Ocean grabbing: a threath to food security in Sierra Leone

INTRODUCTION

In 2012, ocean grabbing was qualified as equally dangerous to food security than land grabbing by the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Olivier De Schutter. He has thereupon brought to light an issue that is still today only rarely mentioned. Sierra Leone enjoys more than 500 km of shoreline, three rivers and four coastal islands giving it the perfect environment to develop a thriving fishery sector. Located in Western Africa, Sierra Leone is well-endowed with fish stocks but the growing practice of ocean grabbing opposes a threat for multiple reasons. The consequences of ocean grabbing are significantly harmful, especially to the small-scale fisherfolks who rely on fish as a dietary input and mean of subsistence. As fishery represents 10%¹ of the gross domestic product (GDP) and employs around half a million Sierra Leoneans, therefore ocean grabbing puts in jeopardy the already fragile economy and subsequently the entire population that depends on fisheries (Neiland, et al. 2016).

Sierra Leone has a total population of 7 million of which 59% live in the rural and 41% live in the urban areas. Characterized with a young demography, 40.9% of the population are children² and 55.6% are of working age³. The country's economy is essentially agricultural, accounting for approximatively half of the real gross GDP with coffee, cocoa, and fish representing the major agricultural exports. According to the African Development Bank economic outlook, Sierra Leone has managed modest economic growth rates during the post-war era (AFDB 2018). It reached its zenith at 20.7% in 2013 thanks to the Agenda for Prosperity 2013-18 (A4P) an initiative launched by the government conjointly with the United Nation Development Programme (UNDP) (GoSL 2013).

Hunger (FAO 2017) kills more than AIDS (UNAIDS 2016), malaria (WHO 2016) and tuberculosis (WHO 2018) combined⁴. In 2000 a large part of the international community

¹ Data from 2013, before the Ebola virus outbreak that ravaged the country and damaged the economy.

2 Population under 15 years of age

3 Population between 15 and 64 years of age

4 The World Food Program and the Food and Agriculture Organization explain that out of the 777 million people suffering from hunger and malnutrition approximatively 9 million died in 2015. According to the Joint United Nations Program on HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS) out of the 36.7 million people affected by HIV in 2015, 1.1 million died of an AIDS related disease. The World Health Organization (WHO) states that out of the 212

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adopted the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), one of which was `to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger' by 2015. At the time 900 million people suffered from hunger compared to 815 million in 2016⁵ (FAO 2017). In spite of those encouraging statistics we must put forward the times when hunger was on the rise in the last fifteen years. In 2007, caused by a mismanagement of wheat stock and poor harvest the previous years the global food crisis increased the number of people suffering from hunger. The same phenomenon occurred in 2016, this time due to climate change and conflicts (WFP 2017).

The goal to reach `zero hunger' by 2015 failed and since then the Sustainable Development Goals, adopted in 2016, set 17 new goals, including n°2 `zero hunger and food security'. Hunger is a consequence of many factors, amongst which food insecurity. Sierra Leone is ranked the third poorest country by the Global hunger index⁶, progressing from a GHI index of 57.2 in 1992 to 38.5 in 2017. Its current situation is partly due to the civil war that ravaged the country between 1991 and 2002 but also the recent Ebola virus outbreak (EVO) of 2014. After the civil war and since the official end of the Ebola epidemic two years ago⁷, the country had made progress and but is still facing many challenges. Sierra Leone's Ministry of Health and Sanitation associated with Action Against Hunger, qualified the country's hunger situation as `poor' in line with the Food Consumption Score (FCS) (GoSL, DFN et ACF 2017). This allows the understanding of the high prevalence of food insecurity. More than half of its population lives under the poverty line⁸ which means more than 3 million Sierra Leonean are food insecure (UNDP s.d.)⁹.

For a comprehensive understanding of the subject we will naturally define the concepts briefly at first and more extensively later in the dissertation. In 1996 the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) defined food security as: «sufficient, safe and nutritious

millions people affected by malaria 429 000 died in 2015 and that out of the 10.4 million people affected by tuberculosis 1.7 million died in 2016.

⁵ ibid, p.2

⁶ The Global Hunger Index is designed to comprehensively measure and track hunger globally and by country and region. Calculated each year by the International Food Policy Research Institute, the GHI highlights successes and failures in hunger reduction and provides insights into the drivers of hunger. It ranks 119 countries based on four components: undernourishment, child wasting, child stunting, and child mortality. Each country is given a score from 0 to 100, the smaller the index the better the hunger situation.

⁷ Sierra Leone was declared Ebola free in March 2016

⁸ The poverty line was updated by the World Bank in 2015 raising it from US$ 1.25 to US$ 1 .90

⁹ 60% of 7 million Sierra Leoneans live below the national poverty line.

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food (É) for an active and healthy life» (FAO 1996). Here hunger is linked to quantity and quality of the food one should consume, but it ignores other dimensions of the problematic. According to this argumentation, nutritional requirements will be met if the production of food increases, therefore reducing malnourishment and hunger (Malthus 1992). The issue of hunger is often associated with availability to food, access becoming secondary. But the question of access is crucial as the amount of food available is irrelevant to populations if they don't have the opportunity to obtain it (Sen 1981). This definition is the most popular one and is widely used, in particular by internationally recognized institutions and organizations like the World Bank, the World Food Program (WFP) or the International Fund for Agricultural Development (IFAD). It takes into account the importance of access to food which is key when studying food security because as we said availability without access is irrelevant to the populations in need. After defining food security, we can ask ourselves about the right to food and its meaning.

The World Food Summit organized by the FAO in 1996 also established a definition of the right to food. The right to food is internationally recognized by multiple institutions and organizations such as the UN. Indeed, it is considered a fundamental human right since it was inscribed in the first paragraph of the Article 25 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR). Its definition reads as follows:

«Everyone has the right to a standard of living adequate for the health and well-being of
himself and of his family, including food, clothing, housing and medical care and
necessary social services, and the right to security in the event of unemployment, sickness,
disability, widowhood, old age or other lack of livelihood in circumstances beyond his
control.» (UN 1948)

Other organizations recognize the right to food, we will later address those definitions. The comprehensive UDHR definition showcases the many aspects of the right to food. Evidently, one can think that the right to food only concerns aspects linked with food, nutrition and diet but it is linked to socio-economical aspect of day-to-day life. This shows us that the right to food is a complex concept that needs to be thoughtfully examined in order to comprehend its link with ocean grabbing.

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The term ocean grabbing has been used to describe actions, policies or initiatives that deprives small-scale fishers of resources, dispossess vulnerable populations of coastal lands, and/or undermine historical access to areas of the sea (James Benett, Govan et Satterfield 2015). In Sierra Leone ocean grabbing is ravaging small-scale fisherfolks. International fleets have been looting West African seas for decades now, whether though illegal means or in due and proper form through international treaties. Entities such as the European Union (EU) were accused of looting fish stocks in the West African region through bilateral agreements (Greenpeace 2011). By depriving smallholders of their resources and livelihood, those who perpetrate ocean garbing are in fact violating international law.

Even though hunger and food security might seem like `Third World problems', the global impact of the phenomenon on developed countries isn't trivial. The developing and poor countries represent approximatively half to two thirds of the world (ISO 2018)¹⁰. Considering that information, any issue concerning developing countries also concerns the rest of the world. That being said, not all developing countries face the problematic of hunger and food security to the same extent. In this dissertation we will focus on the concepts of food security, the right to food and ocean grabbing in general and try to look at their specificities in Africa. The goal here is to show the link between these concepts and apply them to Sierra Leone, our case study. We would like to demonstrate that ocean grabbing represents a serious threat to food security.

Since it was qualified as equally dangerous to food security than land grabbing¹¹, the practice of ocean grabbing aggravated mainly due to the appearance of the Global Partnership for Oceans, an initiative led by the World Bank which seeks to privatize the property rights regimes to aquatic resources (Franco, et al. 2014). How can fishery governance improve the supply of fish in countries where fish plays an important part in to the economy and the human development? The lack of regulation or will to circumvent them, whether by the country itself or a foreign country, has significant consequences on the national economy and human development. Indeed, the practice of illegal fishing or the inadequate and ineffective regulations of the fishing sector leads to an impoverishment of the volume of fish

¹⁰ ISO list of developing countries based on the UN list of Member States of the Group of 77 (G77)

¹¹ De Schutter O. «Ocean-grabbing as serious a threat as land-grabbing» during the United Nations General Assembly, sixty-seventh session, October 2012, New York

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available and consequently makes the populations who depend on fishing to provide for their basic needs, food insecure. Worldwide, hunger in linked to poverty. In Sierra Leone, a country that benefits from fishery for food and employment poverty rates are alarming. According to the FAO, fish is a critical source of protein in Sub-Saharan Africa, providing an estimated 22% of protein intake. But with marine resources being over-exploited, African fish production is failing to keep up with rising populations and demand. These questions lead us to ask ourselves: To which extent does ocean grabbing represent a threat to food security in Sierra Leone?

To answer this question, the dissertation is split into three parts, each one focusing on explaining how the mechanisms of ocean grabbing oppose a threat to food security by taking away from vulnerable populations their means of subsistence and main source of protein intake. In the first part we will discuss the shift of thinking in Sierra Leone's food policy. The Sierra Leonean government always led a self-sufficiency policy which it reinforced to counter the plunge in rice stock following the 2007 food crisis¹². After analysing the results of this policy we will question the concept of self-sufficiency and define the concept of food security and its evolution from the 70's till today. In the second part we will try to show how fishery could represent a serious lead in improving food security. More specifically we will attempt to display the benefits of fishery for food security in Sierra Leone. Finally, in the third and last part we will present the relationship between ocean grabbing and food security.

¹² The 2007 food crisis here can also be referred to as the «2008 food crisis» or «2007/08 food crisis». The crisis being the product of the complex addition of multiple factor. For this reason, a precise date cannot be given. That being said, the period that corresponds to the food crisis above-mentioned goes from around September 2007 to April of 2008.

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PART I - From self-sufficiency to food security

I. Self-sufficiency: Sierra Leone's response to food insecurity

In this section we will lay out the opening facts about Sierra Leone that are essential to the understanding of the dissertation as a whole. After a brief historical return, we will address the impact of the 2007 food crisis and Ebola virus outbreak on Sierra Leone and study the government's initiative to counter the negative effect on the economy, poverty rate as well as food security. Lastly, we will analyse the current state of food security and how it is related to the government's self-sufficiency policy.