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UN/CEFACT Mini Conference on sustainable fishery management and combatting illegal fisheries through information management (FLUX)

UN/CEFACT Mini Conference on sustainable fishery management and combatting illegal fisheries through information management (FLUX)

29 September 2016
Bangkok Thailand

The Agriculture Domain of the United Nations Centre for Trade Facilitation and Electronic Business (UN/CEFACT) is pleased to invite you to a one-day event about the new standard for the exchange of information on fisheries (FLUX). This event will take place on 29 September within the framework of the 28th UN/CEFACT Forum.

The Mini Conference on sustainable fishery management and combatting illegal fisheries through information management (FLUX) will take place in the morning (08:30 – 12:00) and be followed by a Workshop on the FLUX community (13:30 – 17:00).

Background
Due to poor fishery management the world fish stocks are depleting. Overfishing and illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing activities are pointed out as the main causes for the collapse of fish stocks worldwide (WWF, 2015; EC, 2015). The breakdown or collapse of coastal fisheries has a direct impact on the ecological environment and on the economic well-being of communities that rely on fisheries for their livelihoods. Therefore, the United Nations dedicated Sustainable Development Goal 14 to enhance sustainable fisheries and by doing so, counter further depletion and improve the livelihood of those who depend on fisheries.

An essential step in sustainable fisheries management is timely and accurate acquisition of fisheries information. Until now, fisheries management has been largely based upon the collection and exchange of large sets of data between various institutions. This results in a patchwork of diverse data sets which hinder the exchange and the quality of the data.

The agriculture expert group of UN/CEFACT has now developed a standard for the exchange of fishery messages for the sustainable management of fisheries (FLUX).

FLUX project
The FLUX project has been instigated to define a universal and efficient data exchange language to monitor and report on fisheries worldwide. The standard is developed in such a way that it can be used by all organizations associated to fisheries management.

With this standard, fisheries managers around the world will have for the first time access to an open and global standard to automatically collect and disseminate fishery catch data needed for sustainable fishery management. The standard is an efficient tool for detecting and combatting illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing. In addition, the standard will boost the development of a reliable and up-to-date database on fish catches, which will in turn improve research on science-based fishery management.

About this Mini Conference and Workshop
The objective of the day is to inform about the standard and its benefits in relation to tracking and tracing and in combatting illegal fisheries. Furthermore, a community for FLUX will be established for exchanging best practices and experiences on implementation issues of FLUX.

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Participation and registration
To attend the Mini Conference and/or Workshop, registration is compulsory. You are kindly invited to register through the 28th UN/CEFACT Forum register through the online registration by 15 September 2016 at the latest.