 Good day to all and welcome to our seminar. My name is Eudon Lem and I'm a Deputy Director in the Fisheries and Aquaculture Division of FIO. Today's webinar presents the main findings of the first component in a comprehensive study on fishing access arrangements from an economic angle with the objective to facilitate identification of opportunities to enhance trade in fisheries-related services, particularly for developing countries. And the report associated with this study will be published at the beginning of next year. The study focusing on fishing access arrangements involving coastal developing countries, including small island developing states, it aims to identify the main characteristics of these arrangements from a social economic perspective by mapping them to facilitate the understanding of their multiple dimensions. And the study was carried out by Professor Liam Campling who is together with us today together with a global team of fisheries experts. And the study presented today describes the commonalities but also differences among the various fishing access arrangements and with the regional focus considering local specificities and maps the most frequent arrangements used by the major distant water fishing states and distant water fleets. In the next phase we plan to develop and add new components focusing on supplementary aspects in order to provide a more comprehensive overview of such access arrangements. And it's our conviction that this study will allow countries to better understand the global situation of access arrangements and this can foster national development in activities that are complementary to the activities associated with fishing access arrangements in general. And such a study of course can also promote a more inclusive economic growth in coastal countries with positive results on income distribution and in reducing poverty and hunger. The study is also directly relevant for several of the targets under SDG 14 including SDG 14 7.1 on the contribution of fisheries to the GMP of SIDS and other developing states. Finally FAO is developing this study under the auspices of the Glowfish project a multi donor funded project focusing on sharing information on markets and trade and fisheries and agriculture products in order to foster the participation of countries in particular developing countries in global trade and markets. At the end of the event today the summary of the first component of the study will be available on the Glowfish website. With that I thank you and I now give the floor to the author of the study Professor Liam Camping. Liam please. Greetings everybody. I will try to share my screen and hopefully that works fine. So you should be able to see that okay. Yeah so can you see that okay just just let me know. Yeah thank you sorry. Okay so my name is Liam. I teach international business and development at Queen Mary University of London and I'm presenting this piece of work but it's very much a collaborative effort as you will see very soon. So this was a study that was commissioned to map access arrangements. Now as a lot of you probably are aware access arrangements are very often are quite unknown. For example in a personal anecdote when I was starting out my PhD researcher an old hand of fisheries research said to me that getting hold of access agreements was a little bit like getting hold of the holy grail and you know it genuinely is very difficult to study this area so I would like to thank FAO for asking me and the team of people that we work with to do this work but of course it's very incomplete and very partial so I thought it would be useful to start off by talking about the approach that we take with the work. The reason why I want to talk about this is to be completely transparent but also to give you an indication of the kind of the different types of emphases that we make or take in analyzing the different kind of country and regional case studies and I'll explain that a little bit more in a moment. So to start off with we focused very much on the best study. This was a quite a small piece of work, it ended up being quite long. We used a sequence of case studies both of countries and regions by major distant water fishing fleets and by major access recipients so in other words resource holding firms, resource holding states and a lot of this work drew from our individual research and our individual kind of experience and interviewing and kind of country-based work. So we try to capitalize on the very uneven access to information which I set out at the outset by really trying to highlight different aspects of access in the various cases and I'll highlight some of those in a minute. But to set up the work myself and the kind of legal author Elizabeth Hades developed a sequence of kind of key conceptual tools by which to help guide the team in their analysis and what we wanted to do was get beyond the kind of the classic understanding of access as being a government-to-government relation as is kind of typical with the EU, the types of access agreements and to look at the broader kind of the entire range of different types of access which very often involve firms at the center. So we wanted this to be not a state-centered analysis but to think about the economic key economic agency of companies. Now in this work we are focusing exclusively on distant water access arrangements and I'll come into how we're thinking about that in a moment. So before I come to that just a quick note on the co-authors. So I said it was a collaborative piece of work and here you can see the list of people that contributed to the work and the various areas by which they kind of specialized in the report itself. It's quite a long report. It dives into some considerable detail in some cases but as a whole overall the intention is to provide a snapshot, a comparative snapshot to allow readers to get a real sense of the complexity and diversity of forms of access arrangements in the world. So here you can see a figure drawn by Dan Hetherington and what this tries to do is to give a sense of the very varied kind of concerns or interests that coastal states have in relation to access arrangements. Now access arrangements can be reciprocal so for example the classic example would be something like the EU Norway type of arrangement or they can be non-reciprocal and the focus here is really on the non-reciprocal arrangements what the European Union calls the southern arrangements and by that they mean the global south and really the focus here is on how developing developed country but not only also developing country governments and or firms seek and gain access to very mostly developing country resources in their exclusive economic zones and we categorize this in two different general ways. The first is the what we call the classic cash for access agreements and these are as I mentioned at the outset kind of typified by the European Union kind of example or government to government but there are also less well understood relationships here such as industry association to government and as we'll see Japan is a key example there of that model or companies of government an entirely private company maintains an access agreement with a coastal state. Now these are very much cash for access agreements very often there is another component included here for example in overseas development assistance in the government or technical support sometimes in the industry association to government but they're quite straightforward in the scheme of things. The other major type is what we call the second generation kind of access arrangements and what we mean by this is a coastal state giving discounts in in in return discounts in discounted access to the resource in return for the domestication of boats and or onshore investments so for example coastal state will say well if you bring your boats and register them domestically then we'll give you a discounted access fee and why do they do that well because one of the major benefits of having a major foreign operator in an economy is the economic activity that's generated by that fleet in the port and the port services for example as you can see in the image here or kind of quite well known I suppose is the return of onshore investment very often to generate onshore employment in countries that very often have extremely high levels of unemployment or underemployment so the the developmental component of of second generation access is very very much at the heart of the motivations of coastal states. So the findings now this will be very much a snapshot overview of a series of case studies and so bear with me and hopefully you'll read the report and go into the detail there. The report's broken down into two sections the first section sets out the resource seekers and the second section sets out the resource holders now of course there are many more resource seekers and resource holders than we were able to cover in this report so as a result it will inevitably be partial but we do hope we do hope that we have captured some of the major ones at least and so we start off the report by looking at Japan why because it's historically well the most important distant waterfishing nation from before World War II and it sets the global scene so it's kind of post-World War II arrangements were driven by strong industry associations negotiating with coastal states and you know of course this was primarily kicked off in the 1970s but Japan has had access has always played a major role in its international relations and in many ways it still does today partly through the role of the coupled overseas development assistance connecting resource holding states with the Japanese with Japan. Another major example which everyone knows quite a lot about is the EU and why they know about it well because the subsidies are public they're scrutinized they're transparent in a network of sustainable fisheries partnership agreements but one of the things we highlight in the report is the rise of alternative forms of access by private entities who are based in the EU and that includes things like chartering arrangements and other forms of second generation access. The EU case is important especially in Africa both north and sub-Saharan because it's a very strong relationship to trade relations and market access so there's a kind of a deep embedded relationship of raw material supply from the EU fleet to domestic processes in many sub-Saharan African and African economies. As everybody knows China was emerged as a major maritime player and fisheries have been a key aspect of this maritime expansion and fisheries are not just about the fish catching the fish fisheries are also about the industrial activity on shore as is the case for many economies including historically Japan and the EU and by that I mean the procurement of volumes of raw material for domestic processing in China. China is a major user of second-generation access arrangements and there have been a number of studies that looked at the way that access has been supported by decoupled loans in other words loans that are not directly related to the access agreement but have some kind of ties. Taiwan is emerged in the 1970s as a raw material specialist so it really revolutionized global the distant water fishing kind of model by focusing on transshipment that approach and has a real global reach. As a result it's also a major flagger convenience operator. It uses vessel registries in lots of locations but like many of the countries here including China it's implemented a wide range of regulation to try and better control flagger convenience operators. South Korea was quite similar to Taiwan although it's reduced its geographical scope in recent years to primarily Russia and the western central Pacific. The big difference between South Korea and Taiwan is that South Korean access arrangements tend to be shaped by vertically integrated companies on the tables but both countries use industry associations to negotiate and they're very much of the first generation kind of approach. Now the USA has a multilateral access agreement so this is a government-to-government agreement in the western central Pacific and within that it uses has both kind of old fleet and its new fleet so its old fleet is boats owned and operated in the United States and its new fleet tends to be operators who have investments from overseas and tend to be more oriented to transshipment operations. Now as a whole the US tuner fleet has been in decline in recent years and so we would expect to see perhaps less significant access arrangements by this country and then finally we we talk about the Philippines why because it's another model. The Philippines uses fisheries very much as an industrial strategy again like the China case in order to capture raw material to bring it to major domestic processes and unlike some of the other entities mentioned here it has a sub-regional focus so it's primarily focused on the western central Pacific or solely I think. So moving to the resource holders so we look at West Africa one of the complexities of this coastal area is that there are multiple distant water fleets there but unfortunately there has been relatively limited cooperation now there is lots of potential for cooperation there are lots of institutional forms of cooperation but in terms of its operationalization that this is yet to bear fruit one of the other big problems in the West African case is historical conflicts with local fishes. Namibia was a key case that we focused in on because it had a strong success story of domestication so in other words foreign fleets engaging in second generation types of access but these have had very well known operational problems in recent years which have caused all kinds of political problems because of beliefs that there are nefarious practices ongoing or what were at least. In the western Indian Ocean this area from a personal perspective the tuna perspective is very much a eu sphere of influence and there are competing coastal states there have been some attempts to engage in forms of South-South cooperation there and they're ongoing but the coastal states there are also competing against each other for market access and raw materials to the EU market so as a result of this it sometimes impedes the forms of regional cooperation that we will see in a moment take place in other small island developing state contexts. We looked at Manamara's case study because it has had a long history of macro regional competition in Southeast Asia and a history also of illegal access to its waters and we saw that as being an important case study to include because it's a way of gaining access to resource that is illicit and so this is Manamara is not alone in this experience and so we do think this is something that should be highlighted in any analysis of how access works in practice. India was a great case study because it's always been much more oriented towards domestic development and domestic fleet development and so as a result of that there are a very powerful role of for example coastal regions including coastal small-scale fishes shapes the scope for distant water fleets in ways that is not the case in the other kind of examples highlighted here and then finally we talk about the Pacific islands and this is a great study of case study of South-South cooperation it shows the potential that coastal states can harness from access arrangements to maximize rent from distant water fishing fleets and the real kind of success story there has been the Vessel Day scheme for Perseid and that has significantly increased the rent available to the eight parties to the Nero agreement since around 2007 so what you can see here is a very wide range of different approaches to extracting the resource and it approaches to trying to govern access to that resource both in terms of capturing more revenue but also in terms of trying to generate more onshore employment or economic activity as a result of domestic interests and also as in the Pacific Islands case of sub-regional interests of working together so some reflections I think it's very important to recognize that access is a product of economic struggle of rent and profit and so by that we mean when a distant water fleet is trying to gain access to a resource in an AZ it is trying to do so at the most profitable basis that it can in that process it could be eating into the rent that could be captured by the coastal state and so as a result there is this always this economic struggle between these different agents in access arrangements but we also do know that it's often highly geopolitical and this can play a significant role in terms of a sub-regional characteristics of a fishery so for example the the EU's historical role in the western Indian Ocean and other more kind of contested areas of the marine borders and so on which we won't go into here. I think also what we hoped to highlight is that even though there can be calls for different types of best practice in relation to access arrangements they will always be highly context-specific so the case study of India contrasted for example with the case study of the Pacific Islands or West Africa are all such different contexts that they they shape the characteristics of access arrangements the firms involved the states involved both as resource seekers and as resource holders and so in a way each context is quite often unique but there are significant commonalities and one of the things that we find in this work is that contrary to much of the focus in the study of access over the last 20 odd years we really do need to be thinking about placing firms at the center as strategic agents as key players in shaping outcomes but also as kind of political agents very often trying to influence their home states very often punching well above their economic weight in their domestic context because of the political significance of the fishery to a sub-region in the UK for example or to a cultural kind of context so for example politically very often certain sub-regions of coastal areas have fisheries at their heart even if economically they're relatively insignificant. At the same time I think we should be thinking about firms as strategic agents in resource holding countries as well and resource holding countries are often very small with quite small state capabilities or relatively limited state capabilities which means that powerful multinationals can play a significant role in shaping the fisheries policies of particular states and I think it's important to be cognizant of that and why is it important to be cognizant of that because in many cases fisheries access revenue is a significant public asset and it's a public asset that can be a major contributor to all kinds of government spending within the country for example in education healthcare and so on and very often what we've seen in lots of countries is some controversy over discounting that is provided to distant water fleets as a result of second generation access and this discounting can of course be very successfully generate onshore employment which has a significant political social outcome but one thing we've found in this work is the need for countries to recognize exactly what is being discounted and what revenue is being forgotten as a result of that and I'll think I'll stop there. Thank you very much Liam thank you for that I see we have now more than 110 participants joining us and that is very very very good stimulating and we have the first one in the audience asking for the floor I see Iceland former ambassador of Iceland to FAO now back in Iceland good to see you Stefan you have the floor thank you Dr. Lem thank you Edvin and good to see FAO colleagues again even from a remote location and finally we have this presentation we've been waiting for about for a while but to begin with as a former ambassador I'd like to thank all of you on behalf of the Ministry for Foreign Affairs and Ministry for Fisheries in Iceland both to thanks to FAO and the authors of this report and especially the leader Liam Campling who did this very interesting presentation now. Now the government of Iceland decided to ask FAO to lead an independent study of the way in which fisheries contracts in diverse contexts take place and it was agreed to start with phase one of a potentially four phase study. Now the role of Iceland was to fund the first phase and agree to the terms of reference proposed by FAO Iceland did not have any input into the draft or final version of the study report it is the report of the other. Now we do however thank again FAO and the team behind the study for job well done and as we have already heard the report will be public. Now we also like to inform our partners that Iceland would like to continue with the project and bring the whole study to completion and just to inform our very big audience that one potentially promising outcome would be the launch of this whole project a launch of a voluntary guidance about best practice for fisheries contracts between parties but this is for downstream in the future but as of now I would just like to reiterate my thanks and hand over to the chair thanks. Thank you very much for your kind words and thank you for your support of your personal support and that of Iceland of course through the the process of developing this this project and this report and now I have the floor I leave the floor open Marianna can you please help me to see if who else has raised their hands has there been some indication earlier. There is one question I don't know if you would like to. Yes there are few in the in the question and answer especially the last one from Jung and Jung which is do you consider the role of associations in the analysis and not just on firms they're also very important players in the understanding of the of this participant so maybe Liam if you can address that so it's not just the behavior of the companies or the companies or the countries but also the associations and of course there are some associations or there are also associations of countries that are very important in the management of these arrangements. Liam please. Yes, I was trying to be very disciplined in having a 20 minute presentation of a 100 page report and so yes industry associations are absolutely central to multiple access arrangements so thanks for allowing me to highlight that in our definition of first generation access arrangements we set out three ones government to government one is industry association two government and the third was kind of private entity a company to government and the reason why we had that second one there is precisely because of the centrality of industry associations in particular for example in the case of Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and others but those ones spring to mind as very important players in relation to this and the industry associations of course pool the multiple operators together and allow for reduced transaction costs but also better governance very often and so I think that there's an important role that the industry associations play there. Thank you and there is one question from Professor Trond Bjorndal and it's about the resource rents and Trond asks you mentioned resource rents have you looked at the kind of values that are involved in some of these arrangements or agreements and how they are shared between the parties or is that for the next phase? For this piece of work no we didn't but in my own work we have yes and I think there's a fundamental aspect that was kind of what I was trying to get at in the last slide on the distinction between rents and profits and I think that the way of course that the rent is recorded in the distant water fleets is as a profit and and so I think that's a long technical kind of conversation we could have there. I was also I think getting at the relative success of some coastal states in capturing a higher resource rent than other coastal states depending upon the opportunities that they have to cooperate and yeah we can talk about that for a long time but that would probably have to do to now because it wasn't within the scope of the piece of work. Very good, very good. There are also a couple of questions regarding nutritional values of well versus economic value which is sort of an interesting angle in looking at it. I guess it's whether the resource should be more challenged towards domestic markets for nutritional aspects of the domestic population or whether one should allow others to fish the resources etc and then of course gain financial income in order to compensate so I don't know if you looked at that or it's a more generic comment on trade in fish and fishery products. We didn't look at that in this study no but it is very important and I think that we need to think about what is lost and this is part of the opportunity cost kind of question and the distinction between for example food security, food sovereignty and other questions like the right to food so for example with the right to food we could be talking about the onshore employment that's generated through second generation access arrangement or we could be talking about food sovereignty policies being used to block distant water fishing fleets in order to ensure that there's more fish being caught and sold domestically and I think that that's a very wide range of possibilities there that very much depend upon the politics of that particular country but it's a really important crucial question I think. Then we have questions on two different aspects which are both very interesting and important one is on gender where the gender has been looked at and then the second one is if you could say something more about the vessel day scheme in the Pacific Islands that probably not everyone are familiar with so the gender dimension and also the vessel day scheme please. Yes so that's a great question on gender this piece of work did not take a gendered lens partly because we were trying to map the entirety of global fisheries access arrangements and as a result of that there are multiple lenses that we were not able to use but I do know and from the work of people working on fisheries and gender that gender plays a crucial role in as a lens to think about what the domestic benefits are of fisheries access arrangements and the different types of fisheries access arrangements so in some contexts you see highly feminized workforces processing non-shore kind of catch as a result of distant water fleets which has empowered women I'm thinking about the Fijian case here where in other cases you see quite different outcomes where essentially women are being super exploited by the relationship of the distant water fleet and other investors to that coastal state so I think that again the gendered lens would need to be context specific to think about how those outcomes play out but again it's a crucial consideration in thinking about access and fisheries trade in general much like the food security question before and on the VDS the vessel day scheme so what the pacific islands did and there was a kind of connected question about how how we can maximize the economic what was the quote was the question sorry how could we maximize the learning from the vessel day scheme in the pacific islands and potentially advance further so to try and answer that at the same time as explaining the vessel day scheme the image that I used at the end was from a paper of myself Elizabeth Havis compared directly the the WCWCPO the western central pacific EEZ with those of the western Indian ocean and the difficulty of south-south cooperation in a place like western Indian ocean is because of the much greater proportion of high seas in the total fishery which makes it much more difficult for the coastal states to effectively cooperate no arguably they could have cooperated better but in the pacific islands case the in the case of per se and tuna the fish literally swim through those EEZs and because of a long history of effective cooperation amongst those coastal states they have managed to adopt a kind of musketeers kind of approach of one for all for one which has resulted in an in captured I mean it's a public domain an increase in the capture of the resource rent from 60 million a year about 10 years ago to around 500 or 600 million a year now and so it's precisely about this contested nature of access that I think is crucial to understand it there's not just a technical resource rent there are processes of contestation I think need to be better recognised in thinking about access it's not just a flat relationship I have that kind of answers the point you mentioned your PhD and when you started out and the comment on transparency and access to information and there was a question here from Alexander Rodriguez in LDAC about transparency in general regarding access agreements and I don't know if you could say something about that the difficulties maybe you had in gaining access to other agreements and of course there are a number of initiatives now there's PT there are others that are aiming for more transparency in this in this field yeah I think that one of the the questions of course the EU has a very positive approach to its access arrangements and it makes them all public domain and the reason why it does that is because there is a significant subvention from EU taxpayers to that activity and so to not have put that in the public domain would be difficult from its own domestic kind of governance perspective and and so I think that from a coastal state perspective there is the risk that if all access arrangements are in the public domain then it can more easily suffer at the result of the hands of a well coordinated set of distant multi-fishing interests and so one of the key things that stopping coastal states from engaging in foreign transparency is precisely that risk like in any negotiation if the information as asymmetries are crucial as we all know and if the information is all public domain then there is the risk for coastal states that they will be out negotiated and they're already very often in a weak position anyway so I think that's one of the explanations for why transparency is not perhaps as what some people would like to see if that makes sense yeah there are a couple of more questions there's one regarding technology the use of technology and maybe in these arrangements including technology that is not the most labor intensive and then a second issue related to I guess controlled and enforcement whether you look at how effective these are in the the arrangement of fisheries agreements in in maintaining sustainability parameters that overfishing does not take place put it like that enforcement issues and and control okay I could trust on the technology the technology question it is also about firm size right and I think so I think that what we see and my personal perspective in a lot of these contexts is that larger corporate entities are able to capture more of the slice of the pie as they are in all industries and this isn't specific to fisheries at all and there's a lot of work that's been done for example by the World Bank in their most recent kind of World Development Report in 2020 and this is the same case in the same fisheries where you see large entities who are able to use their relative market power to capture gains from other entities in the value chain and this is an argument that I've been making with the colleague Elizabeth Havis for some years in relation to the tuna industry so I do think that firm size matters and kind of corporate strategy and corporate organization and I don't the role of technology in relative labor and capital and sensitivity of that I think is beyond the scope of the access agreements study and that's something that I have looked at in terms of the international division of labor in fisheries processing but I'll pass on that because it would take me away from focusing on access and I'm sorry the second question I didn't I didn't really get hold on which one the one on enforcement or how fisheries agreement could lead to overfishing of course if there are no controls or how this is monitored. Yes and well again that's very context specific I think that there are a very wide range of stronger and weaker types of access arrangements and historically of course in many contexts the access arrangements that were implemented were not just about capturing more revenue they were trying to ensure that the resources there for generations to come and what we have seen is in again to use the Pacific Island countries as a case study is that through their effective South-South cooperation they have also implemented a much wider range of sustainability criteria and that's understood in a broad sense than other coastal contexts and in doing so in the tuner lens they have again probably the most sustainable tuna fishery in the world and so access arrangements must always have sustainability at heart it's the foundation that access arrangements need to be built on if they're not built on that then you were talking about destroying you know essentially a global commons in the interest of short-term revenue gain and I think that's not in anyone's interests. Thank you then we have a couple of questions regarding the impact of this agreement on the domestic industry and one of them is from our old friend Mario Aguilar in of Mexico and he phrases it like this do access agreements contribute are they neutral or do they inhibit the development of domestic fishing fleets for the same species and other fisheries of course and that is also very very interesting and then of course there is a very sensitive question regarding the role of subsidies there and and how this is treated and whether there's methodology to look at at the portion of subsidies I guess within these these payments but so I think that access arrangements have to be understood in their specific contexts and so the the question there is one that it depends so if you're talking about a small island with very limited government revenue that's fiscally squeezed and it has a very significant fishery then the access arrangement can provide revenue whereas if you're talking about a country that has a very diversified economy and with lots of potential for domestic investors industrial investors to build their own fleets and to engage in that fishery then there is the risk that the access agreement could knock them out so I think that that has to be understood on a case by case basis on the question of access and subsidies I think one of the key things to understand there is that what I'm trying to encourage people to think beyond with this piece of work is the straight government to government access arrangement kind of logic that has shaped the international community's understanding of what access is for many years access is like most other forms of investment in fisheries also about management and so how you give out and allocate licenses is also about how a country decides to use its sovereign rights in order to enhance or maximize the sustainability of those resources and so I'd like to just kind of emphasize that when we think about fisheries licensing and access as a whole. Okay yes and then from Aurora Matheus regarding the UN law of the sea convention as the general framework which provisions are missing or could have been negotiated in this subject I guess in relation to fisheries access agreements yes I am not fisheries lawyer and in this audience I would be very reluctant to take on that question. Yeah yeah I saw a comment that maybe Marcio wants to address it very briefly Marcio who is the lawyer. Yeah oh yes but I'm not going to address that question but basically just one issue Otto and Liam and participants that was very since we have received any questions of future phases I'm going just to summarize what FAO is planning to carry out in the next phases of this study so as Liam mentioned this first part was only the mapping of the access agreements of access arrangements so those are it's basically a mapping with the basic characteristics of each region framed by social and geopolitical context the next three phases that we foresee it's going to solve many of the questions that we have received the first the first phase the second phase is an economic analysis of the of the arrangements so in those in those analysis in addition to the economic side we are going to include the institutional framework transparency possibility feasibility of local sourcing resource management fishing rights policy operations etc the second the third phase it's going to be the application itself in terms of what are local bottlenecks that create problems for the supply of sometimes services associated to those fishing arrangements and in the last phase it's going to be the interconnectivity with other agencies in terms of major topics like IEU drugs trafficking fraud etc so those are the main three pillars that we're planning to conduct in addition to the first one of the mapping thank you Marcio now I'd like to give the floor to Don Syme from New Zealand who has asked for the floor and Don Syme please thank you chair thanks Adam yeah really really interesting presentation and really useful piece of work I can see already I've been just wanted to say I've been really happy with your characterization of of the the Pacific so far I think I think you've raised some good points highlighting how well the vessel day scheme has been working as a as quite a unique cooperative arrangement and also the sensitivities around release of this of this information from coastal states it is it is certainly a sensitive issue that is context specific and it's it's not necessarily the same for Pacific Island coastal nations as it is for the EU context necessarily so that's really I think you've presented things in a really balanced way just just had a question I was useful Marcio is talking about the next phase phases a lot of the messaging today is around context specificity and when you're thinking about voluntary guidelines at a global level have you got any initial thoughts about how you would how you would even think about global level voluntary guidelines when when this issue is so context specific do you have any I know it's early days but any any initial thoughts on on how you might manage that thanks chair thank you don it's a tough question um Liam can you can you try uh yeah my someone's turned my video off but um I that's a very difficult question and um oh there we go and so I think that we could start by trying to understand who is doing access and from there we could start to think about perhaps the from a corporate governance perspective and the companies that are engaged having some more transparency as well in how they're doing it and you could imagine that the companies themselves could be asked to be more transparent and perhaps given the fact that they were very often the golden more global players in other words operating in multiple fisheries at the same time um that would give us a greater sense of their strategies now of course that would also be very commercially sensitive and and I think that for this to be effective any kind of global arrangements to be effective you would need a core of relatively good corporate players to be engaged in the process of negotiation um that's a very sensitive beginning of an answer I'm sorry I can't give you more in the moment okay thank you and in any case and any such process within the FAO would have to be of course done in a very transparent manner with the full you know involvement of all the the members of of course which also would have to endorse the final result and I'm sure it would have to go through the usual mechanism of an expert consultation technical consultations maybe in in various steps through possibly one of the the subcommittees etc before it goes to COPE so it will be a long and inclusive process do we have more questions here I don't see any raised hands um let's see if there are some questions we do have one and two questions but I think we've answered them already regarding access to to data which you said had been difficult but at least it's more it's doable compared to how it was in the past at least and of course as you mentioned certain countries organizations like the EU of course have a requirement and obligation to keep these access agreements because it's public money to keep them in the public domain I think you've you've replied to to the others now I don't know well Beatrice Goree is also here and of course she has been working on these agreements for for quite some time I don't know if Beatrice Goree you want to just make a short comment on the on the social dimension which of course you have been very much involved with in in the past also um I think miss uh miss Jessica Landman wanted to have the her her hand raised who sorry uh Jessica Landman Jessica Landman yes please yes my question is that the remark that you made about the about the lessons from the vessel day scheme being applicable in places where the fish are mostly found in the EEZs of the countries in question whether that would be whether there are any lessons there for the countries of West Africa that you might allude to as they think about cooperation may I yes please I think that there's I think that the West African context is there's a lot of great potential and I think that it's not my area at all so I would defer on understanding the specific context but in my basic understanding there is a lot of great potential for West African coastal states to to to activate some of the existing sub-regional arrangements more fully and institutions and to perhaps learn from the real gains that have been made in the Pacific context in terms of capturing more revenue of course a lot of this also connects to some of the other questions that have been asked in in the chat about how do we um think about how to measure those gains and you know if it's just government revenue is that government revenue being hypothecated I channeled to specific outcomes or is it being lost in the treasury on whatever else and I think that that's a really important kind of question that hasn't really been addressed in in all of the contexts that we've talked about where the money goes and then of course it's up to the democratic or the sovereign state to decide that and but it would be I think more powerful to the arguments of enhancing revenue from access agreements if that revenue were clearly um uh hypothecated towards um yeah citizens people that live in that country or industry development or whatever that country decides but yeah okay thank you for that um do any of the other panelists want to to add something I don't know if Iceland you want some final remarks Stefan before I close we've answered all all the questions so far and of course we're also available later on for for questions for those of you who haven't phrased your questions yet um Stefan you want to to add something uh just just to to say again thanks a lot it's been a very very interesting discussion and good guidance on the way forward the just one observation us as the interim chair of the blue food alliance or aquatic food alliance I have been made more aware of the nutritional factor in this whole debate so thanks again for always adding something new to the debate thanks and and thanks to fall for the event thank you well thank you thank you Stefan unless there are and no one who wants to to add some final remarks or additional questions then I'd like to thank all of you for first of all for being here um for your many good and and well crafted thoughtful questions to Liam of course uh and his team for uh being in charge of and delivering this very important first phase of the project and also for hopefully being being willing to continue this thank you to to Iceland of course for their support during the first phase and their willingness and interest also in the second phase and also uh thank you to to all of you who have contributed to to making this more more more interesting and and rewarding and and also the final remark from Stefan regarding for example the nutritional dimension and Merrill Williams about the gender dimension there are so many things that are relevant that we maybe don't think about in in in the very first uh our first analysis which very often deals with the fish and the money but there are so many other dimensions that are equally important and maybe more important for many of the stakeholders so with that I I thank you thank you again all of you and hereby close the meeting and thank you Mariana and and Marshall for helping helping me realize this event today so thank you again and and goodbye thank you thank you thank you everyone for joining thank you