The United States, the EU, Japan, Philippines, Indonesia, and Colombia earlier this month pledged to scale up efforts to counteract overcapacity of fishing fleets.

“We note that when overcapacity contributes to overfishing, it constitutes a serious threat to the conservation and sustainable exploitation of living marine resources in the world’s oceans,” read the joint statement, inked by the six nations at an international conference on sustainable fisheries and management fisheries organised by Greece, which currently holds the EU’s rotating presidency.

The signatories stressed the importance of international cooperation in this area, including using instruments adopted at the global level such as the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s (FAO) Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries. Efforts made by Regional Fisheries Management Organisations (RFMOs) to provide binding frameworks for managing fishing capacity in a sustainable way were also recognised.

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