Balancing the scales: the experience of the Parties to the Nauru Agreement

This thesis discusses the experience of a group of eight Pacific Island coastal States in exercising their sovereign rights for the EEZ to take control of the tuna fishery and reduce dominance of the distant water fishing fleets. The group is established under the Nauru Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Management of Fisheries Common Interest, with the membership including the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. Known widely as the Parties to the Nauru Agreement, the group has adopted a cooperative framework and work together to establish a number of instruments to facilitate the co-ordination and harmonisation the management of the common fish stocks within their EEZs. In doing this, the Parties to the Nauru Agreement were asserting and protecting their sovereign rights, creating economic opportunities for their people, and conserving and managing the tuna fish stock. The thesis argues that the Parties to the Nauru Agreement has taken control of their tuna fishery through the introduction of the instruments such as the minimum terms and conditions for access under the First, Second and Third Implement Arrangements of the Nauru Agreement, the Palau Arrangement for the Management of the Western Pacific Purse Seine Fishery to limit fishing effort and the establishment of the Federated States of Micronesia Arrangement for Regional Access which provide preferential treatment for the domestic and/or locally-based vessels. The thesis concludes that in order to maintain and/or strengthen the control the Parties to the Nauru Agreement have attained, the group needs to redefine its cooperative framework to cater for the different interests they have acquired.