Election 2020: Prioritizing Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing as a Threat to International Security
By Marc Zlomek
In his remarks to the 75th Session of the United Nations General Assembly, U.S. President Trump called out China for overfishing other country’s waters. The United States Coast Guard’s Strategic Outlook on Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated (IUU) Fishing, which was released less than a week before the President’s remarks to the United Nations, makes a detailed argument for why IUU fishing is a threat to international security. The flagrancy and scale of IUU fishing tramples sovereign rights, undermines the rule of law, and robs coastal states of a valuable economic resource. In this age of global great power competition, IUU fishing should be seen as an international security threat and should be given appropriate priority by the next administration, irrespective of whether Donald Trump or Joe Biden occupies the Oval Office.
Between June and September of this year, a fleet of approximately 300 Chinese fishing vessels loitered on the edge of Ecuador’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ). Part V of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea provides that an EEZ may extend up to 200 nautical miles from the shores of the coastal state. The coastal state has sovereign rights over the natural resources within the EEZ. Over the course of the summer, vessels from the Chinese fishing fleet would routinely “go black” by shutting off the transponders to their Automated Information Systems before sliding into Ecuador’s EEZ to plunder fish. As recently stated by Admiral Craig Faller, Commander of the U.S. Southern Command, during a CSIS panel discussion, “As a mariner with decades of experience I can tell you the only time that happens in that kind of frequency and that length is to cover up illegal activity.” On the other side of the globe, China has intertwined its fishing fleet with maritime militias in furtherance of its unlawful attempts to adversely possess large portions of the South China Sea. China’s fishing fleet, which is the largest in the world with nearly 17,000 vessels, has also ravaged fishing grounds of African and Pacific Island nations. A 2019 Stimson Center report recognized that China’s distant water fishing fleet accounted for nearly 40% of global distant water fishing activity.
By design, or through willful ignorance, China has turned a blind eye to the practices of its distant water fishing fleet. This has led to sustained and scaled violations against the sovereign rights of vulnerable coastal states around the globe. The scale of those violations has been greatly magnified through generous subsidies. State subsidies to the Chinese fishing fleet in 2016 were worth more than the total of all other nation’s fishing subsidies combined. If the Chinese fishing fleet is allowed to continue with its unchecked disregard for the sovereign rights of coastal states, it will only embolden China’s aggressive behavior.
From the publication of Hugo Grotius’ Mare Liberum in 1609, to the 1958 Convention on the High Seas and the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, the world has benefited from a commonly accepted maritime legal order. China’s actions in the South China Sea have long made clear its disregard for the law of the sea. China’s massive distant water fishing fleet is exporting that disregard for a maritime rules-based order across the world’s oceans. This in turn will serve to undermine the maritime legal order more generally. By way of example, Chinese behavior in the South China Sea has led to an environment where the practice of ramming or sinking of vessels is now been employed by both Vietnam and Indonesia.
Industrial scale IUU fishing robs coastal states of a critical economic resource. A 2019 World Resources Institute report estimated that the impact of the illicit fish trade in the Pacific alone may cost as much as $21 Billion annually. The loss of current revenue and the increased potential for long-term depletion of poached fish stocks inflicts real harm upon the coastal state’s fishermen and the larger coastal communities that would otherwise benefit from the economic multiplier driven by a healthy local fishing economy. Readers of this forum are all too aware of the interplay between economic depression, crime, and political instability.
Industrial scale IUU fishing is a not a threat that the United States can successfully combat alone. Indeed, both unsustainable fishing practices and the erosion of the rules-based maritime order that stems from the state sanction of such practices, requires a multi-state response. The United States must act in concert with partners around the globe that value their fishing grounds and recognize the importance of law amongst nations. Such a response will require buy-in from the President. While our nation faces many challenges at home and abroad, whoever occupies the West Wing on January 20th, 2021 would be wise to give due attention to the global fight against IUU fishing.
Captain Marc Zlomek, U.S. Coast Guard, is currently a Military Fellow at the Fletcher School. He has served in a variety of operational and legal assignments within the Coast Guard. He has also been assigned to the Department of State’s Office of Ocean and Polar Affairs, served as the general counsel for a major counterdrug task force, and worked as a staff attorney for Multi-National Force Iraq. He holds degrees from the United States Coast Guard Academy, Tulane University, and U.C. Berkeley.
Cover Photo is by U.S Pacific Fleet and is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0.
