Sea Control - Sea Control 308 - Maritime Security & Cameroon with Dr. Maurice Beseng

Episode Date: January 9, 2022

Links1. “The Nature and Scope of Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated Fishing and Fisheries Crime in Cameroon: Implications for Maritime Security” by Maurice Beseng, African Security, 2021.2. Sea Control 256 – Reporting From the Sea With Ian Urbina by Walker Mills, CIMSEC, June 6, 20213. Dr. Beseng’s website. 

Hey folks, Sherrod here. Today, Walker's your host. He's joined by Sheffield University's own Dr. Maurice Besang to discuss IUU fishing and maritime security in Cameroon's waters. This episode was edited and produced by Dr. Ed Salo. Speaking of audio editors, we're looking to add to our team, so if you're interested, please email us at seacontrol at simsec.org with your resume. SimSec, we believe victory in the maritime domain starts with great ideas communicated compellingly. Write, fight, win. Beginning with Giving Tuesday and going through now, this will be the last one of these announcements until next holiday season, we're holding our annual Right Fight Win holiday donation campaign to support SimSec into the new year. SimSec's proud to say since our founding, our content has been free and always will be, especially as more websites build paywalls or pursue intrusive advertising. We hope those in the SimSec community who value our free no-ad model will consider supporting us with monthly donations.

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and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts. On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimber's men. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Welcome back aboard the Sea Control Podcast from the Center for International Maritime Security. Today, we're talking with Dr. Maurice Bissang, a researcher at Sheffield University and a visiting fellow in maritime security at Coventry University. We're going to be talking about his recent article, The Nature and Scope of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Fisheries Crime in Cameroon, implications for maritime security that was published in the journal african security maurice welcome aboard can you go ahead and introduce yourself a bit more formally to our

listeners thank you so much uh for inviting me to this podcast i've been a fan of it i've followed a few like you said initially my name is maurice besang i am a research associate at the sheffield Institute for International Development, University of Sheffield, and a visiting research fellow in maritime security at Coventry University, Centre for Trust, East and Social Relations. I research broadly on ocean governance, but more particularly on issues related to the political ecologies of maritime security practices and policies in the Gulf of Guinea, focusing mainly now on Cameroon. In other words, I try to understand concerns related to issues of equity and justice in contemporary maritime security governance in the Gulf of Guinea.

We're glad to have you aboard. Before we start, I'd like to remind our listeners that the opinions presented here are solely our own and should not be taken as representative of any of the institutions that we are associated with. So, Maurice, can you start us off by kind of contextualizing the size and the importance of the fisheries and blue economy sector in Cameroon? Cameroon has, I would say, a sizable maritime economy. The fisheries sector in particular is characterized into marine and inland fisheries. Capture fisheries production, for example, in 2018 was almost 300,000 metric tons. and 70% of those was maritime. There is also a growing aquaculture sector, which in 2018 contributed close to 6,000 tonnes,

up from 3,000 tonnes in 2014. Marine fishery is therefore the largest contributor of fish. Cameroon economically, socially and in food security terms, as we are going to explore later. The sector is broadly categorized into industrial and small-scale fisheries. And the small-scale sector is also made up of the semi-industrial and traditional artisanal fishery sectors. The difference is just in the size of semi-industrial and traditional artisanal, the size of the boat used. Semi-industrial also run on engine, which is about 40 horsepower.

And the traditional artisanal fishery is most locally docked canoes that are driven by sail or paddle. Nationally, in terms of economic importance, the fishery sector since 2016, I would say, contributes on average about 3% of Cameroon GDP, which in 2019 was just over 39 billion US dollars. And in terms of employment, it is also a significant employer with over, I think there are about 34,000 fisher folks working in the sector. And within that, women also make up a significant majority in terms of the employment it offers to, say, fish processing, sales and distribution around the country. And in terms of its food and nutritional value, it's also significant. Protein sources from fish is more than those from animal protein. So it's quite significant, especially for coastal communities who only depend on fish as a major source of protein. Originally, I would say the importance of the sector is that Cameroon is quite unique in the sense that the sector is dominated by foreign fishers, artisanal, small-scale fishers in particular.

There are over 80% of the people who fish in Cameroonian waters in the small-scale sector from different countries, mainly Nigeria, which make up over 70%, as the Ghanaians, Benin and Togolese national fishing. So you see that the sector provides employment for so many Africans in the sub-region. Most of the fish, of course, that is

produced in Cameroon because of its international nature, I would say regional nature, is destined for export to these countries. So it helps to feed the population in other countries, providing vital source of protein. I think we'll go to explore these issues

further, but that just gives you the context of the importance of the sector to Cameroon. So your article focused on maritime crime and fisheries crime. So now, can you kind of describe the challenges and the criminal activities that you see or you saw in your research in Cameroon that kind of threaten the sector? Just before I elaborate more on the trade, it's just to give you the significance of the Cameroon maritime space and why that significance, I would say, also attracts a lot of challenges nationally and even regionally. Even though Cameroon has a relatively very small maritime space compared to neighbors like Nigeria and Equatorial Guinea, for example, the coastline is only 402 kilometers long, the continental

share of about 10,000 kilometers, an exclusive economic zone of about 15,400 kilometers squared. but you know its location it is strategic you know it is the midpoint between West and Central Africa and it's a gateway to most of the economies especially for landlocked countries in Central African region

especially Chad and Central African Republic Cameroon part of Creeby and Douala plays a pivotal role in terms of supplying goods and services to these landlocked countries if you consider that over 90% of goods destined for Central Africa

since the African Republic passed through the Camunian ports of Douala. So that underlines some of its significant terms of the maritime space. But this strategic advantage also brings challenges, mainly in security terms. Focusing on the fisheries sector, for example, which my article was based on, Mainly the issue of illegal, unregulated fishing and fish-fish crime. I demonstrated that they are intertwined, they can be interrelated. For example, I would say, previously about 5-10 years ago, the issue of cocaine suffocating along Cameroon coast was rarely spoken of. But now those are recurring issues. Locally, health officials are concerned about drug trafficking and the increased use of cocaine within Cameroon society, especially among the youth.

That comes mainly through the ports and fishing vessels, in my experience, as I discovered, have been used increasingly to transport drugs from Latin America into Douala port, which is then shipped on to other countries within the sub-region and then even to Europe. So the challenges that the fishing sector encounters in terms of illegal fishing related to other crimes is that most vessels, most industrial fishing vessels, either artisanal fishing vessels, either because the fishers are lacking or are not able to fish anymore. So they're using their skills and assets to engage in, say, illegal smuggling of goods between Cameroon and Nigeria and other countries in the sub-region, illegal immigration, for example, and the issue of contraband goods that are being used for illegal trade in the sub-region. So Cameroon is quite pivotal in enforcing or enhancing their illegal criminal activities. It's really interesting, especially the piece about cocaine that you mentioned, because that's usually something that we would associate with the Caribbean or the Eastern Pacific. And we don't talk a lot about flows from Latin America into into Africa. I want to ask kind of as a as a follow up, is Cameroon emblematic of other countries in the Gulf of Guinea? I mean, do they have kind of the same challenges or does Cameroon have a separate set or a more unique set of challenges than other countries in the region?

Broadly, they are quite similar, but I would say Cameroon's case is a bit unique in the sense that because of its strategic location and because the sector is dominated by mostly foreign fishers, It provides an extra challenge in terms of the nature of the crime and efforts to police them, if you understand what I mean. So for the past, since 2015, for example, I've been documenting different reports of criminal activities within Cameroon maritime area. Mainly, I'm drawing those data from the Navy's online reports and my discussion with some Navy officers. You see, piracy is quite muted in a sense. Since 2015, I've been documenting those crimes. I have now in my record, in my database,

over 60 incidents of reported crime by the Navy, particularly from the Navy, and a few online reports. But in those 60 records, just two are piracy related. So the rest is either illegal immigration, illegal smuggling of goods, drugs, arms, and then the rampant trading of contraband fuel, which is quite significant in a sense. So, and then the transnational nature of the climb, you know, using the fishery sector in that respect presents the challenge in policing because of the social networks between the fishers in Cameroon and their international networks, say Nigerian fishers and their networks in Nigeria, or Togolese fishers and their networks in Togo. are the same for Ghana and Benin. So that presents an extra challenge for police. So yeah, the crimes are similar to other areas,

but maybe in terms of intensity and the way it is being conducted is a bit different and challenging. You said in your article that overfishing and IUU fishing can make it more difficult for artisanal fishers to make a living and that can kind of drive them into more criminal activity.

Can you talk a little bit about that connection between other types of maritime crime and IOU fishing? Let's look at the notion of fisheries crime. Now, fisheries crime seeks to capture the range of criminal activities that occur along the fisheries value chain, isn't it? So we have, there's a distinction between fishery related crimes,

which are crimes linked to fishing operations, per se, like corruption, forged fishing licenses, tax crimes, inappropriate working conditions within the fishing industry. And then those that are associated to the sector, like using fishing vessels to traffic humans, drugs, and then using that to stage piratical attacks along the coast of Cameroon, for example. So those are some of the crimes that can be linked

to are you fishing or within the fishing industry in that sense. Talking to fishers, you know, because I've had I think I have a unique position in the sense that I lived in one of those communities when I was a child growing up. My uncle was a local artisanal fisher. So I understand the situation, how things were a few decades back and what it is now. And you get

the same frustration talking to local artisanal fishers that if they can't go fishing what do they have left to do you know it is it is a situation where they have the assets they have the skills they understand that their terrain for most uh foreign artisanal fishers some will return to their home countries but those who have already made a home in Cameroon they have to look alternative ways to live. That's when some can use, you know, they will not admit directly to me that they were using their fishing boats to siphon fuel, but you get a sense that when push comes to shove, they will have to do that to survive. So looking at Navy reports, there have been a lot of interception of vessels that are trafficking arms, using fishing vessels to traffic

drugs. And the issue with arms is particularly concerning in the part of Cameroon where I was doing my research, you know, there is a current conflict going on between the Francophone and the English parts of the country. So the army officers are quite worried about that link between fishers in Cameroon, Nigerian fishers who are in Cameroon and their social links in Nigeria because they know that they can use that network to smuggle arms into Camus which can be destined to the groups who are fighting the government for different political agendas. So the fishing industry is quite key in terms of national security issues in Camus.

So it's quite worrying for the government and for local officials within the fishing if they're not close to the Nigerian border, for example. I think that's a link that we've seen others make, that national security is tied to fisheries crime and especially IUU fishing because of the way it gets mixed up with other types of maritime crime. So it's interesting that we're seeing it in Africa as well. You made the distinction earlier that there is artisanal fishers as well as industrial fishing. And is there is there a tension there? And then also, is there a tension between kind of domestic fisher folk and foreign fisher folk coming in and then also foreign vessels coming in?

You know, like there's a phenomenon in Kamuna or Palangza that they use to describe the way some Chinese fishers fish, say Chinese fishing, you know, because for some artisanal fishers, they see Chinese industrial fishers come to local markets to survey the situation. That's the size of fish, then they'll understand where the fish come from so that they will go there, they mainly fish at night, so they'll go there and then catch the fish. So that is creating tension between the two communities. And small-scale fishers also believe that industrial fishers are protected by the Navy when they go out for monitoring and control of operations. and that is largely because those involved to fish industrially in Cameroon you must have a partnership with a local Cameroonian entrepreneur and most of those partners are wealthy elites you know who who strike deals with these industrial fishers to come and fish because there is no Cameroonian who has an industrial fishing vessel so most industrial fishing

vessel over 70 of them are foreign so and you know with this partnership they have instructions maybe to navy officers that this is my vessel coming to fish you have to protect it and so uh for industrial officials it's a frustration that they see i mean for small scale fishers it's a frustration that they see industrial officials violating uh laws that have been put in place to to protect their resources or their environment, but they are not doing anything to counter them. All this is creating tension. I think there is a strong view among artisanal fishers

that particularly Chinese industrial fishers, they are not welcome. They are not the only group who are fishing in Cameroonian waters. They are also industrial fishers from Nigeria, as far as Taiwan. And I had the opportunity to consult some registry, industrial fishing registry, when I was doing my research. There were also vessels registered to Panama, to Greece, and to Russia.

So, but the majority are Chinese industrial fishing. I think that's super interesting because the role of the Chinese distant water fishing fleet is something I wanted to ask about. So I think it's interesting that it's not only arriving to fish, but also kind of almost an industrial sector-specific espionage in local markets. And we did a podcast a couple of months ago about the negative effects that the Chinese distant water fishing fleet is having in Gambia, which seems kind of like a similar situation. So I want to shift now and ask about enforcement. So what does enforcement look like from the Cameroonian military or police or maritime sector, and is it effective? Enforcement is challenging, isn't it? I published another paper that looks at this issue in particular.

On paper, monitoring, control, and surveillance of fishing activities in Cameroon has to be carried out by the Ministry of Livestock, Fisheries, and Animal Industries. through what they call the Brigade for Monitoring and Control of Fishing Activities. That's at the national level. At the regional level now you have the fisheries control centers or the fisheries control post. But in practice it is the Navy and the Delta Rapid Intervention Battalion Force that does monitoring and control at sea. So this shift in the way fisheries operations for example are being policed is uh i know that is all wrapped up in the in the in the response to piracy but that is having a detrimental effect on i would say on an effective fisheries control mechanism in the sense that um in my research i discovered that previously before

the military became involved in monitoring fishing activities for example their fishery centers were effective you know they can do they can carry out impromptu surveillance for example because they were close to the uh the fishers control posts are located within uh artisanal fishing ports or industrial fishing so they can do impromptu surveillance they understand what they are looking for in terms of violations is it the size of fish is it are there other activities associated with that or but within with the navy you know the navy will maybe go out to see a vessel that is

I alluded earlier how it is an official fee that some industrial vessels have been protected. That shift in the Navy, I would say, doing monitoring and control now is a bit, I would say,

a wanting in the sense that in the absence of fisheries control officers winning the team that is doing surveillance, a lot of crucial evidence is missed in terms of the position, the type of fish, the size of fish, other evidence that can maybe implicate more such vessels if they are doing illegal activity or not is crucially missed. To me, like I agreed in that paper, that can be improved by doing a mixed team of not only, say, the Navy and the Delta Intervention Force officers, but also fisheries officers,

fisheries control officers, officers of other departments like the Merchant Marine that are involved in vessel safety, those from labor and social insurance that are involved in monitoring labor abuses on board vessels. So a crucial evidence is missed if it's the Navy that is mostly involved in that. In your conclusion, you write that threats to fisheries can cause a gradual erosion of the locals' way of life. And I thought that was kind of a powerful way to end your article.

Can you explain kind of the long-term effects and the big picture impacts if Cameroon isn't able to better kind of control and address these maritime security issues? I think I can best illustrate this by just giving you this picture, you know. In one of my research trip in Cameroon, in a fishing village,

a fishing, artisanal fishing village called Edinao, I met a local fisher, you know, who had just come back from sea, from fishing. He went fishing, they left home at about 4 a.m. with two other fishers. and they came back it was about 3pm he was showing me on the ground

what they catch for the day it was about 6kg of fish mainly mackerel around that there were women desperately trying to buy from the fish for their own petty businesses and then he told me that as I can see

there is no fish anymore we depend on fish to survive if I can't bring fish home I can't feed my family. These women can't have enough for their businesses. This cannot help the boys I took out for fishing with, which means that our families will suffer, their families will suffer,

and it cannot continue like this. It was quite powerful in the sense that because I looked at him and I looked at the boys and all what I've learned was just there in front of me. I was just thinking, what will these boys do if they go out two, three times and then they come back with the same quantity of fish. They have the skills, they have the knowledge,

they have access to fishing boats. And they know that alternatively, if I use that in fresh smuggling, I can get more money, I can feed my family. So you see the long-term implications of that. Fish scarcity only brings more insecurity, it brings more pain. Without adequate effort

to maybe counter this there will just be more insecurity as people try every way to survive just to ensure that they can they can meet their livelihood needs and at present it's quite worrying because in the time that i've been in cameroon you know you go along fishing communities there's there's there's some sense of tension in the air people are agitated you know what if i don't have enough today what will happen people are threatening to test that that is that is making the government worry you know and the long-term implications of that if people can can bottle up that that sense of frustration anymore it can spill out to to protest and and then unrest and more insecurity so there are efforts to diversify into aquaculture but

That may not be something that many people want. People are used to fishing. That's the way they have been brought up. They want to continue that tradition. And without that, it will be difficult. You've painted a clear case for why, you know, the links between fishing and national security, at least in that part of the world. Unfortunately, we're just about out of time for today. But before we go, I'd like to ask you what you're working on now and where, if anywhere, our listeners can find you online.

Yeah, sure. I'm currently working on a project called AfriCultures. The project seeks to enhance food security in African agricultural systems with the use of remote sensing services. It's quite an interesting project and has a lot of applicability in the maritime environment. That's why my interest is in it. Alongside this, I'm also carrying out research, looking more into the intersection of maritime crime and livelihood challenges for coastal communities. For example, in my website, I think which you've come across,

I'm trying to detail some of these criminal practices. But behind that, I've started to flesh out literature which will be hopefully submitted for publication soon. My website is mauricebessin1.com. Your listeners can also follow me on Twitter or to get some highlights of my recent publication at MUBessing. Awesome. Well, we look forward to your future work

and we'll make sure to throw links to your work and your website below the podcast. I'd like to thank my guest again, Dr. Maurice Bessing, for joining us today to talk about his recent article, The Nature and Scope of Illegal, Unreported, and Unregulated Fishing and Fisheries Crime in Cameroon, Implications for Maritime Security. Take care. © BF-WATCH TV 2021

Thank you.