The United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) is coordinating a tuna project on fisheries management and biodiversity conservation, set to run from 2013 to 2018, on Wednesday.
The aim is to protect what is the most valuable fishery resource caught in areas beyond national jurisdiction, considering catches of the most important tuna species alone are worth over $10 billion annually.
“Today’s decision sets the stage for action on a global scale that will address both an economic and environmental threat to one of the world’s most important commercial fish species,” said Global Environment Facility (GEF) CEO Naoko Ishii, who approved the project.
Funding for the implementation phase of the project will come from the GEF, an international institution uniting 183 countries to address global environmental issues and support sustainable development, which has approved funding.
GEF has committed $50 million in support of the program, leveraging an additional $270m of co-financing.
To date, $30m in GEF grants has leveraged more than $150m of co-financing in support of the project, which forms part of a broader multi-stakeholder initiative working to ensure that these resources are harvested in a sustainable way.
Partners range from long-time sustainability groups like the World Wildlife Fund US and the Marine Stewardship Council (MSC) to newcomers such as the Global Seafood Sustainability Initiative (GSSI). The tuna industry is also a supporter, the UN News Centre said.
“I am pleased that we are able to bring together both public and private partners in this project, which give us a fighting chance to work on a scale sufficient to reverse negative trends threatening the global tuna fishery and the ocean environment that sustains it,” Ishi said.
Some specific aims include management improvement on the high seas. This means conserving biodiversity of related ecosystems and species and reducing illegal catches of the highly prized fish.
Another aim is to change the fishing mentality on the high seas, said the FAO.
“High-seas fisheries support the food security and livelihoods of millions of people worldwide,” said Arni Mathiesen, FAO assistant director-general for fisheries and aquaculture.
“Through collective action at all levels and broad cooperation that optimizes the use of scarce resources, this project – and the wider Common Oceans initiative – will help move the world away from ‘the race to fish’ and towards implementation of an ecosystem approach,” said Mathiesen.
“This is crucial to ensuring the future well-being and productivity of these vital marine ecosystems. Early successes will create incentives for donors and agencies to further invest in these types of catalytic projects.”