Fisheries and Sustainability: A Legal Analysis of EU and West African Agreements

Marine living resources are currently under severe threat from unsustainable use. International law urges a precautionary approach in the use of remaining fish stocks, necessitating rational domestic management of coastal fisheries and requiring foreign nations accessing these stocks to cooperate to this end. The manner in which bilateral fishing relations between the EU and various West African states have historically played out, however, has not followed this route. This book is a legal study of these relations from an inter-disciplinary and contextual perspective with particular reference to sustainability questions using three broad conceptual lenses: common resource management, integration towards sustainable development and the colonial legacy to interrogate the extent to which these interactions operated as legal instruments of sustainability.