The small scale artisanal fisheries benefit the local people but don't benefit the central government.

The central government gets cash (the benefit) and does not suffer (the cost).

Using immoral logic, the cost benefit analysis for the government is to screw the local people to get money for themselves.

If there was a more open democratic government they would not have done this.

...and the article points out that the central government has made these deals with no public input.  This points to the importance of democracy for a sustainable future.

You would have to wonder, too, what on earth EU fishing boats are doing in African waters. Now that they've overfished the North Sea, where to next, I suppose?

Surely the immorality does not end with the Mauritania government. How can agreements with dictators be legitimate?

Eliminating subsidies may not be enough, too. The common people of Mauritania ought to be able bring suit against the EU in an international forum, like a UN Sustainability Court. (Of course, a body like that is unthinkable under the current US adminstration.)

...but it certainly works better than none, witness the former Soviet Union with some of the worst pollution in history and the present regime in China.  At least where there is a democracy, people can protest and take direct action, and do as was done in the early 1970s, identify an environmental "dirty dozen" in Congress, defeat most of them, and push Congress to pass the Clean Air Act, etc.  Nothing will clean up the environment if enough people don't want to.

Good point, BioD.  A bloc of influential voters with an interest of their own can destabilize any democracy, or at least point its policies in very unhelpful directions.

So what is the answer?  Enlightened despots?  OK, but they are hard to come by, first of all, and secondly, the enlightenment tends to wear off, sooner or later.

In this connexion, it should be noted that the EU is looking a bit hypocritical: on the one hand, green-wise, trying to look like a global conscience, with its serious focus on climate-change mitigation, and social-wise, trying to help out African governments and nations, e.g. by debt relief; but then on the other, subsidizing their own people, at the expense of poor Africans, and of the biodiversity of African coastal waters.

Chickens are our cousins! So are other sensitive animals! Enough is enough! No more factory farms!

No fishing boats should be allowed to go fishing more than a certain limited amount of miles away from their home country.  That would help prevent EU boats going to Africa, Canada and elsewhere and taking such unsustainable amounts of fish.  

If you eat fish, this is another reminder to stick to local and sustainable seafood. Or better yet, switch to a plant-based diet.