Analysis of Taiwan’s foreign fisheries policy in tuna RFMOs: Possible variables and determinants

This paper aims to analyze and understand Taiwan’s international fisheries policy through the examination of its participation in tuna RFMOs, as well the variables that affect Taiwan’s policy in this regard. This paper finds that Taiwan has always been cooperative in its actions within tuna RFMOs. However, fishing opportunities remain the first priority for Taiwan when participating the work of these tuna RFMOs because of its nature as a fishing nation, and thus is reluctant to accept any new conservation and management measures (CMMs) nor submitting any CMM proposals in most circumstances. Further, Taiwan’s experience meets with the four variables, namely “Substitutability”, “Value Chain”, “Regulatory Capture”, and “Environmental non-governmental organizations (NGOs)”, were analyzed in this paper. However, the consideration of Taiwan’s right to equal participation in RFMOs like other States, which have been existed in most RFMOs as of today due to the endeavors made by Taiwan delegations, may still have greater influence to Taiwan’s positions of decision-making than all other variables in RFMOs. Therefore, despite the fact that it is true that the four determinants analyzed in this paper do, to a certain degree, affect Taiwan’s international fisheries policy, unlike other fishing nations, the influence of Taiwan’s statehood debate and the consideration of its equal participation are an additional and a must determinant that has to be analyzed.