Skip to this page's content Skip to access keys
Go to home page [Ministry for the Environment]

Home | Contact us | Related links | Site map
Working
with you		 | The
issues		 | Laws and
treaties		 | State of the
environment		 | Publications | About the
Ministry

You are here: Laws and treaties Contains: Multilateral Environmental Agreements Contains:

Wellington Convention

The 1989 Convention for the Prohibition of Fishing with Long Driftnets in the South Pacific (Wellington Convention) bans the use of driftnets over 2.5 metres long in the South Pacific. The Pacific’s fisheries resources (and in particular its limited southern albacore resource) had been placed under severe strain by extensive (and unsustainable) fishing by Korean and Japanese fishing industries in the region, often with little or no regard for the requirements of the region’s indigenous peoples.

The Wellington Convention paved the way for a global moratorium on driftnet fishing on the high seas (Resolution on Large-scale Pelagic Driftnet Fishing and its Impact on the Living Marine Resources of the World’s Oceans and Seas, adopted by the United Nations General Assembly on 20 December 1991).