Dear colleagues and participants

Welcome to the third North Atlantic Conference, here in Tromsø.

The North Atlantic Conferences is about the management and protection of marine resources. Tromsø is located close to the entrance to one of the most productive marine areas in the world, the Barents Sea. It is therefore natural in this opening address to focus on the Barents Sea, and how we intend to use this valuable area in the future. However, I will also use the opportunity to touch upon other issues close to my heart.

This spring the Government presented a White Paper to the Norwegian parliament, with a proposal for an Integrated Management Plan for the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea and the areas off the coast of Lofoten and Vesterålen.

The plan is internationally in the forefront for establishing management plans for larger sea areas. The plan will be debated in the parliament next week, and I am told that Norway is the first country to lift this type of plan to the highest political level.

One of the major aims of the management plan is to provide better instruments for a sustainable harvest of the marine living resources. This means taking into account driving forces others than the fisheries itself. It also means the establishment of a framework for management that also includes the aspects of biodiversity, as well as the interactions between the most important components in the ecosystem. In other words, our management will be further developed to a complete ecosystem based fisheries management plan.

This ecosystem based approach also includes considerations connected to the exploitation of the oil and gas resources of the area. The plan proposes that certain valuable areas, in particular areas important for the recruitment of fish stocks and for fishing activities, should not be opened for oil exploration.

The most important proposal concerning the oil and gas activities in the Barents Sea is probably the total ban on production discharges to the sea from such activities.

Norway has had offshore oil and gas exploitation for almost forty years. We therefore have a fairly extensive experience in coexistence between oil - and fishing activities. Some will disagree. But I believe that we have an obligation to utilize non-renewable resources as well. That is, if we can do it with proper concern for the environment, its living resources and other uses of the particular area. And this is what the plan is about.

The Integrated Management Plan for the Barents Sea is a challenge for politicians as well as bureaucrats and scientists. Developing and implementing an ecosystem approach to management involves a wide range of activities. Coordinated monitoring of the environment, living resources and pollutants is a major challenge. The increasing transport of oil from Northwest Russia is another. To meet the challenge from oil transport, Norway has recently submitted a proposal to the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) for establishment of mandatory separated shipping lanes off our northern coast.

Currently, the most serious threat to the Barents Sea ecosystem is the illegal, unregulated and unreported fisheries, the so called IUU-fisheries. More than 100.000 tonnes of Arctic cod and 30.-40.000 tonnes of haddock are estimated to be illegally fished in the Barents Sea each year. To be more specific, ever fifth fish in the Barents Sea is fished illegally.

This is theft!

For Norway the Barents Sea theft is close and we tend to focus on the nearest thing, but we must not forget that IUU-fisheries are a world wide problem.

It is also important to underline that theft is not profitable without buyers. They are just as responsible for the illegal and unreported fishing activities. This theft not only threatens the sustainability of fish stocks. Incomes, work and settlements along the coast will ultimately be negatively impacted by illegal fishing. I will use this opportunity to state that the Norwegian government is determined to continue to work nationally and internationally stop this robbery.

Clearly, it is important for us to increase international attention to the problem.

At a UN-conference about high seas fisheries 14 days ago, it was decided to establish a legally binding instrument on port state control. The decision was based on a Norwegian proposal, and I am very encouraged by the broad support it received.

I’m also meeting with the Fisheries Committee of the European Parliament, to discuss how EU and Norway can work together to combat IUU-fishing.

To give you a fresh example of how IUU-fisheries will have a dramatic effect on the legal cod fisheries next year, I will refer to the just released advices from the International Council for the Exploration of the Sea, ICES. Their advice for 2007 for Northeast Arctic cod is that the total catches should not exceed 309 000 tonnes. This dramatic reduction from the 2006 quota of 471 000 tonnes is caused by earlier years IUU-fisheries. The uncertainty introduced in the management models from the increasing IUU-fisheries seriously threatens a sustainable fisheries mangament.

This is making me furious – as minister of fisheries, but also as an inhabitant of a coastal community being completely dependent on the fisheries. Next year seems to be difficult for all the communities and people that make a living of legal harvest of the Barents Sea resources. For every fish taken illegally from the Barents Sea, the disaster is approaching. Therefore the fight against IUU-fishing will remain a top priority issue for the

Norwegian Government and me. I really hope that the international society will join us in this fight.

My vision as Minister of Fisheries and Coastal Affairs is that I want to see lights in the houses along the coast and in our fjords. The fish resources have been harvested for more than a thousand years in Norway, and have been fundamental for small coastal communities.

Fish will continue to be important for future generations as well, but fisheries alone will not guarantee for a prosperous future. It is therefore important for the coastal communities in the Northern-Norway that the Integrated Management Plan for the Norwegian part of the Barents Sea opens for better and coordinated multiple uses of the area and its resources.

I felt it important to give you a brief introduction to some of the aspects in the proposed Integrated Management Plan for the Barents Sea. This in particular since the topic for the Third Atlantic Conference is “Marine Protected Areas – From Global Policy to Regional Perspectives”, which also is a part of the management concept for marine areas.

Marine Protected Areas, MPAs, in management of marine living resources opens for a wide use, depending on how we define this instrument. In this context it is important to draw the attention to the fact that marine living resources comprise more than the fisheries of today. As I mentioned, an ecosystem based approach to resource management include both use and knowledge of the various components in an ecosystem.

Vital and well functioning ecosystems are fundamental for a sustainable harvest of the fish resources. Well functioning ecosystems will also be a guarantee for the biodiversity in an area.

Looking into the future, we do not know what kind of treasures may be hidden in for examples our cold water corals. Marine bio prospecting is only in its early beginning and seems promising.

Protecting certain areas from certain activities, for future use or even for permanent protection, is active management. But such actions will require both good knowledge and enforcement of the decision to protect. It is therefore fundamental for management purposes that all aspects of protection are well considered before any measures are taken.

Along the Norwegian coast the scientists, due to better instrumentation and a more systematic search, discover new cold water corals on every survey. The question is then; do we need to give them all a permanent protection? Or can we open for certain specific fishing activities in some areas? But we may also ask the opposite question. Can we accept that big trawlers with heavy gear destroy coral reefs for the sole purpose of increasing their catches for a limited period? I know that this kind of question may provoke some one, but I hope that we in this conference will have an open discussion where we can ask questions like these. And even better, find some answers that we can agree upon.

The Marine Protected Areas as a management instrument can be a strong tool for a dynamic management of the marine living resources and its environment. But strong tools need to be handled with care. I hope that this conference will succeed in defining Marine Protected Areas and how to use this concept.

We have in our preparation for this conference experienced that one of the main reasons for having North Atlantic Conferences at regular intervals seems to have vanished. I understand that those who took the initiative had the vision that this conference should be a meeting place for ministers of environment and fisheries, national and international managers, representatives from local coastal communities, fishermen’s associations and other non governmental organisations. We have not succeeded in attracting ministers of environment to the conference and I understand that they experienced the same at the second North Atlantic Conference in Shetland. Therefore I will propose that you in the final discussion tomorrow also consider the future of the North Atlantic Conference in the form and regularity it is supposed to have today.

Having said this I will strongly underline that the topic of Marine Protected Areas is of uttermost importance. Therefore I hope you all will take actively part in the discussions, and I am looking forward to fruitful days at The North Atlantic Conference.

Good luck to you all.