CCAMLR

The use of trade-related measures, including catch and/or trade documentation schemes and the imposition of trade sanctions on vessels or Flag States failing to comply with the conservation and management measures of RFBs, has increased noticeably over the last decade. Experience has shown that trade-related measures have a role to play in improving catch estimates and addressing IUU fishing. There is even some evidence that trade sanctions have provided incentives for some countries to join RFBs and/or to co-operate in the implementation of the conservation and management measures of RFBs. In recent years UNGA resolutions on sustainable fisheries urged “States, individually and through regional fisheries management organizations and arrangements, to adopt and implement internationally agreed market-related measures in accordance with international law, including principles rights and obligations established in the WTO agreements, as called for in the IPOA-IUU.” CCAMLR has already introduced a series of trade related measures to combat IUU such as CDS, however there remains evidence that IUU activities continue in the Convention area and undermine the efforts of the Commission for the Conservation of the Antarctic Marine Living Resources. Thus trade and market measures remain an important element that the commission has still not used and through which CCAMLR and its members can seek to promote the Convention’s conservation objectives.

The issue of bioprospecting has been a constant item on the agenda of ATCM since 2003. Last June, ATCM XXXI discussed the report from an Intersessional Contact Group (ICG) that was established to examine the issue of Biological Prospecting in the Antarctic Treaty Area. Although increasingly used in International legal and policy frameworks addressing genetic resources, the term bioprospecting is not defined in any international convention or agreement. Indeed, there remains a range of views in the literature and in policy circles as to what bioprospecting involves. Definitions differ largely on how far ‘bioprospecting’ extends down the commercialisation path, and whether it includes the development process of the biocompound through to full scale commercialization and marketing. This makes it difficult to generalize any legal implications of “bioprospecting” and even harder to draw implications of this activity on resource management. Much of the debate to date in relation to marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdiction has centred on evidence of emerging commercial interest in the genetic resources of the deep sea. The private sector involvement in research related to marine resources may have delayed the publication of research results, which would explain the lack of publicly available information on genetic resources from the deep sea and in particular from Southern Ocean. This also raises the question of the public availability of data in the framework of the Antarctic Treaty which promotes free scientific information exchange. The paper provides a summary of information on research and commercialised products arising from biological samples that were sourced from the Antarctic region provided by the Antarctic Biological Prospecting Database. 56% of the records in the database originate from the marine environment of the Southern Ocean. Krill make up 60% of the marine records, while fish and other vertebrates come in second at 10%. Of those records, the majority relate to fish, with one record relating to the King Penguin. The rest of the records include marine algae (10%), sponges and tunicates (7%), and bacteria (6%). Finally the paper discusses some the evolving aspects of the regulations of bioprospecting of marine genetic resources beyond national jurisdiction and the relevance of some CCAMLR provisions, in particular the Convention’s reporting requirements outlined in Article 20 and monitoring requirement pursuant to Article 2.

Because of the unique context of the Southern Ocean, and the potential impact of Global Change on its ecosystems, Antarctic marine biodiversity information has to be widely published, immediately accessible, and carefully checked. To answer this need, the SCAR Marine Biodiversity Information Network (SCAR-MarBIN) manages since 2005 a dedicated data portal, www.scarmarbin.be, which provides free and open access to this information. The two main achievements of SCAR-MarBIN are the development of a central Register of Antarctic Marine Species (RAMS: 13,000 taxa) and of a distributed network of databases, which aggregates the information on the web portal (90 datasets; 1,000,000 records). SCAR-MarBIN is designed to act as a long-term repository, safeguarding the legacy of the IPY collaborative efforts, and to spread this knowledge within and beyond the present and future Antarctic communities. Almost entirely funded by the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO), SCAR-MarBIN is presently seeking to broaden its support basis. It plans to do so by establishing a consortium of partners willing to provide funding (financial or in-kind), on an equitable basis, to sustain and further the services SCAR-MarBIN presently offers.

In the Southern Ocean fisheries are increasingly being exploited while the effects of fishing are becoming obscured more and more by climate factors that in themselves are changing marine populations and communities, thus confounding management. It is timely for CCAMLR to develop a network of MPAs, with initial inclusion of the well-researched Ross Sea, the area of the Southern Ocean having relatively little human interference so far. Under present climate change scenarios, it could be among the last stretches of the world’s oceans where sea ice remains an important part of the system. The Ross Sea, therefore, represents a refuge both for science, historical value, and a diverse, sea-ice associated biotic community inhabiting neritic waters.

ASOC submitted a paper to the June meeting of the International Whaling Commission in Santiago outlining the reasons why the IWC, in concert with CCAMLR and other appropriate international bodies, should develop a Management Plan for the Southern Ocean Whale Sanctuary. This was made available as an Opening Statement in accordance with IWC rules. Following the IWC meeting, ASOC prepared an updated version of the paper, which is now in circulation to all of the governments participating in the IWC’s Small Working Group. ASOC is sharing this information paper with the CCAMLR community. In this context, ASOC notes that in August the IWC and CCAMLR Scientific Committees held a joint workshop to share scientific information and methodologies for modeling the Southern Ocean. ASOC hopes that this laid a good foundation for further collaborative work., and looks forward to the report of that workshop and future joint work.

Last year the Commission considered a proposal for a Conservation Measure concerning the adoption of a trade measure that will promote compliance with CCAMLR’s agreed upon rules to bring sustainable fishing. The proposal received the support of all but one State. ASOC would like to support the adoption of this Conservation Measure by the Commission at its XXVII Meeting, and clarify why the adoption of such a measure is a positive step for CCAMLR. ASOC reviews in this paper the relevant international legal framework, and concludes that a measure such as the one proposed does not challenge in any way the existing international legal regime, including neither the rules of the WTO nor the rules and principles of CCAMLR. On the contrary, there is full international support to taking trade measures to combat IUU fishing.

Climate change has emerged as an important topic in Antarctic research over the past decade, but little in the way of policy or operational change has resulted at CCAMLR. Over the past 50 years major alterations of the ecological workings of the Southern Ocean have been underway. These changes are accelerating as time passes, including regional changes in sea ice persistence and extent. The Western Antarctic Peninsula has warmed more than four times faster than the average rate of Earth’s overall warming making it the region that is experiencing the most rapid warming on the planet: Future reductions in sea ice will be among the most immediate changes, and likely will lead to major alteration in the distribution and abundance of those species whose natural history patterns are closely tied to sea ice. "The uncertainty in climate predictions leads to uncertainty in projections of impacts, but increases in temperatures and reductions in winter sea ice would undoubtedly affect the reproduction, growth and development of some keystone fish species such as silverfish and toothfish (or high Antarctic fish species) and Antarctic krill (Cheung et al., 2008), as well as changing the habitat characteristics of many co-occurring and dependent species." To date, at the last CCAMLR meeting the Commission requested the Scientific Committee to provide advice on the issue of climate change. The Scientific Committee needs to increase its work on climate change impacts in order to consider the consequences of a range of scenarios. One of the most important aspects is to identify ways by which climate change impacts can be distinguished from fishing effects, on which the SC requested advice from the Working Group on Ecosystem Management and Monitoring. ASOC requests Members to adopt a Resolution acknowledging the various adverse impacts of climate change on the Southern Ocean, to pledge to apply a highly precautionary approach to management in the context of the unknowns of climate change, and to include in this approach the establishment in the next few years of a network of Marine Protected Areas of ecologically significant size as refuges where species can best adapt to climate change without confounding pressures from fishing mortality.