Casting A Wider Net: A Panel Discussion on the Security Implications of Illegal Fishing

Across the globe, millions of people depend on fisheries for their food security and livelihoods. Yet estimates suggest that between 20 to 50 percent of the global fish catch is either illegally caught, mislabeled, or never reported. Illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing is valued at an estimated $15.5 to $36.4 billion a year, and the illicit nature of IUU fishing activities makes it difficult to understand the full scope of the problem.

Town Hall partners with The Stimson Center, World Affairs Council, and the University of Washington EarthLab to present a panel of experts on the IUU fishing and its detrimental impacts. They convene to discuss the economic, political, and environmental repercussions of IUU fishing, tracing operations from local fishers operating outside regulations, all the way up to transnational syndicates and countries that knowingly under-report or even subsidize IUU fishing operations. In an interactive panel discussion, these experts highlight examples of IUU fishing overseas and the corollary geopolitics, showcase promising technologies and big data solutions, and discuss the role of the military and the unconventional alliance with the conservation community.

Join the conversation with this forum of fishing-policy experts, and hear accounts of how IUU fishing destabilizes ocean-reliant economies of all sizes (from local economies such as Washington state to entire nations around the world). Discover new strategies and solutions to a global problem undermining economies, ecological stability, and even National Security.

Presented by The Stimson Center, Town Hall, World Affairs Council, and University of Washington EarthLab as part of the Civics series.