The Minister of Forestry, Fisheries & Environment, Barbara Creecy, eventually published the hake deep-sea trawl appeal decisions on 4 October 2023. More than a month later than promised. 15 months after the appeals were filed in July 2022. And 20 months after the first rights were allocated back in February 2022.
Effectively, those that successfully appealed for a hake deep-sea trawl right will only get a 13-year right while their competitors received 15-year rights.
The disdain and contempt shown by the Minister toward the fishing industry has been truly breathtaking. It does not, however, help when the principal "fishing industry body", FISHSA, is more interested in fostering cordial relations with an inept and incompetent Minister and her department, rather than protecting fishing right holder interests.
The appeal decisions confirm a Minister desperate to appease the historic right holders by granting them fishing rights in a desperate bid to avoid litigation challenging the hake deep-sea trawl decisions. The appeal decisions demonstrate the extent to which the delegated authority's original decisions in February 2022 would have been capable of successful judicial review. From the failure to make competitor applications and scoresheets available before the appeals to the ad-hoc and unlawful "fixes" applied to the incoherent and illogical scoring criteria.
The appeal decisions are nothing but a stitch-up. And we must still remember that the Minister's decisions in the hake inshore trawl and horse mackerel fishing sectors (dating back to the FRAP 2016! - NOW 7 years old) remain unresolved. The Minister has lost every single one of the reviews brought against her repeated unlawful decisions in these fisheries.
Most recently, she dispatched FISHSA itself (as I said, an organisation that hardly represents fishing industry interests but increasingly a mouth piece for the Minister) to cajole four appellants/right holders in the hake inshore trawl fishing sector to discuss settling their respective review applications against her.
But returning to the hake deep-sea trawl appeal decisions. Putting aside the fact that these are indeed reviewable on both procedural and substantive grounds, they are an incredibly dull and uninspiring set of decisions for South Africa's most important, capital intensive and profitable fisheries (because it has been so incredibly well managed by SADSTIA and individual right holders).
The appeal decisions do not in any way demonstrate the attainment of any of the legislative and policy objectives. That is because the decisions probably dont achieve a single objective. For one, the appeal decisions allocate rights to historic paper quota holders and then go further by creating an entire new generation of paper quota holder with 100 ton hake trawl allocations! Secondly, there is no definitive evidence as to what proportion of the trawl quota vests under the control of black-controlled fishing companies, especially given the fact that the Minister tries to make a lot about her decisions increasing transformation of the fishery. Thirdly, what about job creation? How does her appeal decisions sustain or increase job numbers in this fishery? What is the average wage earned by seasonal and permanent employees in the fishery?
Well, what does the data say? Have any of the fishery objectives been met? We dont know!
We dont know, because the Minister has (a) refuses to provide the analysis or data on these metrics; and (b) she refuses to make any data about the right holders available.
The only thing we do know is that there were 29 right holders in this fishery after 28 February 2022 and now there are 37!
While the Minister may have thwarted a review application(s) from Category A (historic right holders), her decisions are, at best, a dull appeasement. There was nothing profound or imaginative about this incredibly important fishing right allocation process for hake deep-sea trawl.
The trawl fishery has probably best demonstrated the value of the stability of long term fishing rights. The awarding of MSC certification in 2004 and the subsequent increasing self-regulation and management of the fishery, led by the industry regulatory body, SADSTIA, has completely mitigated the dysfunction and collapse of fisheries research and management by the Department.
The 2020 (delayed to 2022) fishing rights allocation process presented the Minister with the ideal opportunity to introduce new entrants to the fishery in a substantively meaningful way without prejudicing existing quota holders. Unlike any allocation process before, the Minister was faced with an incredibly healthy and sustainable hake fishery and a "free" allocation of more than 2000 tons of hake quota previously reserved for the hake hand line fishery. The hake hand line fishery had ceased to exist almost two decades ago and the annual quota allocated to this fishery since 2006 has either never been harvested or harvested in completely negligible amounts.
Over and above this 2000 tons of "free" hake, the Minister had a potential surplus of 5% of the hake trawl TAC, representing the annual increase in the TAC. 5% is the equivalent of some 5000 tons of hake trawl quota.
Seven thousand tons of quota could have been utilised to increase the small quota allocations of the existing historic cohort of right holders (especially those with less than 500 tons of quota), thus narrowing the gap between the larger right holders and the smallest and to award new entrant applicants at least 500 tons of quota as opposed to the 100 tons allocated, ensuring that these quota holders will be nothing more than rent-seekers for the next 15 years.
Planning for this "FRAP 2020" started in 2018. Five years later, it has ended (unless a Category B new entrant elects to review the Minister's decisions) with a bland thud.
No comments:
Post a Comment