Akademik Veri Yönetim Sistemi
Unraveling the Impact of Environmentally Harmful Subsidies in the Mediterranean, Robin Degron,Constantin Tsakas, Editör, UNEP/MAP and Plan Bleu, Marseille, ss.58-75, 2024
Over the past two decades, environmentally harmful fishing subsidies, particularly capacity-enhancing ones, have posed significant threats to marine fish stocks worldwide, including the Mediterranean Sea. Despite the global attention paid to harmful fishing subsidies, studies focusing on their impacts in specific regions, especially in the Mediterranean, remained limited. Today, scientists agree on the need to remove harmful fishing subsidies, as they damage marine environmental health and unevenly benefit the industrial fishing fleet. This study delves into the repercussions of fishing subsidies on the marine ecosystem health of Türkiye, a pivotal player in Mediterranean fisheries. In recent years, Türkiye has made progress towards a more environmentally conscientious approach, shifting its «subsidy-mix» towards more environmentally virtuous tools, mirroring patterns observed in other EU-Mediterranean countries.
Leveraging data from relevant sources (monetary amounts of fishing subsidies from the OECD, changes in commercial marine species catch and fishing fleets from TURKSTAT and FAO, ecological indicators for marine ecosystem health and GPS-based fishing vessel track from the Global Fishing Watch database), our findings demonstrate that capacity-enhancing subsidies, including fuel tax concessions and infrastructure support, have primarily supported industrial fishing, but did not correspond to higher catch rates. Conversely, Türkiye has shown a significant commitment to beneficial subsidies aimed at resource conservation, comprising the majority of its subsidy allocation in more recent years. However, these subsidies have primarily been channeled towards enforcement measures rather than research initiatives. While this allocation has its merits, there is potential for further enhancing their efficacy by allocating a portion towards research endeavors. Ambiguous subsidies, like vessel buy-back programs and income support for fishers, have played a complex role. While income support for smallscale fishers could potentially support sustainable fishing practices, the effectiveness of vessel buyback programs in reducing overall fishing pressure remained limited. Overall, the patterns observed in the Turkish fisheries, particularly the persistent decline in the average catch and the downward shift in the mean trophic level of catches, with the intensified fishing effort despite the decreased fleet size, indicate an opportunity for further optimizing the allocation of fishing subsidies towards more sustainable fisheries management practices.
As the patterns in Turkish fisheries are similar to those observed in other EU-Mediterranean countries, we underscore the need for a paradigm shift in the Mediterranean towards sustainable fishing practices by redirecting fishing subsidies towards conservation, research and development, participatory and adaptive governance and integration of advanced technologies to enhance data transparency and monitoring of fishing activities. Implementing such a shift could be complemented by participatory adaptive governance of different stakeholders such as fishers, scientists, and local coastal communities, mobilizing the traditional ecological knowledge of coastal artisanal fishers, and supporting their capacity and capabilities for community-based management. This may potentially alleviate any negative effects of a subsidy reform on fisheries incomes and may enable a “just transition” of the fishing sector in terms of socio-economic outcomes.