The arrival of the current administration of the federal government changed fisheries policies. For Rigoberto García Soto, lawyer and former director of inspection and surveillance of the National Aquaculture and Fisheries Commission (Conapesca), the efforts to combat illegal fishing have not taken the best path and today, four years after the entry of the present administration, the problems have taken on new dimensions.
Illegal fishing has a variety of causes. According to a panel of 30 specialists surveyed by the Belisario Domínguez Institute, the first is the lack of inspection and surveillance (18.94%).
Followed by corruption (15.9%), the presence of organized crime (10.6%) and an inadequate legal framework, little known and with weak implementation (9.85%).
In an interview with Causa Natura, García Soto, who was, among other positions within Conapesca, director of inspection and surveillance in the government of Felipe Calderón and Peña Nieto, gives his opinion on institutional processes in the fight against poaching in Mexico.
— In terms of the operation of inspection and surveillance and based on your experience, what would be a change between this six-year term and the previous one?
There is a very marked difference in what is happening today in terms of law enforcement in the country's fishing and aquaculture sector in relation to the work that was done in the previous six-year periods. And this is reflected in different aspects: one of them and of great importance has to do with budgetary allocation.
Currently, between 100 and 120 million pesos are being allocated per year by the fishing authority. In the previous six-year periods, a budgetary provision of between 270 and up to 320 million pesos was available to be invested in fishing inspection and surveillance actions, for the salaries of federal fishing officers, for field expenses allocated to federal fishing officers, spending on the acquisition of vehicles, boats, satellite monitoring of fishing vessels, collaboration agreements with the Secretariat of the Navy of Mexico, as well as the programs that were applied before for inspection and surveillance , in collaboration with the fishing and aquaculture sector, which was allocated between 70 and 110, up to 130 million pesos in some year, to set up land camps, maritime bases, which operated precisely during periods of closure of the country's main resources.
So we are seeing a very marked difference of three to one in terms of budgetary allocations to an issue that is extremely important, such as inspection and surveillance, which ends in the application of the law in this area.
— Is it impossible to keep the actions you had before on the ground when there is a budget cut?
Of course and a very strong budget cut. The simple fact of considering that in the previous two six-year periods, between 270 and 320 million pesos were allocated for fishing surveillance and this year, for example, a typical year for this six-year period, between 100 and 120 million pesos are being allocated for that pending subject, which is surveillance that is inspection, makes all the difference. And this is of course reflected in the results offered by fisheries inspection and surveillance today.
In other words, there is no comparative basis that allows us to say that things are being done better today than before, on the contrary. Now moving away from the budgetary part, because you could say 'well, today because of austerity we allocate less resources, but we are more efficient in spending. ' Nor is it true because when it comes to comparing the results and I am not referring to these happy numbers given by the authorities in the mornings or in any exercise that is called information exercise where they presume tours and mobilized personnel and things like that, those are not results.
— What would be reliable results?
The concrete results of fishing surveillance are records drawn up, sanctions imposed, firm and enforced sanctions where fines are collected, permits are revoked, concessions are suspended, vehicles, boats, nets and illegal fishing products are permanently confiscated, and that is not happening. In other words, if we go back to reviewing the reports given by the authorities, they are limited to saying `we did so many tours in the Upper Gulf of California, we mobilized almost as many inspectors, we secured so many kilometers of networks', but all that data is missing from the most important thing.
Where are the sanctions imposed? , what are those sanctions? , in what amount have they been imposed in which entities in the country? , to whom how have these fines been executed? , which permissions have been revoked? , which concessions have been suspended? That doesn't exist.
So beyond that three to one in the budgetary allocation (between one six-year term and another). Well, in terms of results, perhaps the difference is much worse.
— We have heard of initiatives to militarize illegal fishing. Are they just words or is there really greater involvement of the armed in inspection and surveillance tasks?
In the area of fishing and aquaculture, the presence of the Armed Forces is greater in discourse than in the field. You can view the officials' social networks, you can read or listen to their speeches and there is talk of full coordination with the Armed Forces. In particular, with the Secretariat of the Navy, whose presence for surveillance in the seas in the functions of coast guard and application of the rule of law, since in the letter of the law it is very important. However, in fact, that doesn't land, that's not happening.
In terms of fishing, the presence of the Armed Forces in the discourse is more important than the actual coordination that lands on the ground. And this is reflected in the fact that, for example, tomorrow, March 23, the ban on Pacific shrimp begins and as of today, the fishing surveillance operation that will be implemented has not been announced.
It has not been announced what budget the governmental authority will put into this, it has not been announced how many surface units, how many seafarers will be present in this, it has not even been announced whether or not, for the fourth consecutive year that it has not been done, the collaboration of the fishing sector for the installation of maritime bases in the main points of conflict, where illegal shrimp fishing occurs at the beginning of the closed season.
— It was originally published in a note from Excelsior, as in the change of supplier relay for the satellite monitoring system, there will be a breach of vessels that will not be monitored for a while. What is the importance of this system and how does it affect the fact that we are somehow without that possibility of fully relying on it?
The satellite location and monitoring system for fishing vessels in Mexico is of the greatest importance for the country's fishing sector. It is, without a doubt, the most advanced technological tool available to the fishing authority in Mexico to, first of all, prevent the commission of administrative violations by vessels because they are subject to location and monitoring, in particular, larger vessels, boats of 10.5 meters in length onwards, which includes our entire fleet of medium height and height called shrimp boats, sharks, flake longliners, the scale trawler fleet, the tuna fleet, in short, the sardine fleet, it includes completely our entire fleet.
One of the main objectives of Sismep is to help persuade this fleet and, of course, to warn, at an early stage, of the existence of signs that may indicate illegal fishing activity, a fishing activity that is not allowed, or a prohibited fishing activity. It is so important that our country has had Sismep compulsory since 2004 and it is a system that, well, started from scratch. It was built with the work of many people from this country and the industry itself, it was built and to date it has been supported by a public budget.
Sismep is a service that costs the Mexican State annually an amount that ranges between 36 and 48 million pesos approximately, year after year, for 19 years or so, and it is a system, which covered about 2,556 vessels more or less, that are monitored. In other words, the entire Mexican medium-height and high-altitude fishing fleet.
Now what is happening today, as you well point out, a replacement of the supplier is taking place, the authority began a bidding process, concluded it. It awarded the service to a different provider than the one that had been providing service to the Mexican government for the last 19 years at a higher cost than it cost us before, but in a very worrying way with less coverage than the system had before.
— What are the implications of this?
What does this mean? , that before we had a system that was contracted to monitor up to 2,100 ships, of which 2,566 ships are effectively monitored as of January of this year and as of today the contract, signed by the Mexican government, will only cover 1,800 ships. So we bring there 250-256 ships that the contract does not intend to cover and we ignore the reasons.
On the one hand and on the other, because it brings that monitoring of 2,000 and a few boats, because it turns out that the new system that should be starting up by the end of March, because it will only start with 300 boats. And there a space is generated for impunity, this is generated, a space of concern.
— What were the main challenges that existed in the previous six-year period and what became of them?
Yes, one of them had to do with corruption, of course. Inspection and surveillance is an area and a matter, not only in fishing, in aquaculture, in any other activity in the country.
Corruption is a present topic. It's a deep-rooted issue, it's a topic that needed to be improved. It was one of the strong challenges facing the sector in that regard, but it was not the only one. Understanding that broadly speaking, the fishing activity of medium-height and high-altitude fleets was at that time, not today, moderately covered, because there was a location and monitoring system that focused on the 2,500 boats operating in the fleet 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, with one pulley per hour.
This allows the fleet to be very well checked, which did not exempt it from committing violations and that they could be discovered or not, by other means. But the challenge was then, as is usually the case in Mexico and in other countries in Latin America and the world in general, particularly in developing countries such as ours: in the smaller fleet.
The activities of the boats, the activity of the pangas, that is a great challenge, because, because we have never had a census, an accurate statistic on the number of smaller boats in the country. There are those who say that they are between 100,000 and 120,000. There are those who go so far as to point out that there are even just over 120 thousand boats (...).
But it was a great challenge at the time and it remains so today with all the more reason because we have just over 2,500 arrival sites in the country. In other words, places from which these smaller vessels can enter and leave at any time of the day or night and there is not humanly and materially the capacity of personnel, the capacity of financial resources, the capacity of material resources to be present with monitoring and surveillance with fishing inspection at those 2,500 arrival sites. So what's going on there.
Well, that's where illegal fishing or the bulk of illegal fishing occurs in the country, that's where people go out fishing without permission, where there are boats that don't have a registration number, that's where there is the issue of fishermen going out to fish under restrictions or with prohibited or not allowed fishing gear, that's where there is a surplus in the certain volumes of catch, or that's where it happens that they arrive with fish of a smaller size or in a larger volume than allowed by the Secretariat in the Official Mexican Regulations.
— If this gap has been identified, what actions can be taken?
I was telling you, because we have more than 2,500 arrival sites, there is no way to be present there doing the surveillance. So that was (the challenge) at that time and today it is even more so an enormous challenge, where lies the key to being able to do something against illegal fishing in the country and it does not mean in that sense that we have to have at least 2,500 inspectors with vehicles, but it did mean an increase in the budget, if it meant having a greater infrastructure, it also meant being able to act with greater intelligence to understand the networks for the collection, distribution and subsequent commercialization of the products that entered or that were fished this in the Mexican seas, which entered the territory through land through those 2,500 arrival sites to be able to monitor it and at the nerve points where this production will be concentrated in the hands of intermediaries to be able to arrive with the act of authority to verify the legal origin of that product. That was the challenge at the time, that's what we were working for, that has been totally lost today.
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