In February, Seychelles became the first country to comply with an international standard that aims to make governments’ management of their fisheries more transparent. The goal of the Fisheries Transparency Initiative (FiTI) standard is to improve oversight and public accountability. Seychelles, with an exclusive economic zone of 1.37 million square kilometers (500,000 square miles), has an economy built on tourism and fisheries, including a thriving tuna fishery. The FiTI framework, through its 12 requirements, lays down what information about a country’s fisheries sector public authorities should publish online. This includes fisheries-related regulations, deals that give foreign actors access to a country’s fisheries resources, employment statistics, and information about beneficial owners of businesses in the sector. “We’re very good at providing statistics on the catch, the revenue is well accounted for, fisheries legislation and policy are all available,” Philippe Michaud, chair of the National Multi-Stakeholder Group tasked with implementing FiTI in Seychelles, told Mongabay. “We are a little bit lacking in information on employment and perhaps even labor standards. We need to improve on that. The information on beneficial ownership is available but not necessarily public,” said Michaud, who is also a consultant to the Seychellois fisheries ministry. In Port Victoria Seychelles, a stevedore prepares tuna to be lifted off of a vessel via net and crane. Image by UN Women/Ryan Brown via Flickr (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Opacity makes sustainable management of a country’s fisheries resources challenging. It can conceal overfishing, poor labor standards and lopsided agreements that privilege foreign actors at…This article was originally published on Mongabay
Seychelles becomes first country to comply with fisheries transparency standard
