World Summit on Sustainable Development Department of Public Information - News and Media Services Division - New York
	Johannesburg, South Africa 26 August-4 September 2002	30 August 2002

PRESS CONFERENCE ON 'FLAGS OF CONVENIENCE'   It was time to get serious about a sustainable maritime industry and that meant clamping down on "flags of convenience" ships, which flew flags of nations to which they had no connection and then went out to sea and did whatever they pleased, said members of the International Transport Workers' Federation (ITF), governments and Greenpeace today at a Summit press conference to launch the Federation's new report: "More Troubled Waters". Flags of convenience vessels, or what some called the navigation underbelly of globalization, bought country flags to which they had no affiliation "dirt cheap" and then over-fished, illegally fished and polluted the seas, John Bainbridge of ITF said. He demanded that those ships, which defied international law and ran contrary to sustainable fishing and shipping, be stopped. Some 80 per cent of the world's trade involved shipping, and 60 per cent of the ships flew flags of convenience, he said. Mr. Bainbridge was joined by: John Ballard, Director of Water and Land, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs of the United Kingdom; Horst Kleinschmidt, Deputy Director General, Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, Marine and Coastal Management of South Africa; and Matthew Gianni, Oceans Campaign Coordinator of Greenpeace. The ITF is a global federation of 604 transport trade unions in 137 countries, representing approximately 5 million workers. Continuing, he explained that flags of convenience were sold in secrecy and enabled people to avoid liability, either personally or of their fishing vessel. It also allowed them to "get around" the resource management of any country seeking to control its fishing resources. The oceans were a delicate ecosystem easily damaged by pollution and over-fishing. Recently, instruments to protect them, such as the United Nations Law of the Sea, had been strengthened, but those were not being ratified or implemented. The key issue was the ability of fishing vessels to plunder ocean resources, particularly of developing countries, without any chance of owner identification or accountability. Country flags of Panama, which accounted for one-fifth of the world's fleet, appeared regularly, and Belize. Other areas of concern were substandard ships, which might cause pollution. In the case of a ship that spilled oil all over the beaches of France, there had been no way to determine the owner, until eventually "he put his own hand up". Mr. Gianni said the problem involved multinational corporations seeking out the country that would exercise the least control over ships. On the fisheries side, 10 to 15 per cent of the world's commercial fleet was registered to flags of convenience and that number was growing. At the same time, 70 per cent of the world's fisheries were overexploited. The United Nations had declared that all ocean ecosystems were under stress, except two (West Indian Ocean and the South Pacific), from over-fishing, and scientists were increasingly sounding the alarm for the "wholesale collapse" of ocean ecosystems, owing to over-fishing. He said he was here to call on countries to close ports and markets involved and cease shipping operations with flags of convenience vessels. A news report earlier this week that talked about a breakthrough on the outcome text in the oceans section was untrue. In fact, the agreement reached this week would perpetuate the cycle of over-fishing and fish stocks depletion and decline. For the outcome text, negotiators used a provision from the Law of the Sea Convention negotiated 20 years ago and in force in 1996, and then said that did not have to be implemented until 2015, and then, only when possible. Until flags of convenience were eliminated and a genuine link was established between owners and flags, it would not be possible to deal with matters of substandard ships and resource protection around the world's coastlines, Mr. Ballard warned. Tackling the flags of convenience issue required a concerted, international effort, for which new partnerships must be created to eliminate unauthorized fishing, strengthen regional fisheries organizations and impose State controls. The European Commission was proposing a new distant water strategy for developing countries. Mr. Kleinschmidt said he keenly supported the calls made at this press conference. As far as illegal fishing was concerned, he said that the space in square kilometres that constituted South Africa's economic exclusion zone was two-thirds the land mass of the whole country; that gave an idea of how difficult it was to monitor over-fishing and illegal fishing in its waters. Recently, his Government introduced a new fisheries rights bill, but it was pointless to have a rational system on the one hand, and theft or poaching or illegal fishing on the other. Replying to a question, Mr. Bainbridge said the Federation's membership did not like being put out of work because they abided by the rules. Then, they found flags of convenience vessels coming in and "taking the catch" they had "stepped back from". The ITF was working with the European Union to find a solution. Mr. Gianni added that rather than go out of business by abiding by over-fishing rules, a lot of boats were re-flagging and then fishing completely outside the rules established by regional fisheries organizations. Press Conferences Summit News