First Session of the COFI Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management - Opening Remarks

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen,

I am pleased to welcome you to this first Session of the Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management, which was established by the FAO Committee on Fisheries in 2022 and endorsed by the FAO Ministerial Conference in 2023.

The Sub-Committee aims at providing technical and policy guidance on fisheries governance and management to advance the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and we all have a role to play in ensuring the Sub-Committee fulfils its mandate and achieves its objectives, within the broader mandate of FAO.

Fisheries and aquaculture play a crucial role in providing millions of people with food, nutrition, employment, and cultural identity. The production of aquatic foods continues to increase, and consumption keeps growing.

Over 500 million people globally depend, at least partially, on fisheries for their livelihoods - nearly half of them women, if you consider the whole value chain.

This shows how the sector significantly contributes to global food security, livelihoods, and economic development, and to achieving the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, particularly SDG 2 (No Hunger) and SDG 14 (Life Below Water).

Many countries, including many developing countries and Small Island Developing States (SIDS), are especially dependent on capture fisheries, both coastal and inland.

While the annual global fisheries production has remained largely stable since the mid-1990s at about 91 million tonnes, with some 40 percent of this production from small-scale fisheries, capture fisheries face significant challenges.

According to FAO’s latest assessment, while 65 percent of fish stocks were within biological sustainable levels, 35 percent were estimated to be at unsustainable levels - a proportion that has been increasing since the 1970s.

Effective fisheries management has been proven to successfully rebuild stocks and increase catches within ecosystem boundaries.

Indeed, sustainably rebuilding overfished stocks could increase fisheries production by 16.5 million tonnes, boosting global food security and, at the same time, reducing pressures on land production.

Improving global fisheries management remains crucial to restore ecosystems to a healthy and productive state and to protect the long-term supply of aquatic foods.

This improvement also includes eliminating illegal, unreported, and unregulated fishing, and on addressing the impacts of the climate crisis, and biodiversity degradation that are also heavily impacting aquatic and coastal ecosystems and dependent communities.

Dear Colleagues,

The Sub-Committee on Fisheries Management will play an important role in addressing these global and complex issues, promoting effective fisheries management, and supporting FAO Members to ensure capture fisheries are environmentally, socially, and economically sustainable - with a special focus on small-scale fisheries.

The Sub-Committee will identify and discuss major trends and issues in fisheries management that require measures and make recommendations to the Committee on Fisheries (COFI) to help advance implementation of the FAO Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries and achieve the vision set out in the FAO Strategic Framework 2022-31 for better production, better nutrition, a better environment, and a better life, leaving no one behind.

The Sub-Committee will also foster collaboration among partners, promote harmonization and collective action, and endorse policies to assist Members design and implement sustainable practices in fisheries management.

The work of the Sub-Committee will guide FAO’s Blue Transformation roadmap and its core objective of ensuring that global fisheries resources are efficiently and effectively managed.

It will allow Members to recognize the diversity of fisheries and their management systems and the various ways in which the sector contributes to food security, nutrition, livelihoods, and inclusive economic growth, while minimizing negative environmental impacts. In other words, it will continue to contribute to producing more with less.

The success of this Sub-Committee will depend on the supports and commitment of each of us, and the outcomes of this First Session will lay the groundwork for future work.

I wish you a fruitful meeting and successful outcomes.

Thank you.