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The Puerto Morelos Declaration
September 2003
(Puerto Morelos is the artesanal fishing village just south
of Cancun, Mexico)
The representatives of the fishing cooperatives from the State
of Quintana Roo and Yucatan, Mexico, together with the World Forum of Fish-Harvesters
and Fish Workers (WFF), meeting in Puerto Morelos, between and 6 September,
in relation to the Fifth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO),
DECLARE:
- fisheries resources constitute a patrimony of humanity
that can not be treated as a commodity for global corporations;
- fishing communities recognize a cultural, economic, environmental,
and political relationship with fisheries resources that can not be privatized,
sold, or rented with the pretext of attracting foreign investment or economic
incentives that exclusively benefit national and/or global conglomerates;
- Fishing represents a livelihood that can not be reduced
to mere commercial or productive aspects because it represents an ancestral
heritage that has allowed humanity o relate to the sea and develop food sovereignty
based on the sustainable se of fisheries resources;
CONSEQUENTLY:
We express to all peoples and to the government trade ministers
negotiating at the WTO:
- Our rejection of the proposal that the WTO expand its powers
to include fisheries under its trade rules. Under no circumstances can fisheries
resources be considered a commodity and even less so can they become subject
to the logic of the market and the neoliberal model;
- Our conviction to develop and strengthen local and national
markets and push for a just international fisheries trade;
- Our opposition to proposals that fisheries resources be
privatized directly or indirectly and we reaffirm our desire that local and
national governments develop the capacity to protect the world's fisheries
resources and support the development of fishing communities as the only way
to ensure sustainable fisheries;
- We denounce the political pressure by some nations and
blocks of nations to expand the scope of WTO to ensure new rights for global
corporations, weakening the sovereignty of coastal countries and intending
to reduce our control within the Exclusive Economic Zones and our national
laws for conservation, management, and development of fisheries resources;
- We demand that governments defend the sovereignty of nation
states from new WTO rules and increase the rights of popular participation
for access to information so that whatever international agreement on fisheries
emerges must include the opinion, vision, and needs of artesanal fishing communities;
- We recognize the cultural value of artesanal fishing and
the dignity of the fishing communities, and we warn the world about the danger
of the disappearance of the coastal communities;
- We recognize the value of United Nations Convention on
the Law of the Sea as the primary instrument of international maritime law
and that its moral and juridical validity be preserved regardless of whatever
the WTO decides on fisheries;
- We support the international struggle to denounce and impede
over-fishing, illegal fishing, the use of flags of convenience, and the fisheries
subsidies authorized by the same nations that today push the fisheries discussion
in the WTO.
Artesanal fishing communities are the guardians of the world's
fisheries resources and we call upon all people to take up an active, peaceful
and democratic fight to preserve fisheries resources, to stop their privatization
and to leave future generations of fishing men and women the millennial legacy
of healthy fisheries that we received from previous generations.
WTO OUT OF FISHERIES!
Puerto Morelos, Quintana Roo, Mexico, September 2003
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