Coastal communities face opportunities as well as threats

Resilience is a word that must have been coined by someone who depended on someone who worked at sea. Coastal communities dependent on fishing fleets which lost out to agricultural interests during and after Ireland’s accession to the EU have managed to survive and, in some pockets, thrive some three decades later.

According to Miguel Marques, partner at PricewaterhouseCoopers, Portugal, the economic viability of coastal towns and villages should only improve due to increased global demand for fish protein, for offshore renewable energy and for marine products such as seaweed for biotechnology.

Developing new middle-class markets are also fuelling tourism – much of it coastal – which now represents 10 per cent of global domestic product, he said in a keynote address to the Government's Our Ocean Wealth conference at Dublin Castle in June.

Growth in world population to over eight billion by 2030 will fuel a 35 per cent increase in demand for fish protein alone, he said. And offshore renewables would become far more important, and “not just for environmental reasons”, in meeting a 50 per cent increase in global demand for energy.

Marques’s message was music to the ears of Minister for Agriculture, Food and the Marine Simon Coveney, who described with some pride how, if one boarded a plane in Galway and flew for two hours west, one would still be over Irish territory – 10 times the size of the island.

He reaffirmed the Government's commitment to its Harnessing Our Ocean Wealth strategy, published two years ago, which aims to double the value of the marine economy to 2.4 per cent of GDP by 2030 and increase turnover to exceed €6.4 billion by 2020.

The Commission for Economic Development of Rural Areas (Cedra) notes that there has been “no analysis” of the impact this will have on the immediate hinterland, but believes the strategy’s 39 “actions” will have a positive impact on rural areas.

However, it also notes a number of challenges, including “regulatory frameworks, planning and licensing”, lack of clarity with managing inshore fisheries and seaweed, and a need for more focus on marine tourism and recreation.

Similar issues are also identified in a report by the Joint Oireachtas Sub-committee on Fisheries which was published by chairman and Fine Gael TD Andrew Doyle last January on the Aran island of Inis Oírr.

Marine policy

Current governance arrangements are not the “best working model”, Doyle’s report found. A marine co-ordination group – set up by former taoiseach Brian Cowen after his predecessor Bertie Ahern axed the Department of the Marine – does not involve all the bodies which have an input into marine policy.

It urged the establishment of a directorate similar to Marine Scotland.

There are myriad examples of the lack of clarity, co-ordination, and duplication, which both Cedra and the joint Oireachtas sub-committee studies have identified.

Cedra chairman Pat Spillane says he did not know that State company Arramara was being sold off by Údarás na Gaeltachta when his group highlighted seaweed’s potential and advised that it be the subject of a regulatory and development framework. Doyle’s sub-committee was not aware of the sale either, and made a similar recommendation.

“We like to blame Brussels when it comes to fish management, but I think the biggest problem we have is at home,”says retired west Cork fisherman Donal O’Driscoll, who is part of a Fishing for Justice campaign for larger quotas.

O’Driscoll believes opportunities were wasted during Ireland’s presidency of the EU when reform of the Common Fisheries Policy was part of the agenda, and there will be a repetition of this as long as the fishing industry itself does not hold governments to account.

Commercial fishing

The EU is now spearheading a new marine strategy framework directive, similar to the water framework directive, which will have further implications for commercial fishing and aquaculture, oil and gas and shipping, renewable energy and water-based tourism.

Up on the Inishowen peninsula in Co Donegal a maritime community has decided to look on the directive as an opportunity, rather than a threat, with a plan for Ireland’s first national marine park and a Unesco biosphere fishing reserve – modelled on the Eden project in southern England.

“Fruit of the Loom’s manufacturing plant was the big employer here, along with fishing, and tourism wasn’t really promoted,” says Emmet Johnston of the Irish Basking Shark Study Group, which is backing the project.

“The fishing fleet has weathered a lot of difficulty here, and we’ve had environmental non-governmental organisations standing on moral soapboxes without having any practical solutions. So we want the fishing industry to be part of this, as stakeholders in the marine environment, similar to the approach with farmers in the Burrenbeo project in north Clare.”

The Malin Head Ocean Centre and Marine Park is not promising big employment, but is stressing that the small number of jobs will be sustainable.

The approach echoes a point made by Miguel Marques in his closing remarks at the Our Ocean Wealth conference before handing the platform to Mr Coveney.

“It is impossible to maximise opportunities from the sea without a strong marine culture,” he said, shaped not by economists like him or bureaucrats, but by people with both “skills and a passion for their area”.

“Coastal communities are the cradle for the human capital of the sea,” Marques said. “We must be vigilant about their health.”