This month’s major report from the United Nations about the continuing destruction of the natural world, especially the oceans, should serve as a wake up call to protect this big blue planet.
But, unfortunately about the only action resulting from the report will be more of the same – and that is leading us down a path of destroying the natural world upon which we all depend.
The report, entitled GEO- 4 (Global Environmental Outlook – 4), marks 20 years since the United Nations adopted sustainable development as the blueprint linking environment and development challenges. Unfortunately, many indicators, especially relating to the oceans, are showing that we are moving on a path further away from sustainability.
- Three-quarters of marine fisheries are exploited to or beyond their limits.
Fish feed people. 2.6 billion people worldwide depend on fish for at least 20% of their animal protein consumed. For some, there is a luxury that if fish stocks decline or prices rises, they simply switch to other sources of protein.
But for the 50 million small-scale fishermen and the people they feed, where does the protein come from when the fish disappear? And where do their jobs go? Earlier this year, when I talked to elders in subsistence fishing villages in Papua New Guinea, the story was the same. There are fewer fish than there used to be. What is left is harder to catch, as they face competition from industrialized vessels further encroaching on traditional fishing grounds.
During this same 20-year period, when the world was supposed to be embracing sustainable development, we have seen the continued growth of industrial fishing. Deep sea trawling scouring ocean floors. Longline fishing setting a billion hooks in the sea every year. Purse seiners smothering tuna throughout the Pacific.
- Marine species are teetering on the edge of extinction
Biodiversity is the fabric of healthy, functioning ecosystems. In the US Atlantic, larger sharks, such as bulls, great whites, duskys and hammerheads, prey on cownose rays. But when large shark populations are decimated, the cownose rays rise in numbers and in term reduce bay scallops.
All these creatures of the sea are connected, and when we blindly disturb the balance, it can have economic impacts.
In some cases, the impact might just be a vanishing act. Over the last 20 years, the population of Pacific leatherback has crashed more than 90%, due to the human harvesting of eggs of nesting beaches and the rampant, mostly unchecked longline and gillnet operations along coastal waters and on the high seas. Scientists predict extinction in the next 10-30 years if we stay on this trajectory.
- Demand for fish is expected to rise
Beneath these calamitous declines is the uneasy revelation in the GEO-4 report that demand for fish is expected to rise. Fish consumption has risen in the more developed regions: North America, Western Europe, and South East Asia. According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, there will be a global shortage of fish supply, and prices will rise.
Along the coast of West Africa, foreign fleets have gained access to traditional fishing grounds, resulting in a forced migration of fishers from the country and an increase in the imports of fish. European demand for tuna has led to an increase in the bushmeat trade (the consumption of wild forest animals) as local fish stocks have declined and forced fishermen in search of other sources of protein.
The state of the oceans is dismal at best. A mere shadow of historical accounts of abundance – of fish so thick they would stop boats, of whales as plentiful as dolphins, of turtles filling nesting beaches like scattered stones.
The oceans are a source of life and we need to make a sea change in the way that we are living with them. Ideas for this sea change, or at least ideas good enough to get us started, are out there. Marine protected areas, reduced fishing effort, a Slow Fish movement, reduced consumption of fish, fish for local consumption first.
But what we lack is the political will. Over the past 20 years, the state of the oceans has moved from bad to worse. We cannot afford another 20 years of thinking about solutions. Because there just may not be anything out there left to protect. We need to act now – for the fish, for the turtles and whales, and for the people throughout this world who depend on healthy oceans to feed their families.
Take action to protect the oceans now!
