Cost Recovery Guidelines for Electronic Monitoring Services

This report, prepared for the Worldwide Fund for Nature (WWF) and the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency (FFA), examines options, and proposes guidelines, for the recovery of costs for electronic monitoring (EM) services in FFA island member country tuna longline fisheries. It was prepared as a result of increasing interest in how EM, which has largely been financially supported by non-government organisations or development assistance partners to date, may be sustained in the long term.

The extent to which costs may be recovered for any Government service is dependent on policy decisions of the Government or responsible agency. Relevant considerations may include:

• The extent to which costs are attributable to the user of the service;
• The extent to which Governments or agencies are willing to provide support to stimulate economic activity in the sector concerned; or
• The extent to which support is required to facilitate transition to a new administrative process.

A framework to guide the implementation of cost recovery for EM services in FFA island members is proposed. The framework comprises a series of principles to guide the overarching implementation of cost recovery arrangements, as well as a series of operational level policies to implement cost recovery in practice. The framework has been developed taking into account existing cost recovery policies within the FFA membership, as well as practical experience implementing cost recovery in the Pacific islands region.