, but at the same time we come together as friends, understanding that while friends may disagree, they retain their relationships, their shared interests and their common future. We just have to manage this and good friends will always find a way of doing this.
With the right support and thinking behind us, we can find ways to turn this crisis into opportunities, to consolidate our strengths and to give us a chance to work to fulfill FFA’s vision of enjoying the highest level of economic and social benefits that is compatible with the sustainable use of our tuna resources.