A Study on Vietnamese Tuna Fishery Management in the Context of Collaboration with the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC)

Abstract

Tuna is a key export seafood product of many coastal localities of Vietnam with the total export value of US$720,000 million (in 2019). However, even though the Tuna production of Vietnam has increased with increasing effort over the past 9 years, production in recent years has seen a slightly decreasing trend with increasing effort. Moreover, the Catch Per Unit of Effort has particularly witnessed a sharper decline. Vietnam is currently a cooperating non-member of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission (WCPFC). On ascension to full membership, the Tuna industry stands to benefit from the technical and material support of the commission. A logical pathway to becoming a full member of the commission is to ensure coherence and compatibility between the Government fisheries institutions and that of the commission. It is against this setting that the goal of the thesis is a sustainably exploited and managed Tuna fishery in Vietnam within a compatible and acceptable management framework involving the WCPFC, the national fisheries authority, and practitioners. In order to achieve the goal, three objectives have been pursued including; to review the status of the Tuna fishery in Vietnam in order to determine the opportunities to seize upon and challenges to address for sustainable resource exploitation; to review and compare the policy and regulatory provisions of the national fisheries authority and that of the WCPFC in order to discern the required alignment for compatibility and acceptability of a post-WCPFC membership governance structure; and finally; to propose required reforms in the fisheries of Vietnam to meet the Commission's approval for membership. Institutional analysis was drawn upon to examine the policy and legal framework of WCPFC in tandem with the regulative framework and policy of the Government of Vietnam. The results of the thesis show that by and large, Vietnam's regulations are aligned with WCPFC's management measures. However, several critical gaps and incompatibilities exist which require regulatory amendments or policy reforms in order to ensure coherence with WCPFC's regulation. Therefore, the hypothesis that; Tuna fisheries governance in Vietnam is well aligned with WCPFC regulations has been rejected. The thesis advocates the precautionary principle and proposes specific recommendations that will enhance the compatibility of Vietnam's regulative framework with the Commission so as to obtain the approval for membership of the Western and Central Pacific Fisheries Commission.