International cooperation in the implementation of trade measures to combat illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing

Abstract

Illegal, unreported and unregulated (IUU) fishing remains the main global threat to the conservation and sustainable management of living marine resources. In practice, the fight against these illegal activities requires increased involvement of market States as a result of the ineffectiveness of the flag State controls. The relevance of market measures against IUU fishing stems from two factors: the main incentive of IUU fishing is economic and fish is one of the most traded food products. Therefore, an effective means of discouraging these predatory fishing practices is to increase the costs of these activities or reduce the benefits of IUU operators. But the implementation of these measures requires international cooperation. For this reason, this paper focuses on examining the practice of regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), as these institutions have been pioneers in the adoption of trade measures to deny access to markets of IUU fish. These measures are more effective than those adopted unilaterally by States because they have been approved in a multilateral framework as representing RFMOs and offer more guarantees to respect the WTO rules.