IFC-IOR to Check China Overfishing

In News

• The Quad (Australia, India, Japan and the United States) is planning to unveil a maritime surveillance initiative to protect exclusive economic zones in the Indo-Pacific against environmental damage.

About

• The initiative is to deter China from illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing (IUUF) in the Indo-Pacific region. 

• The Indian Navy’s Information Fusion Centre-Indian Ocean Region (IFC-IOR) would play a pivotal role in the Quad initiative.

How would the initiative function?

• Constellation of surveillance centers: It will use satellite technology to connect existing surveillance centers in India (IFC-IOR), Singapore and the Pacific and establish a tracking system to combat IUUF.
• Mechanism: The tracking system would then monitor fishing activities from the Indian Ocean and South-east Asia to the South Pacific and report the illicit fishing and associated vessels.
• Proposed surveillance centers: The data fusion centers likely to be involved in this initiative are:

• Indian Navy’s IFC-IOR based in Gurugram, India
• Singapore Navy’s Information Fusion Centre
• Australia-sponsored Pacific Fusion Center, set up in 2019 in Port Vila in Vanuatu.

Need for the initiative

• Checking China’s IUUF: China is considered responsible for 80% to 95% illegal fishing in the region after having overfished its own waters. 

• It has been incentivising illegal fishing with generous subsidies to meet its growing domestic demand.

• Livelihood and food security: the collapse of fisheries can destabilise coastal nations and pose a much bigger security risk.

• It can fuel human trafficking, drug crime and terror recruiting.

• Checking ecological damages: The unabated fishing by Chinese vessels has eroded ocean biodiversity vastly with little regard for maritime boundaries. 

• The destructive practice of bottom trawling deployed in the vessels causes harmful ecological imbalances without any regard to fish type, age or quantity limits.

• Human Rights: The Chinese fleets use forced, bonded, slave labour and trafficked crew. 

• Widespread abuse of migrant crewmembers have also been reported on the vessels.

• Geostrategic move: The move by QUAD is also seen to be aimed at reducing the small Pacific island nations’ growing reliance on China.

• China also uses its fleet of big trawlers to project strategic influence and to bully fishing vessels from weaker nations.

• Synergising IPEF: The U.S led initiative of a new economic framework for the Indo-Pacific, aimed at countering the Chinese presence in the region would get a further boost with the initiative.

Way Forward

• In the last decade, IUUF has been perceived as a bigger threat to maritime security than international piracy. It depletes stocks and deprives vulnerable regional economies of an important food source.
• Sustainable Usage: The global community should perceive maritime resources as shared resources with sustainable usage so that the balance between human needs and nature’s concerns could be balanced..
• Adhering to international laws: The QUAD grouping has rightly convened the initiative so as to foster the international rules. The UNCLOS mandate should be abided by all the member states to have regional and global maritime peace.

Source: PIB