Incorporation of Indigenous and Local Knowledge in Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Management

• Author: Valentin Schatz
• Position: Research Associate, Chair of International Law of the Sea and International Environmental Law, Faculty of Law
• Pages: 7-11

© 2019 Valentin Schatz. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribu-

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Citation: Valentin Schatz. “The Incorporation of Indigenous and Local Knowledge into Central Arctic Ocean Fisheries Man-

agement’’ Arctic Review on Law and Politics, Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 130–134. http://dx.doi.org/10.23865/arctic.v10.1630

Arctic Review on Law and Politics

Vol. 10, 2019, pp. 130–134

130

Debate

The Incorporation of Indigenous and

Local Knowledge into Central Arctic

Ocean Fisheries Management

Valentin Schatz*

University of Hamburg

On October 3, 2018, the so-called “Arctic Five plus Five”1 concluded the Agreement

to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (CAOFA,

CAOF Agreement or Ilulissat Agreement).2 The CAOFA establishes a precautionary

framework for the regulation of sheries in the high seas of the central Arctic Ocean

(CAO), including a temporary moratorium on unregulated commercial shing.3 The

purpose of this debate article is not to discuss the CAOFA’s provisions on sheries

as such, but to take a look at a number of interesting and novel provisions concern-

ing the interests of indigenous and local communities, particularly with respect to

incorporation of indigenous and local knowledge into science-based sheries man-

agement in the CAO.4

1 The term refers to the ve Arctic Ocean coastal States (Canada, Denmark (in respect of

Greenland and the Faroe Islands), Norway, Russia, and the United States) and, in addition,

China, Iceland, Japan, South Korea and the European Union.

2 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean (Ilu-

lissat, 3 October 2018, not yet in force). For a text of the CAOFA, see European Com-

mission, “Annex to the Proposal for a Council Decision on the Signing, on Behalf of the

European Union, of the Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the

Central Arctic Ocean”, 12.6.2018, COM(2018) 454 nal, https://eur-lex.europa.eu/

legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX:52018PC0453&from=EN.

3 For commentary on the CAOFA, see Valentin Schatz, Alexander Proelss and Nengye Liu,

“The 2018 Agreement to Prevent Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic

Ocean: A Critical Analysis,” International Journal of Marine and Coastal Law 34 (2019):

https://doi.org/10.1163/15718085-23342015; Andrew Serdy, “The Agreement to Prevent

Unregulated High Seas Fisheries in the Central Arctic Ocean: An Overview,” Ocean Yearbook

33 (2019): (forthcoming).

4 The CAOFA’s coverage of indigenous interests more generally was the subject of the pre-

sentation ‘The CAOF Agreement and Indigenous Interests’ by Nigel Bankes at the 11th