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STORY: NICE / UNOC3 FAO SUSTAINABLE FISHERY
TRT: 04:43
SOURCE: UNIFEED
RESTRICTIONS: NONE
LANGUAGES: ENGLISH / NATS
DATELINE: 11 JUNE 2025, NICE, FRANCE
1. Wide shot, port Lympia
2. Wide shot, conference room
3. SOUNDBITE (English) Qu Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“If managed well, aquatic food systems can further increase their contribution towards addressing hunger, malnutrition and poverty, thanks to their relatively low environmental impact, large biodiversity and rich nutritional profile.”
4. Wide shot, conference room
5. SOUNDBITE (English) Qu Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Despite improvements, over 30 percent of global fisheries still lack management plans, challenging effective governance and the sustainability of fish stocks and fisheries.”
6. Wide shot, conference room
7. SOUNDBITE (English) Qu Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Management is the best conservation tool! To safeguard our oceans, we must strengthen fisheries governance at every level, providing the frameworks, rules, and enforcement needed to ensure responsible practices. Strengthening management also means addressing Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated, so called IUU fishing”
8. Wide shot, conference room
9. SOUNDBITE (English) Qu Dongyu, Director-General, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“By 2050, aquatic food production must grow by at least 22 percent to maintain current levels of per capita consumption. In Africa, this growth must reach 78 percent. This must be achieved sustainably, and in a way that ensures its availability, accessibility and affordability - without compromising biodiversity or ecosystem health. We have the tools and knowledge on how to manage all the world’s fisheries, but we require global commitment, funding and collective action, policies, investment and science innovation.”
10. Med shot, conference room
11. SOUNDBITE (English) Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General /Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“35.5 percent of the fisheries out there are unsustainably exploited. That means that out of 100 fish stocks all treated equally, 35 of them are overexploited, which means that we are extracting - using a banking comparison - we are extracting more than the interest that the bank is giving us. Therefore, we are depleting the populations.
12. Wide shot, conference venue
13. SOUNDBITE (English) Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General /Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“77 percent of the fish that ends in the market is from those sustainable stocks, because the sustainable stocks produce more and are more effective in not just producing food, but also supporting livelihoods and those that depend from the sector.”
14. Wide shot, conference venue
15. SOUNDBITE (English) Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General /Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Australia, New Zealand region, more than 85 percent of the stocks being sustainably exploited in North America, in Canada, the US, the Pacific side, more than 90 percent of the stocks have been sustainably exploited in the Antarctic region, an 100 percent of the stocks are sustainably exploited.”
16. Wide shot, conference venue
17. SOUNDBITE (English) Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General /Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“In the Northwest African coast down to the Gulf of Guinea, more than 50 percent of the stocks are overfished, and this is a trend that has been deteriorating over time. The Mediterranean and the Black Sea also in a difficult situation: 65 percent of the stocks in this sea are over exploited. Yet in this case, there are some positives: Over the last decade, the fishing effort, the amount of boats going out, has been decreasing by 30 percent.
18. Aerial shot, conference venue
19. SOUNDBITE (English) Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General /Director, Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO):
“Management works. It has to be implemented. In some places, management is not operating for different reasons, and we need to understand those reasons. Managing stocks sustainably and science-based management is expensive, and so there's some regions where they can't afford the infrastructure needed for control and monitoring, the science needed, the institutions needed. So, we need to build up capacity for the regions that are not doing so well, not to blame them, to understand the reasons why they are not doing so well, and support them in rebuilding their populations.”
20. Aerial shot, conference venue
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) chief said, “Management is the best conservation tool! To safeguard our oceans, we must strengthen fisheries governance at every level.”
Today (11 Jun) at the 2025 United Nations Ocean Conference (UNOC3) in Nice, France, FAO Director-General, Qu Dongyu attended the Ocean Action Panel called “Fostering sustainable fisheries management including supporting small-scale fisheries.”
Addressing the panel, he said, “If managed well, aquatic food systems can further increase their contribution towards addressing hunger, malnutrition and poverty, thanks to their relatively low environmental impact, large biodiversity and rich nutritional profile.”
He reported that despite improvements, over 30 percent of global fisheries still lack management plans, “challenging effective governance and the sustainability of fish stocks and fisheries.”
He continued, “Management is the best conservation tool! To safeguard our oceans, we must strengthen fisheries’ governance at every level, providing the frameworks, rules, and enforcement needed to ensure responsible practices. Strengthening management also means addressing Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated, so called IUU fishing”
He warned, “By 2050, aquatic food production must grow by at least 22 percent to maintain current levels of per capita consumption. In Africa, this growth must reach 78 percent. This must be achieved sustainably, and in a way that ensures its availability, accessibility and affordability - without compromising biodiversity or ecosystem health. We have the tools and knowledge on how to manage all the world’s fisheries, but we require global commitment, funding and collective action, policies, investment and science innovation.”
Today at UNOC3, FAO also released the most detailed global assessment of marine fish stocks to date, called ‘The Review of the state of world marine fishery resources.’
In an exclusive UN News interview today, Manuel Barange, Assistant Director-General and Director of FAO Fisheries and Aquaculture Division, explained, “35.5 percent of the fisheries out there are unsustainably exploited. That means that out of 100 fish stocks all treated equally, 35 of them are overexploited, which means that we are extracting - using a banking comparison - we are extracting more than the interest that the bank is giving us. Therefore, we are depleting the populations.
He continued, “77 percent of the fish that ends in the market is from those sustainable stocks, because the sustainable stocks produce more and are more effective in not just producing food, but also supporting livelihoods and those that depend from the sector.”
He noted, “Australia, New Zealand region, more than 85 percent of the stocks being sustainably exploited in North America, in Canada, the US, the Pacific side, more than 90 percent of the stocks have been sustainably exploited in the Antarctic region, an 100 percent of the stocks are sustainably exploited.”
He added, “In the Northwest African coast down to the Gulf of Guinea, more than 50 percent of the stocks are overfished, and this is a trend that has been deteriorating over time. The Mediterranean and the Black Sea also in a difficult situation: 65 percent of the stocks in this sea are over exploited. Yet in this case, there are some positives: Over the last decade, the fishing effort, the amount of boats going out, has been decreasing by 30 percent.
He stated, “Management works. It has to be implemented. In some places, management is not operating for different reasons, and we need to understand those reasons. Managing stocks sustainably and science-based management is expensive, and so there's some regions where they can't afford the infrastructure needed for control and monitoring, the science needed, the institutions needed. So, we need to build up capacity for the regions that are not doing so well, not to blame them, to understand the reasons why they are not doing so well, and support them in rebuilding their populations.”
The Review of the state of world marine fishery resources - 2025 reports on the biological sustainability of 2 570 individual fish stocks, a major increase from previous editions of the report.
Informed by over 650 experts from more than 200 institutions and over 90 countries, this participatory and inclusive report analyzes trends across all FAO marine fishing areas and offers the clearest picture to date of how global marine fisheries are faring.
The report confirms that 64.5 percent of all fishery stocks are exploited within biologically sustainable levels, with 35.5 percent of stocks classified as overfished.
When weighted by their production levels, 77.2 percent of the fisheries landings globally come from biologically sustainable stocks.
In marine fishing areas under effective fisheries management, sustainability rates far exceed the global average. In the Northeast Pacific, for example, 92.7 percent of stocks are sustainably fished.
Despite major advances in data coverage, gaps persist, especially in small-scale fisheries where insufficient coverage of landing sites increases assessment uncertainties.
FAO urges countries to invest in data collection and management systems, and science-based approaches, and to close capacity gaps and align sustainability goals, to keep fisheries on track.
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