Untitled - CNR

Fishery and Sea Resourcesthe fisheries common policy in order toguarantee the long-term profitability of thefishery sector by means of a sustainable exploitationof the live water resources, basedon reliable scientific opinions as well ason the precautionary approach grounded onthe same considerations of the precautionaryprinciple mentioned in art. 174 of thetreaty establishing the European Community.The sustainability principle is alreadypresent in the Maastricht Treaty. This is theresult of a process started during the 1972Stockholm Conference where the Earthwas defined as a “capital” to be preserved,taking into account the critical relationshipbetween growth of ecosystem and the irreversibleprocess deriving from the exploitationof non-renewable resources. However,only in 1987 the concept of sustainabilityreceived an official acknowledgment withthe publication of the report “Our CommonFuture” of the World Commission on Environmentand Development created by theBruntland Commission. This concept containsthe idea that it is necessary to guarantee“the needs of the present without compromisingthe ability of future generationsto meet their own needs”. In 1992, the Riode Janeiro Declaration affirmed this conceptby making it a legal principle whichis pervasive of every law at international,European and national level concerning thepreservation of the environment and of itsresources.Consequently, through the resources interventionmeasures, such as the elaborationof plans for the management and the reconstitutionof the fish stock (indicating thelimits of their exploitation as well as thedetails of collection) or the assignment ofcapture and marketing shares, the Regulationn. 2371/2002 [6] adopts a turnoverof the anthropocentric mentality. Quotingfrom Regulation - art. 2 “the target is togradually implement a management of thefishery based on ecosystems”. The humanactivities can thus be carried to such anextent which their impact does not affectnor impair the integrity of the ecosystemand, consequently, the downsizing and themodernisation of the fishing vessels fleetsproves an essential measure to realize theintent of a sustainable exploitation, as wellas the development of the common marketof alieutic products, goals to be pursuedthanks to the appropriation of structuralfunds.6 Concluding remarksThis overview of rules and parliamentarydiscussions, allowed us to highlight theevolution of the public intervention in theregulation of fish resources which, wellbefore 19th century, were perceived as acommon good whose use could not be leftto a free and indiscriminate access. Theprevailing of this vision, a rather opposingtrend in comparison with the economic,politic and scientific mores of the century,can be brought back to the customs sharedby the different coastal communities activein the exploitation of the fish resources.The attention for the fish resources willgrow during the 20th century, in parallelwith a growing intervention of the Statein economy. The early years of ‘900 sawthe diffusion of the idea of the existenceof a wide field of interests which the centralgovernment can manage better than themarket. This belief consolidates in thesecond half of ‘900, when the natural resourcesstart being considered as strategicassets which need to be protected in nation’sinterest. Thus emerges the awarenessthat mankind is not free from those2180