New research reveals huge loss of jobs and profits due to overfishing of EU stocks

New research published by new economics foundation finds that poor management of fish stocks is supressing jobs and sinking profits. The report Jobs Lost at Sea estimates the benefits of rebuilding 43 European stocks (out of more than 150) and finds that:

* Restoring these 43 stocks to their maximum sustainable yield (MSY) would generate 3.53 million tonnes of additional landings; enough to meet the annual demand of fish for almost 160 million EU citizens (and reducing carbon intensive imports Ed)
   
* Value of restoring fish stocks is worth £2.7 billion (€3.2 bn) per year to all countries. It is worth £1.5 billion (€1.8 bn) per year to the EU27, or almost three times its annual fishing subsidies.

* Value of restoring these fish stocks could support 100,790 new jobs, around 83,000 to the EU27 (31% more than current employment in the EU fishing sector).

* Restoring fish stocks could increase catch values from these stocks by 81% for the EU27, and more than double for most countries, including the UK (+109%) and Germany (+116%).

* Worst affected fish are cod (lost 970,000 tonnes/yr), haddock (lost 378,000 tonnes/yr), herring (lost 854,000 tonnes/yr) and whiting (lost 834,000 tonnes/yr).

Overfishing means the EU is getting much less out of its fish stocks than if they were restored and sustainably managed. The study has analysed of the difference between the current size of catches compared with their potential (‘maximum sustainable yield’) to highlight the scale of that overfishing has hijacked revenues and employment. restoring fish stocks from current levels to their maximum sustainable yield should be at the heart of European fisheries management. The reform of the Common Fisheries Policy is an ideal opportunity to put an end to this waste and restore profitable sustainable fisheries.

Is there a democratic crisis in marine governance?

Who is 'competent' or 'very competent' to manage the marine environment?

Graph: Data showing perceived competence of different groups to manage the environment. Scores shown as percentage of responses rating ‘competent or highly competent’ (rating of 4 -5). Note that EU, National and Local refer to government bodies. Sample: UK, Poland, Spain, Germany, Italy, Portugal, France,

Source: Knowseas: Public perceptions of Europe’s Seas - A Policy Brief. LINK
  
 The chart points to public concern over the process for managing the marine environment -  and the  opportunity to develop new ways of co-managing marine resources and including public voice in marine decisions. Environmental groups and scientists are perceived as more competent (at 57% and 56%) than government bodies, individuals and industry (max 37%). While on one hand this is a concerning statistic, it points to a change in the way marine governance can work. Governance means more than government, and the inclusion of civil and scientific voices, not only as 'stakeholders' but as co-managers, may be the way forward to improve marine sustainability.

There is clearly a critical role for elected representatives in government and civil departments to continue to administer and support marine management and be viewed as the custodian of the process. But if the views of the community are to be acknowledged, the system needs to advance to include genuine engagement over consultation.

What do individuals, communities and nations think of marine issues?

A wonderful happy new year to all of our readers on Sustainable Seas! 2012 promises to be the biggest yet for the blog with plans for further expansion and coverage of sustainable marine and coastal issues around the world.

We're starting the new year with a bang.

One of the huge gaps in marine policy research is understanding the views of the public when it comes to valuing and managing the marine environment. While as engaged researchers or activists we naturally place the marine environment high within our own values - but are the the views of the public substantially different? What is the importance of public discourse?

This recent report by the European Knowseas project charts public opinion of 7000 people across 7 European countries concerning marine values and management approaches. The results highlight that while the oceans are generally low in public opinion, there is a strong call for more civil society involvement in governance. Approaches such as MPAs and marine spatial planning, while in early development, are strongly supported by the public. Views across countries differed dramatically with countries such as the UK, despite a strong maritime heritage, displaying a disconnect from the sea whereas countries such as Portugal and Spain showed a strong connection. The emerging 'ecosystem approach' was important with the public highlighting that non-economic values are as important as traditional economic outputs.

The results raise several interesting questions and consequences - notably the demand for more co-management, public involvement and democratic accountability in the governance of the coasts and seas.

We have a NEW LINK to download the report.

Geoengineering in the Arctic

A recent commentary in New Scientist 'Call for Arctic geoengineering as soon as possible' discusses the perspective that  a climate "tipping point" has been reached in the Arctic and that geoengineering is urgently required to turn around the deterioration of Arctic sea ice. The suggestion is for using stratospheric aerosols to cool the surface and subsurface below, or increasing the reflectance of low-level clouds by pumping a fine spray of salt water into them, and therefore cooling the ocean-atmosphere system. 

In highlighting the geoengineering solution, there is  an assumption that there is a crisis in Arctic summer sea ice, driven by human influenced climate change. Looking a the past records of summer sea from from the National Snow and Ice Data Centre ice extent for September 2011 was the second lowest in the satellite record. The last five years (2007 to 2011) have had the five lowest September extents in the satellite record with the rate of decline now -84,700 square kilometers (-32,700 square miles) per year, or -12% per decade relative to the 1979 to 2000 average.

Clearly something is going on in the system and the evidence points to human induced climate change from GHG emissions as the key player. Natural variability is still an issue, and this is underpinned by considerable uncertainty about how the system will react in the future to a warming planet and where the tipping points for irreversible change lie. The only clear message is that it is unclear and that human pressures and natural variability have combined to create a state change in the Arctic.

In term of geoengineering, I'm pessimistic about it's application in the region, and more importantly its potential effects. However, despite the uncertainty about the impacts of geoengineering on the marine environment and the hair raising implications of it as a final 'last gasp' solution to climate change, we must still continue to investigate its applications, its impacts and its opportunities. But geoengingeering (at least to me) and as pointed out in a recent Guardian article feels like failure of political process to get agreement of binding international cuts and a failure to turn society around towards a low carbon economy. It is the last straw and one that will hopefully not be required in lieu of poor progress on international action to reduce emissions. 

What is your perspective?

 

Overfishing in Rural Ghana

Overfishing in Rural Ghana

by Elaine Hirsch

The tragedy of the commons is a dilemma habitually encountered by groups of organisms sharing a common resource. Popularized by Garrett Harding in 1968, the idea is common knowledge among online doctorate economics majors. Harding's idea states that given a situation with individuals acting in their self-interests, a shared resource will be depleted, despite the fact that it is in no one's long-term interests to do so. This phenomenon is central to all aspects of fishing today, but especially hinders rural fishing groups in developing areas, as public policy is underfunded and much harder to enforce in such areas. This article will focus on Ghana's fishing industry and how the tragedy of the commons have affected fishermen in the country.

As a coastal country in Sub-Saharan Africa, one of Ghana's main industries is in fishing. Despite having one of the most effective governments in place among its peers, Ghana remains victim to the tragedy of the commons, as policies set by the Ministry of Fisheries are difficult to enforce in rural coastal areas. Lack of funding, along with cultural precedents trump policies, causes fishing groups to overfish and deplete the overall stock of fish, producing a sub-optimal long-term solution for Ghana's population, which heavily depends on its fishing revenues.

The Keta region, located on the Southeastern coast of Ghana, is an area which is becoming heavily plagued by overfishing. Not only is the region itself sustained through fishing operations, but many entrepreneurs in the region rely on exporting their catches to more profitable areas (such as Ghana's capital, Accra) to produce sustainable margins.

Due to overfishing in recent years, however, the volume of fish caught both during regular seasons and harvest seasons have dramatically decreased. Although supply and demand allows margins on each individual fish sold to increase, depleting fish populations are bad for all parties involved in the long-term. Fishermen who export their catch to profitable areas are price-takers (the price they sell their fish are determined my market supply and demand instead of what they want to charge), so their revenues diminish with a lower stock of fish. Lower supply also strains local markets, as the rural population must pay more for a less amount of fish.

Luckily, the Keta population has developed a few ways to prohibit excessive overfishing. For example, it is socially frowned-upon for fishermen in local provinces to fish on certain days. Although religious and social reasons are used to justify this social contract, fishermen in the region also acknowledge that it is a primary way for its population to prevent overfishing. A social contract such as this has been a huge detriment to overfishing in the region, but similar institutions will be needed to ward off the overwhelming demand for fish.

This is just one example of an increasingly prominent trend of giving ownership of natural resources to indigenous peoples as a means of developing sustainable social institutions. Eleanor Ostrom, in her Nobel-Prize winning research, found that having full ownership of a certain natural resource provides people with the incentives to overcome the tragedy of the commons.

Obviously, this isn't a sustainable solution to the overfishing problem in Ghana. History has shown that enforceable public policy is needed to prevent entire populations from succumbing to the tragedy of the commons. The Ghanaian government has institutions (such as the Ministry of Fisheries) set in place to handle such issues. It will, however, need additional funding if it will truly fix the problem.

Tuna fished 'illegally' during Libya conflict

 

Evidence is emerging of unregulated and probably illegal tuna fishing in Libyan waters during this year's conflict. Signals recorded from boats' electronic "black boxes" show a large presence inside Libyan waters, a major spawning ground for the endangered bluefin tuna. Several strands of evidence, including a letter from a former industry source, suggest the involvement of EU boats. The issue will be aired this week at the annual meeting of ICCAT, which regulates tuna fishing in the region. The details on this sordid story can be seen here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15597675

In the light of this disturbing information, WWF and Greenpeace wrote today an urgent letter to ICCAT and ICCAT contracting parties urging them to:

1. urgently, identify in a public and transparent manner the names and flags of those vessels which - according to the VMS signals transmitted to the ICCAT Secretariat - operated in 2011 inside the Libyan fisheries protection zone and the Gulf of Sirte.

2. Include such vessels and their owners in the ICCAT IUU list.

3. Formally declare as IUU any recorded catch of bluefin tuna by these vessels during 2011.

4. In case of farming of the above mentioned catches, urge the concerned farms to immediately release an equivalent amount of fish.

5. Call on ICCAT CPCs to explicitly ban any fishing in Libyan waters in 2012.

Illegal fishing on this scale in a key nursery ground for Atlantic Bluefin tuna could prove catastrophic for this recently red listed species. Sustainable Seas calls for the listing of Bluefin on CITES Appendices 1and the implementation by the EU of coastal, port and market state controls on the fishery including the black listing of IUU vessels and the immediate implementation of a fisheries restoration zone across the range of the species.

A new approach to mapping marine policy...

Often policy processes in coastal and marine systems are difficult to understand, opaque, or the means of making changes are hard to identify.  A new paper by Bainbridge, Potts and O'Higgins is freely available in the journal Plos One that demonstrates an approach to mapping and understanding marine and coastal policy. The approach, called Rapid Policy Network Mapping (RPNM) aims to improve the understanding and positioning of actors and institutions in environmental policy, see who is represented and where, and identify the 'levers of change'. It is a generic tool - one that can be used anywhere and at any scale - and users are asked to contribute to a growing community of online maps and debate about how the ecosystem approach can be implemented.

The main benefits of RPNM are that it:

1. Captures the majority and most significant instruments and actors in the development of specific policies.
2. Aggregates and compares actors and instruments by policy domain.
3. Provides a robust platform of data as a baseline for reference or further research or action e.g. multi-modal network analysis, policy networks etc.
4. Provides a web based tool for dynamic collaboration.
5. Is a means of understanding and visualising complex policy systems and identifies where changes can be driven through the system. 
6. Can be developed at a reasonably low cost and deployed rapidly. 
7. Helps understand who does what and where, who is over and under represented in policy debates.

Can you give up “your” piece of the sea?

It is probably true that each of us thinks that it is our right to use the sea – to swim, to sail or simply to look at - depending on one’s affinities. These activities for the most part do not cause a great harm to the marine environment (unless your boat is leaking oil, for example) and so long as one is not trying to sail through a group of swimmers, there is very little opportunities for different users to get into conflict. Imagine, however if each of us was much, much bigger and I wanted to swim in a bay in which you wanted to swim in, but both of us could not fit in and there was no alternative bay for one of us to go to anywhere in the vicinity. What would happen between us?

At a large marine ecosystem scale, “Rival countries have squabbled over territory in the South China Sea for centuries - but a recent upsurge in tension has sparked concern that the area is becoming a flashpoint with global consequences.” (BBC)

More locally, a proposed development of the Tiree Array, a large offshore windfarm being planned off the Isle of Tiree (West Coast of Scotland), has produced quite a commotion as posts on both the No Tiree Array (NTA) and the Tiree Community Development Trust (Tiree Trust) websites show. The No Tiree Array campaign has started in November 2010 to “resist the proposed construction of the Tiree (Argyll) Array, or any ancillary development, within 35km of Tiree’s coastline”. The Tiree Trust, which is owned and managed by the Tiree community was formed in March 2006 to promote “the sustainable, environmental, economic and social development of Tiree”.

As a mediator, I propose that all users of the marine environment, no matter how big or small, in conflict or not, consider:

• What are my needs when using the sea? How do they, if at all, shape my position in potential conflict?

• What may other marine users’ needs be?

• What small changes in my behaviour could I make that would still satisfy my needs but possibly allow other users’ needs to be satisfied as well?

Sceptical? Thinking why would they use it and not me? Consider the above example of you and me and one bay that is too small. What both of us may need is to cool down from the mid-day sun, but we may be too stubborn or too proud or both to find out about each other’s needs and to think of a solution together. But if we were not too stubborn or too proud, could we simply take turns to swim in the bay?

I am not suggesting that the South China Sea or the Tiree Array situations are as simple as this, but I am proposing that we look beyond our entrenched positions and try to identify our own needs, other people’s needs, and work on achieving a needs-based solution rather than a position-fuelled conflict. It would be a start and would take us a long way towards achieving sustainable seas.

Marshall Islands establishes world's largest shark sanctuary

The Republic of the Marshall Islands is now home to the world’s largest shark sanctuary. The MPA ends commercial fishing of sharks in all 1,990,530 square kilometers (768,547 square miles) of the central Pacific country’s waters - an equivalent ocean area four times the landmass of California.

Key provisions of the Marshall Islands' sanctuary include:

• A prohibition on the commercial fishing of sharks as well as the sale of any sharks or shark products. Its zero retention stipulation requires that any shark caught accidentally by fishing vessels must be set free.
• Large monetary fines between US$25,000 to US$200,000 for anyone who is found to be fishing sharks or in possession of shark fins. In addition, violators would be fined the market value of the product in their possession.
• A ban on the use of wire leaders, a longline fishing gear which is among the most lethal to sharks.
• A monitoring and enforcement provision which requires all fishing vessels to land their catch at one of the country's ports and bans at sea transfers.

The challenge in the management of this sanctuary will be ensuring there are adequate monitoring and enforcement control mechanisms in place. The sheer scale of the area presents a logistical, technical and financial challenge - particularly to control IUU fisheries in the area - and to ensure that trans-shipment of shark products do not occur. Cross boundary partnerships in the region should be developed that compliment the outcomes in the sanctuary. Ultimately the market for shark fin products should be eradicated to ensure a future for this magnificent ocean species.

More on the initiative here at Pew.

New Marine Protected Areas for the UK

This morning the BBC has reported a sharp increase in the amount and scope of marine protected areas in UK waters.Under the Marine and Coastal Access Act (2009) there is a legal obligation to implement a 'coherent' network of MPAs, driven in turn by agreements at the international level such as OSPAR and the Convention on Biological Diversity.

Under the Act, MPAs within an 'ecologically coherent network' should be developed for the waters of England and the offshore region for Wales. In Scotland this would occur under a separate legislative process (The Marine (Scotland) Act 2010) and in Northern Ireland the process has not started.

It is a considerable expansion - from an approximate level of 1% to 25% - that would significantly protect marine ecosystems.....and livelihoods. The zones, while incorporation marine protection, also allow for human activity at various levels - particularly activities that do not adversely damage the features under protection. This will clearly be a challenge to activities that generate some impact, and will potentially drive innovation towards sustainable uses of the sea. Management plans and zoning of activities have not been discussed at this point, what we see today is the initial designation of sites that will feed into a scientific review and a further political negotiation.

Two points to end on - it is likely that the network will be altered under the negotiation process; and the management planning process for protected sites will be critical to ensure marine features are conserved and appropriate and sustainable marine activities are allowed to flourish.