Sea Control - Sea Control 318 - Fish & Ships with Dr. Frédéric Grare (French Version)

Episode Date: February 13, 2022

Links:Fish and Ships: Chinese Fishing and Europe’s Indo-Pacific Strategy by Dr. Frédéric Grare, European Council on Foreign Relations, 24 Aug 2021.

Hey folks, Jared here. We have another dual language episode for you this week. This is the French language version of an interview with Dr. Frederick Grau discussing EU fishing policy and hosted by Alexia Boulaghi. Alexia also edited and produced this, and for our French-speaking audience, you'll be getting a lot more of her in the coming weeks as she's recorded a few more French language podcasts. We are still looking for audio editors to add to our team, so if you're interested, please email us at ccontrol at simsec.org with your resume. Finally, I want to take the opportunity to recommend our partners in the SimSec Podcast Network, the Bilge Pumps. You can find Alex, Jamie, Drac, and a pile of Iron Brew bottles wherever you download your podcasts.

On that note, I'll turn it over to Kimbersman. You're listening to Sea Control, hosted by the Center for International Maritime Security. Aloha, camarades de bord, et bienvenue à bord de Sea Control. Aujourd'hui, je suis rejoint par le Dr. Frédéric Graar, et nous allons discuter de son rapport pour le Conseil européen des relations internationales intitulé avec un titre des plus accrocheurs Fish and Ships, la pêche chinoise et la stratégie indo-pacifique de l'Europe. Dr. Graar, bienvenue.

Pourriez-vous nous en dire un peu plus tout d'abord sur votre parcours professionnel ? Bonjour et merci de votre invitation. Je m'appelle donc Frédéric Graar et je travaille pour l'European Council on Foreign Relations, ICFR, ainsi que pour la Carnegie Endowment for International Peace à Washington, D.C. Après avoir passé une partie de ma vie à travailler pour le ministère de la Défense et le ministère des Affaires étrangères français. En guise de rappel, toutes les opinions exprimées nous appartiennent et ne sont représentatives d'aucune institution

auxquelles nous pourrions être autrement associées. Dr Graar, pour commencer, comment s'est formée votre réflexion autour du sujet et quelle a été la genèse de cet article ? Il n'y a pas une genèse particulière de cet article. Ça fait très longtemps que je suis évidemment la politique chinoise en Asie parce qu'elle est absolument essentielle. And then, I would say that maybe the starting point of all this was the series of incidents in the South China Sea that occurred from mid-June 2019. And from there, it was interesting to wonder why these incidents put in contact the fishing fleets and not the war fleets.

We will have an obvious and intuitive answer, but it was interesting to look at why more specifically. C'était intéressant aussi de regarder comment tout ça s'articulait avec la politique générale des pêches de la Chine et c'était intéressant de voir quelle était la signification de tout cet ensemble-là. Une question amenée à une autre et globalement c'était le point de départ de ce papier. Vous commencez votre article en écrivant que la politique de pêche chinoise est caractérisée par une exportation de ses problèmes environnementaux et une protection de ses propres zones maritimes. Pouvez-vous nous expliquer comment la Chine articule cette ambiguïté ?

Yes, what struck me at the start of the research was that there was a complete discrepancy between the policy followed by China in its territorial zones and the policy followed by China outside its territorial zones. So that means that on the one hand, there was absolutely no ignorance of international regulations or environmental and economic issues that arose from the Chinese authorities, but that there was a deliberate policy that led to saying we protect what belongs to us and we are relatively indifferent to what does not relate to our responsibility. And in fact, in China, the question of the deterioration of the resource, the decrease of the resource, is not a new question. It is largely linked to the totally absurd policies followed during the Mao Zedong government and the company. The first signs of a weakening of stocks are considerable in Paris since the end of the 1950s. And then, after Mao's death, there is this whole series of reforms that are initiated not only in economic matters, also on areas such as fishing, which consists of integrating more and more clearly international regulations to protect resources in the exclusive economic zone of China.

But all this very, very quickly poses very practical problems. First, in terms of supply of the Chinese market, as you know, China is at this time in a fairly considerable phase of expansion of its population. It therefore needs to supply its market. And on the other hand, the restriction of fishing possibilities in Chinese territorial waters also means very concretely employment problems for these fishermen. And so what we see is a progressive development of a policy of subsidies and incentives to long-term fishing. And this policy of incentives, it goes largely through subsidies,

notamment des subventions sur les carburants pour les bateaux de pêche, qui vont atteindre, je crois que le sommet sera 6,5 milliards en 2013. Pour l'anecdote, 2013, c'est aussi la date de lancement de la Belgenau initiative. Je constate la coïncidence, je n'en déduis pas nécessairement une causalité. Vous mentionnez que l'agenda de l'UE pour sa stratégie de coopération dans l'Indo-Pacifique est en partie normatif. What does this imply for the relevance of this strategy in the Indo-Pacific and its ability to respond to the challenges? First of all, there is a statement to be made. It is that Europe is today the largest market for everything that is a resource of the sea,

everything that is fish, sea fruit, and so on. And so the European Union has a predominant role in all negotiations, in the organizations related to the respect of the clause, in the relations within the FIO fishing committee, and more generally, all the organizations concerned by fishing, and so on. And then there is also the process of defining international norms that involve the European Union at first. And then there are the more specific policies

that allow the European Union, as long as its market is concerned, to apply these norms. This is the case, in particular, with illegal fishing, with a whole system of green, yellow or red cards that restrict or prohibit the access of European markets to the boats of this or that country if the countries in question do not do what they do

to put an end to illegal fishing. And then there are dialogues, which are dialogues of fishing with a certain number of countries. And there, of course, the European Union plays its role and its efforts to develop the standards that it has, by the way, contributed to this. Could you tell us about the Epoch State Measures Agreement and why it is crucial to note that China has not yet adhered to it to this day? China has not yet adhered to it, but it has a particular importance in this system because it is the first country in the world in terms of capture percentage.

I think that China is 15% of the world's captains, and it is very far from that point of view in front of Peru and Indonesia, which are its immediate followers and which are respectively each at about 8%. And the agreement itself is an agreement that obliges the signatories to first verify, in the first place, the recording of the boats before allowing them to dock and land their fishing at the port, which obliges them to conduct an inspection center and to take all the necessary measures to ensure that the boats concerned do not transport fish caught illegally. So it's a mechanism that somehow forbids the non-respectful boats of the legislation to be able to take advantage of a malacca fishing.

And it's a system that is all the more effective because there is a system of transmission aux autres pays concernés, si bien qu'il y a une espèce de maillage qui se crée autour des bateaux qui sont coupables de pêche INN en français, ce qui fait que leur vie devient extrêmement compliquée dès lors qu'ils ont été identifiés

comme ne se conformant pas aux règlements internationaux. Pourquoi l'UE est-elle préoccupée par le positionnement et les évolutions de la flotte de pêche chinoise et la possibilité éventuelle que la Chine puisse l'utiliser comme un substitut de la marine chinoise qui est-elle une composante de l'armée populaire de libération ?

Alors, ce n'est pas la possibilité, c'est la réalité de cette chose-là. Il suffit de regarder ce qui se passe en mer de Chine du Sud. Comme vous le savez, la Chine réclame en gros 80% de la surface de la zone. Et pour appuyer ces demandes, envoie ses bateaux pêcher dans les zones, ce qui leur permet ensuite de dire que la Chine dispose du droit historique. In short, a circus that is extremely well known in all the literature of international relations. And then the incidents multiply from there.

Now, the European Union and all that to allow China to ensure control of the zone. That does not mean that China is looking internally to ban access, but it is looking to ensure control. Now, all the European boats, all the European countries that trade with Asia, are in a way or another led to have their boats transit through this area. So there is a dependence on the goodwill of Beijing that no one wants to obtain. And so not only is Europe concerned, but it must be, in the same way that other regions of the world are concerned by what is happening there, but it is not a distant phenomenon that has no consequence for it,

it is really something consequential and important. Indeed. My next question, which is still related to the European Union, Comment l'activité chinoise en mer impacte-t-elle les intérêts européens ? Et pourriez-vous nous expliquer quels pays européens sont spécifiquement touchés et qu'ont-ils fait à ce jour ? D'abord, il y a plusieurs types d'impact. On a parlé de l'affaiblissement, voire d'effondrement, en certains cas, de la ressource en croissant dans certains océans du globe,

dans l'océan Indien, dans une partie du Pacifique, et ainsi de suite. Il est bien clair que dès lors que la Chine est le plus important, des bateaux contribuent à ça et qu'elles ne se conforment pas toujours, voire pas très souvent aux règlements internationaux, il y a un problème et qui est un problème qui affecte tous les pays

européens ou non d'ailleurs, mais européens aussi, qui pêchent dans les zones concernées. Ensuite, il y a l'impact géopolitique dont on vient de parler. C'est l'impact direct, la revendication territoriale sur des zones économiques exclusives, que la Chine affirme

être la sienne et que Obviously, the concerned states refuse it, but the appropriation by China would have consequences for the freedom of navigation and for a certain number of states that transit through the country. And then there are other phenomena. All the people who followed the question of piracy across Somalia know that before being a problem of organized crime, piracy was the local consequence of the overfishing, and in particular, overfishing linked to INM fishing.

China was absolutely not responsible for this situation since it was quite little present in the Indian Ocean at that time. China was invited to participate in the effort against piracy, we took the opportunity to accelerate the zone, it is now a base of the boutique. But in fact, we see a lot more Chinese boats operating on the entire zone. If you read the report of CRIMARIO,

which is a maritime surveillance program developed by the European Union, you realize that all states, from Iran to South Africa, are complaining about the legal protection of China. If you follow the recent news, you had a month of protests in the Pakistani port of Gwadar, in the province of Pakistan, which was also linked to illegal Chinese fishing. So there is also an immediate or immediate question, in any case there is a risk of destabilization of certain areas, not of all, but of certain areas. And at that time, as for Somalia, the states that intervened were essentially European states. And then there are other more local situations. In 2018, for example, China signed a kind of secret agreement on fishing with Madagascar,

in which a part fell, and this agreement would have allowed a Chinese fishing that made more than double the quotas allowed for sustainable fishing. It's a situation that would have been unbearable, would certainly have pushed Malagasy fishermen to fish in the French territorial waters, in the Spars, Trombin and so on. However, you know, there is a difference between France and Madagascar.

On the one hand, France and Mauritius on the property of these territories. However, there are discussions in progress. It is clear that if we had a Chinese fishing system with indirect consequences in this area, the problem would have been exacerbated. And then these are things that we have already observed yesterday, a few years ago, the problem has been resolved since then. The deliberate looting of the Vietnamese waters by the Chinese fishermen has led the Vietnamese fishing boats to come fishing in the territorial waters of New Caledonia.

So it's not an abstract problem, it's a very, very, very real problem. And that's it, so France has taken a certain measure. First in Madagascar, the government changed, the agreement was suspended. In New Caledonia, the problem was partially resolved by the French Defence Force on site and the negotiation with the Vietnamese government, and so on. It's a set of measures that are taken and that follow. And then, today, there is a much better surveillance of the entire area than there was at the time. The CRIMAREO program, as I said, is a maritime domain surveillance program. and it is a program that started precisely in the southwest of the Sahrawi

which today has a second component which is in the Gulf of Bengal and which will probably have a third which will be in the South Pacific. So these are things that are being put in place. This is the kind of thing that the European Union is doing. And you add that, of course, to the politics already described in this interview. Thank you very much for having discussed the issues in the Indo-Pacific for the European Union. To finish, we will address on three points the different aspects of the political recommendations that you mentioned in your article.

First, what is the coordinated mechanism of maritime presence and why do you think that this one is particularly suitable for the Indo-Pacific? The coordinated mechanism of maritime presence is, as its name suggests, a simple coordination of the presence of European battleships in this or that zone. And it's mostly the transmission of information about what's going on in the sea. So it's something that allows us to have a much better vision of the activities conducted by each other in a given region, in a given ocean, in short. Today, why do I think they would be more adaptive?

Because the reality of the European presence in the Pacific Ocean is that it is weak and that it would be illusory to imagine that suddenly all the European states will start to build boats in mass that will allow them to have absolute control over the area. So, from there, using the existing resources and interacting with them is probably something reasonable, since there is information transmission to the boats and to the coastal states concerned, which allows to ensure a minimum of action. Is it a perfect system? Certainly not, for me, for two reasons. First, because the weakness of the capacities that I mentioned at the moment also applies to the mechanisms of maritime presence.

Obviously, the less there is a boat, the less there is a coordinate and the weaker the mechanism is. And then on the other hand, because obviously it is a mechanism that is still being discussed, it exists today in the experimental state in the Gulf of Guinea. The intention is to bring it to the Indian Ocean, but all this is done at a European pace, that is to say relatively slowly. We also note in your article that fishing management must be in the order of the day European dialogues on maritime security. Isn't that already the case? And what more can be done to consolidate this objective?

There are two things that need to be understood. There are dialogues on fishing policy. There are dialogues on the governance of the oceans. That exists. Where it poses a problem is the taking into account fishing management as a problem of national security. And there, you have various differences between states, between, for example, the DG MAR, which essentially speaks of governance of the oceans, and then the Foreign Action Service, which is ready to consider AEN fishing, for example, as a maritime security problem. To what extent is this a problem? This is something disputable.

There is, in any case, a certain number of strategic impacts of fishing, and in this respect, I think, for my part, that it should be taken into account in the dialogues of maritime security. That said, if you look at the text of the joint communication on the EU's cooperation strategy in the Indo-Pacific, you see that illegal fishing is also taken into account in the questions related to maritime security, that it is in the management of the oceans. And the text as such provides a kind of strategic framework where the actions taken with one specific objective, security or counter-management of the oceans,

complete each other relatively well. So is this system perfect? Certainly not, but at least we have a framework text that allows us to evolve in this system and take into account realities that also move. We were not talking about Chinese peace as a geopolitical problem. Il y a encore trois ou quatre ans. Aujourd'hui, c'est une espèce d'évidence pour tous les gens qui suivent le sujet.

Ça ne l'était pas il n'y a pas si longtemps. Donc, il est normal que les institutions aient un peu de retard à l'allumage, si je puis dire, sur ces questions-là. Et on est allé assez vite dans l'évolution de la perception du problème par rapport à d'autres questions qui ont fini de se poser. Merci. Alors, troisièmement et pour finir, que devrait faire l'UE pour accroître et affirmer ses exigences de transparence

et construire une meilleure connaissance des activités illégales qui se font faire en Indo-Pacifique ? Elle conduit un certain nombre d'activités, mais ce qu'elle fait est assez peu connu en dehors de la Commission elle-même et des ministères spécialisés dans les États membres. Donc, il y a, à mon sens, un besoin de publicité sur ce que fait l'UE. D'ailleurs, ça ne s'applique pas seulement à la pêche. Un des problèmes de la légitimité de l'UE dans les autres pays,

c'est que personne ne sait ce qu'elle fait, alors qu'elle fait en réalité pas mal de choses. So there is work to be done to highlight what it is doing, including in this area. But I think we could also use the current problem to clarify China and the geopolitical question, which today poses very different questions, to put the question in another way. France, in particular, the organization of large international conferences which would bring together all the actors concerned,

states, fishing organizations, specialized NGOs, and so on, because this kind of big rout is minimally critical on a lot of things, but that despite everything, it gives visibility to problems that remain confined today within the professional organizations concerned. We must take into account one thing. Compared to other problems, fishing is something that concerns millions and hundreds of millions of people around the world. not only as a consumer, but also concerning the fact that there is a strong potential for mobilization,

and it is something that concerns the categories of populations which are often not the most comfortable to be heard on the international scene. So there is a context where the European Union could take the initiative to develop change. For once, the goal is not to prohibit such and such a state of fishing, c'est simplement de faire en sorte que les pêches se conforment à la réalité de l'évolution des espèces et des milieux et de faire en sorte que l'ensemble des États, à commencer par les plus importants acteurs, et la Chine en fait partie, se conforment à la régulation internationale pour que tout ça devienne à peu près durable.

Et qu'on cesse aussi de jouer avec ça pour les questions de géopolitique. C'est tout le temps dont nous disposons aujourd'hui. Je tiens à chaleureusement remercier mon invité, le Dr Frédéric Graar. Où pouvons-nous vous trouver en ligne et sur quoi travaillez-vous en ce moment, docteur? Ok, moi je continue à travailler sur les questions liées à la fois à l'Asie du Sud et puis à l'Indo-Pacifique

et vous pouvez trouver mes travaux en ligne sur le site du European Council on Foreign Relations, le CFR que vous n'avez aucun mal à trouver sur Internet Effectivement Merci et à nos auditeurs Merci d'être à l'écoute et à la prochaine © BF-WATCH TV 2021

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