Governments must step up protection of fishing limits in international waters to prevent fish species being killed off, the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) said yesterday.
International waters account for more than half the world's surface, yet many governments are ignoring controls and increasing catches, while pirate fishing is also common, said Simon Cripps, head of the WWF's marine program.
"If they're not addressed now, you won't have livelihoods, you won't have fish stocks," Cripps said. "You're seeing it already in the choice of fish in your shops."
In its latest report on the state of the world fisheries, the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) estimated that a quarter of the fish stocks it monitors were overexploited or depleted. A further half were fully exploited, meaning they were producing catches close to their maximum sustainable limits.
There has been a consistent upward trend in the proportion of overexploited and depleted stocks, from about 10 percent in the mid-1970s to almost 25 percent in the early 2000s, the FAO report said.
According to a report released yesterday by the Switzerland-based WWF, regulations under so-called regional fisheries management organizations need to be tightened to restrict any overfishing.
The management organizations "are constrained predominantly by the lack of political will, commercial motivations or the capacity of their members," said the 56-page report.
The WWF report was released before a meeting in New York when governments will review the UN Fish Stocks Agreement, the legal framework for management of fish populations in the high seas, which are further out from coastal areas and so not under national government control.
Countries like Australia, Britain and Canada should be taking more responsibility, setting examples and putting pressure on other states, Cripps said in an interview in Geneva.
Some regional agreements, such as the Antarctic Convention, do a good job of protecting fish stocks as well as the rest of the environment, Cripps said.
But others are failing.
Some signatories to a North Atlantic agreement are ignoring their fishing quotas, he explained. Some countries have not even signed up to such treaties and are severely undermining the efforts of responsible governments.
The Grand Banks off Canada's east coast are suffering huge declines in cod stocks, devastating the income of coastal communities, Cripps said. This is happening even though Canada's government is protecting stocks in its national waters, because the Grand Banks extend into international waters where others are overfishing.
Regulations must be tightened and pirate fishing clamped down on. Otherwise, there will be few fish left for anyone to protect, Cripps said.
"It's got to stop, we've got to do it quickly," Cripps said. "There is hope, if we can get management put in place."
REBUILDING: A researcher said that it might seem counterintuitive to start talking about reconstruction amid the war with Russia, but it is ‘actually an urgent priority’ Italy is hosting the fourth annual conference on rebuilding Ukraine even as Russia escalates its war, inviting political and business leaders to Rome to promote public-private partnerships on defense, mining, energy and other projects as uncertainty grows about the US’ commitment to Kyiv’s defense. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy were opening the meeting yesterday, which gets under way as Russia accelerated its aerial and ground attacks against Ukraine with another night of pounding missile and drone attacks on Kyiv. Italian organizers said that 100 official delegations were attending, as were 40 international organizations and development banks. There are
The tale of a middle-aged Chinese man, or “uncle,” who disguised himself as a woman to secretly film and share videos of his hookups with more than 1,000 men shook China’s social media, spurring fears for public health, privacy and marital fidelity. The hashtag “red uncle” was the top trending item on China’s popular microblog Sina Weibo yesterday, drawing at least 200 million views as users expressed incredulity and shock. The online posts told of how the man in the eastern city of Nanjing had lured 1,691 heterosexual men into sexual encounters at his home that he then recorded and distributed online. The
TARIFF ACTION: The US embassy said that the ‘political persecution’ against former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro disrespects the democratic traditions of the nation The US and Brazil on Wednesday escalated their row over US President Donald Trump’s support for former Brazilian president Jair Bolsonaro, with Washington slapping a 50 percent tariff on one of its main steel suppliers. Brazilian President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva threatened to reciprocate. Trump has criticized the prosecution of Bolsonaro, who is on trial for allegedly plotting to cling on to power after losing 2022 elections to Lula. Brasilia on Wednesday summoned Washington’s top envoy to the country to explain an embassy statement describing Bolsonaro as a victim of “political persecution” — echoing Trump’s description of the treatment of Bolsonaro as
CEREMONY EXPECTED: Abdullah Ocalan said he believes in the power of politics and social peace, not weapons, and called on the group to put that into practice The jailed leader of a Kurdish militant group yesterday renewed a call for his fighters to lay down their arms, days before a symbolic disarmament ceremony is expected to take place as a first concrete step in a peace process with the Turkish state. In a seven-minute video message broadcast on pro-Kurdish Medya Haber’s YouTube channel, Abdullah Ocalan, the leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), said that the peace initiative had reached a stage that required practical steps. “It should be considered natural for you to publicly ensure the disarmament of the relevant groups in a way that addresses the expectations
RSS