The State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture 2020

partially in the high seas. The United Nations 
Fish Stocks Agreement (in force since 2001) 
should be used as the legal basis for management 
measures of the high seas fisheries.
Regarding the Sustainable Development Goals 
(SDGs), the situation as at 2017 indicates that it is 
unlikely that SDG Target 14.4 (to end overfishing 
of marine fisheries by 2020) will be achieved. 
Achieving the target will require time and:
„
stronger political will, especially at the 
national level;
„
enhanced institutional and governance 
capacity, technology transfer and 
capacity building in science-based best 
management practices;
„
controlling of fishing capacity and intensity at 
levels that do not impair resource productivity;
„
transformation of consumers’ perceptions 
through market mechanisms and education;
„
strengthening of the global monitoring system 
to provide transparent and timely information 
to the public.
The continuous increase in the percentage of 
stocks fished at biologically unsustainable levels 
may mask regional differences in progress. 
In general, intensively managed fisheries have 
seen decreases in average fishing pressure and 
increases in stock biomass, with some reaching 
biologically sustainable levels, while fisheries 
with less-developed management are in poor 
shape (
Box 4
). This uneven progress highlights an 
urgent need to replicate and re-adapt successful 
policies and measures in the light of the realities 
of specific fisheries, and to focus on creating 
mechanisms that can effectively implement 
policy and regulations in fisheries with 
little management.
Inland fisheries
Basins that support inland capture fisheries can 
be found throughout the world. In some cases, 
these are major sources of inland fish as food 
in national or regional diets (e.g. the African 
Great Lakes, the Lower Mekong Basin, the 
Peruvian and Brazilian Amazon, and the 
Brahmaputra and Ayeyarwady river basins). 
Elsewhere, their production may be modest 
but of strong local-importance in the diet (e.g. 
interior regions of Sri Lanka, and Sumatra and 
Kalimantan in Indonesia). Allocating national 
inland fishery catch data by basin, sub-basin and 
large waterbody provides a more realistic picture 
of the areas where inland fisheries are conducted 
(
Figure 22
).
Table 14
shows the 60 most important hydrological 
or river basins in terms of contribution to the 
global inland fish catch. The first 50 percent of 
total global inland fish catch can be attributed 
to the top 7 basins. These basins also represent 
some of the highest levels of per capita fish 
consumption in the world.
Some of the world’s largest inland fisheries come 
from basins or river systems that are facing 
severe threats from anthropogenic and natural 
environmental pressures. However, there is 
limited or no routine monitoring of the status 
of capture fisheries in most of these basins 
(see the section Improving the assessment of 
global inland fisheries, p. 179). Inland fisheries 
are strongly influenced by fluctuations in 
environmental and climate conditions, in