The Tuna Production Cartel

Abstract

Outside the realm of tuna, the PNA is virtually unknown. But within the tuna world everyone knows what the initials stand for: the Parties to the Nauru Agreement. As we mentioned before: what OPEC is to oil, the PNA is to tuna: a production cartel of eight island states with the largest stocks of this resource. The PNA was set up in 1982 by the Federated States of Micronesia, Kiribati, the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, the Solomon Islands and Tuvalu. The autonomous island territory of Tokelau that forms part of New Zealand has been a ‘cooperative member’ since 2012. The PNA is one of the most inspiring agreements when it comes to increasing tuna stock sustainability through fishing policies. Just think about it: eight island states, with less than 9 million inhabitants (of which 8 million in Papua New Guinea), dispersed over thousands of islands and atolls, with a combined EEZ comparable to the size of the European Union before Brexit, joined forces. With an estimated half of global skipjack catches in their seas and a quarter of all total global tuna catches, the PNA was the most important source of raw material for the global canned tuna market. Of the 590 big purse seiners from the distant water fleets which were fishing the world seas from 2010 on, at least 250 could be found in PNA waters.