A visit by two United Nations officials to the University of Wollongong’s (UOW) Australian National Centre for Ocean Resources and Security (ANCORS) from 3-6 September has highlighted the University’s vital ongoing role in helping to manage the global fishing crisis.
The officials from the UN Food and Agricultural Organisation were in Wollongong to open a specialist International Fisheries Law Enforcement course. ANCORS was selected due to its reputation for expertise in the international law of fisheries management.
The especially designed course is being attended for three weeks at UOW’s Innovation Campus by 23 fisheries officials coming from the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Samoa, Sudan and Vanuatu.
Professor of Law and ANCORS member Professor Greg Rose said ANCORS was Australia’s only multidisciplinary university-based centre dedicated to research, education and training on ocean law, maritime security and natural marine resource management.
ANCORS also provides authoritative policy development advice and other support services to government agencies in Australia and the wider Indo-Pacific regions, as well as to regional and international organisations and ocean-related industry.
Professor Rose said the global fishing crisis reflects the economic issues that arise when resource users exploit the open access common property resources in the oceans. He said that the course under way at the Innovation Campus assists fisheries managers to enforce regulatory approaches to address overfishing.
It is a new course to implement a UN priority area to cooperate to prevent, deter and eradicate illegal unreported and unregulated fishing. In particular, the participants’ expertise in gathering and presenting evidence of illegal fishing for court trials is a focus.
ANCORS is also involved in the marine and innovative aspects of the ‘blue economy’ in South East Asia.
Professor Rose said the challenge in both fisheries and the marine economy research is to integrate economic incentives into the protection and sustaining of marine resources assets.
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