14 May, 2012.
Keynore Remarks by the Director General of the Forum Fisheries Agency(FFA), Mr Su'a N.F. Tanielu at the Opening of the 81st Annual Meeting of the Official Forum Fisheries Committe(FFC 81) Nuku'alofa, Tonga, 14 -18 May, 2012.
- His Royal Highness Crown Prince Tupouto'a ‘Ulukalala
- Hon. Prime Minister of Tonga, Lord Tu'ivakano
- Deputy Prime Minister, Hon. Samiu Vaipulu
- The Hon. Lord Vaea, Minister of Agriculture, Forestry, Fisheries and Food.
- Your Excellencies and representatives of the Diplomatic Corp
- Rev. Falematapule Lomu
- CEOs and senior officials of the Government of Tonga
- FFC Chairperson, Faalavaau Perina Sila
- Distinguished Heads of FFA delegations and members of your delegations
- FFC Observers and Guests
- FFA DDG and staff
- Ladies and gentlemen
I would like to start by joining our gracious hosts in welcoming you all to the Kingdom of Tonga and thank you for the opportunity to make some remarks at the opening of this 81st Officials Forum Fisheries Committee meeting.
At the outset, let me on behalf of the FFA once again express our sincere condolences to the royal family, the government and peoples of Tonga on the passing of the late King George Tupou V, a visionary leader for democracy and development in your nation and our region.
May I also express our sincere gratitude to the Government of Tonga for the warm welcome and hospitality extended to us since our arrival on your beautiful shores, particularly the services provided to support our meetings that started last week and continue on for the rest of this week. I acknowledge here the tireless efforts and support from the CEO for MAFFF, Dr Matoto, Vilimo Fakalolo, Ana Taholo and their team for their preparations and making us feel at home here in your friendly islands.
Background
FFC 81 is a very special FFC for me personally and for this region as a whole. It was here in the Kingdom of Tonga that our Leaders in 2007 made a decision to review the Pacific Plan to reflect Fisheries as being our regions number one priority. The Vava'u Declaration on Pacific Fisheries, "Our Fish, Our Future", was endorsed by our Leaders and has since become this region's high level guiding policy for fisheries management, development and compliance. It was also here in 2007, that the Leaders reinforced the decision made by their forefathers in 1978 to establish FFA as a Pillar One regional organization with a special mandate to be the custodian of our fisheries.
The Vavau Declaration on Fisheries was the Leaders and our regions challenge to FFA.
This challenge was informed by FFA's 30 years of existence as a regional fisheries organization with a well defined Constitution including its governance structure and a longterm vision of fisheries for our people, a Governing Council that is resolute in its decision making, a Secretariat that is vibrant with a good appreciation of the strategic environment, a very well established relationship with the donor community including our very own Australia and New Zealand, member governments who are prepared to make unconditional commitments to FFA at all levels of government including making compromises for national priorities against regional initiatives, internationally recognized experience in negotiation at the national, sub-regional, regional and international levels, members appreciation of fisheries dynamics including those of management regimes, economic and market opportunities, a determination to ensure that all fisheries decisions are based on and informed by good science and with great relevance to our special requirements and development aspirations, continuous efforts to develop and implement robust Monitoring, Control and Surveillance (MCS) regimes to reduce economic opportunities lost due to IUU activities, a well defined role in the development and implementation of international fisheries and fisheries related instruments including those of UNCLOS, UNFSA, WCPFC, and FAO Code of Conduct for responsible fisheries, and most importantly, by the principles of regional solidarity and strength through cooperation.
Achievements
With all this wealth of experience and wisdom, FFA responds very appropriately to our Leaders decisions;
We now have the FFA Regional Tuna Management and Development Strategy (RTMADS) as a high level guiding Strategy which principles underpin our work in fisheries management, development and compliance. In support of RTMADS is the FFA Monitoring Control and Surveillance Strategy which is driven by the need to operationalise MCS initiatives at the national, sub-regional and regional levels. Whilst these Strategies are spearheaded by the FFA Secretariat, their implementation is specific to FFA members with continuous oversight by the FFA Governing Council, FFC.
FFA featured prominently in the work of the WCPFC
resulting in what we now have as a functional Tuna RFMO. The Commission has a Secretariat with rules of procedures that guide its work and those of its subsidiary bodies. Most notable of course, is the FFA involvement in the development of more than 20 CMMs which WCPFC now utilizes to implement the principles of the Convention.
We are currently redefining the role and mandate of the Niue Treaty so that a region wide arrangement is in place to deal with MCS with a special recognition of the role played by our developed partners, namely Australia, New Zealand, USA and France in providing the capabilities and capacity to make MCS practical and more effective.
The FFA Minimum Terms and Conditions (MTCs) have been continually revised to reflect our ongoing efforts to enhance MCS, including recent work to make our VMS a members friendly tool as well as improvements to the operation of our FFA vessel registry. The Regional Fisheries Surveillance Centre (RFSC) is fully operational and has demonstrated its ability to provide the necessary support to our sub-regional surveillance operations which is believed to have a deterrent effect on Illegal Unreported and Unregulated (IUU) activities in the region. Like wise, our Regional Observer Program has been greatly enhanced to provide us with the capacity to address our obligations under the WCPFC, the UST and those of our own national interests.
The conservation and management policies that we now have in place to control fisheries within the Exclusive Economic Zones of our members are proven robust and effective. For example, the Vessel Day Scheme is beginning to bring in huge economic benefits to our Purse Seine fishing members, and the land mark 3IA policy is not only an aberration in conventional fisheries management, but the magnitude of the challenges it presents to both coastal states and distant water fishing partners in terms of responsibility is quite challenging. The allocation of resources and rights within the EEZs of our members, in my opinion, is a simple matter of continuous evolution in the context of our current work and towards the direction of rights based management principles.
As our fisheries policy frameworks become more stringent, there is no doubt that activities within our waters are more consistent with internationally accepted fisheries management practices as well as creating an increasing awareness for and recognition by our partners of our special requirements and development aspirations.
Economic opportunities present themselves as our ongoing efforts to tighten our control over activities within our EEZs continue and the fact that more than 2 million tons or more that 50% of the global tuna catch is harvested from our region which is also home to what is believed to be the last healthy fish stocks in the world.
Recognizing how important these opportunities are to our members, we enhance the capacity of our fisheries development framework by introducing the Regional Economic Integration of Pacific Tune Fisheries (REI) concept that was designed to take our fisheries development initiatives to the next level in order for us to take a fair share of this multi-billion dollar fisheries, and also to achieve our long term goal of maximizing economic benefits from the sustainable harvest of fisheries within our region. Whilst REI explore opportunities for commercial development, we continue with the assistance of our DEVFISH II Program, with our core activities such as the establishment of Competent Authorities at the national level, promoting trade initiatives including the creation of market opportunities utilizing our competitive advantage over this resource and developing our own capacity to cope with the dynamics of global trade particularly in commodities such as fisheries.
Our efforts to strengthen our national legislations have been rewarded with most, if not all, of our members now having their laws on fisheries either fully reviewed or completely overhauled in order for them to be able to deal with the demands of proving non compliance beyond doubt. FFA members are now prosecuting non compliance with confidence and in most cases, resulting in the generation of revenues from fines and penalties.
Over the past 6 years, we have witnessed with pride the effective and efficient participation of our members in regional and international forum, particularly the meetings of WCPFC and its subsidiary bodies. Of great significance to our members at this point in time is the renegotiation of the US Treaty which to date, is already yielding outcomes that can only be achieved with negotiators of the highest calibres and may I dare say that FFA members are firmly nested in that category. As a result, the Secretariat has made all efforts to ensure that we only supplement national capacity in the most strategic of manners. Furthermore, our capacity development efforts will continue with special emphasis on lessons learnt and the specific demands of the issues at hand, including the provision of assistance to fisheries institution reviews at the national level.
It is with great satisfaction that I wish to mention how our corporate governance which consist of FFC and the Secretariat evolved over the period demonstrating efficiency in the systems with good outcomes. In 2007, FFC made a decision to review the structure and work of the FFA Governing Council by ensuring that FFC's Agenda is focused on fisheries strategic issues. This forms the basis for the recommendations to the Ministerial FFC. Two years later, the FFC Ministerial was held separately from the FFC Officials so that ample time is given to Ministers to consider the outcomes and recommendations from the Officials FFC.
In the meantime, the Secretariat was put under the microscope to determine how well it responds to the priorities of our members and partners as well as the dynamics of regional and global fisheries. The Secretariat underwent 3 independent reviews during the period. First, the trilateral review with AusAid and NZAID, second by the EU and third by FFC. Our Corporate Governance at the second tier level was therefore thoroughly reformed. We now have systems such as the FFA 3 year Statement of Intent with well define objectives, plan of actions with timelines, measures in place such as indicators to monitor and evaluate our performance, risk analysis and management capabilities to address non achievement issues. This provides our members and partners with unprecedented visibility of the Secretariat operation, and more importantly, the allocation of resources and the impact that our work has had at the national level. More recently, we introduced the Country Service Level Agreement concept to enhance our relationship with our members, promoting transparency and accountability in the work of the Secretariat while addressing the identified priorities of the respective members.
I can therefore conclude that the FFA Corporate Governance is quite robust and is already being rewarded with good outcomes including having in place mechanisms for multi-year funding agreements between the Secretariat and AusAid, NZAid, and that of the Japanese Promotion Fund.
Challenges
Colleagues, despite our good intentions and our best effort to ensure that we achieve sustainable fisheries and maximising economic benefits from sustainable development, we continue to face challenges. Some of which are inherent to fisheries management, while some are geo political in nature.
Fisheries of course has more than a dollar value to our nations as it is also part of our culture and livelihood and as custodians of this important resource we have responsibility of preserving it not only for ourselves but for generations to come.
I believe that all the challenges we have faced throughout the life of the organisation, can be turned into opportunities that will make our region stronger as we work towards the common objective of "enjoying the highest levels of social and economic benefits for our people through the sustainable development of our fisheries resources".
Conclusion
The key to our continued progress and development has been your good leadership, vision and sound advice which has ensured that the ‘Pacific Way' ideals of consensus and regional solidarity have remained. This is fundamental to moving ahead with our vision and goals enshrined in our Convention and brought alive by our Strategic Plan, Statement of Intent and Annual Work Programme and Budget
In conclusion, let me once again express our sincere appreciation to our gracious host for agreeing to hold both the Annual Officials and Ministerial FFCs here and we look forward to experience the great hospitality that the Tongan people are known for. Let me also wish you a successful FFC 81.
May our good Lord continue to be the guide on the important work ahead of us and bless each and everyone of us.
Malo Aupito and Tangio tumas
>>> View Opening Day PHOTO ALBUM HERE
END
Issued by the: Ministry of Information and Communications, Nuku'alofa, 2012.
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17 May, 2012. The Government of Japan will host the Sixth Pacific Islands Leaders Meeting, PALM6, in Nago City, Okinawa, from 25 - 26 May 2012 with leaders from 16 Pacific islands countries including the Kingdom of Tonga. Tongan delegation will be led by Lord Tu'ivakano, Prime Minister of Tonga.
15 May, 2012. A friend in need is a friend indeed. This widely quoted but truthful proverb was most manifestly embodied by the Pacific Island Countries (PICs) in the wake of the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami last year. We will never forget the compassionate encouragement and assistance from the people of Tonga and other PICs at the time of the unprecedented national crisis. Here again, on behalf of the people of Japan, I wish to express our deepest gratitude to everyone concerned.
