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by Sebastian Smith Sebastian Smith Mon May 17, 11:07 pm ET
NEW YORK (AFP) The world faces the nightmare possibility of fishless oceans
by 2050 unless fishing fleets are slashed and stocks allowed to recover, UN
experts warned.
"If the various estimates we have received... come true, then we are in the
situation where 40 years down the line we, effectively, are out of fish," Pavan
Sukhdev, head of the UN Environment Program's green economy initiative, told
journalists in New York.
A Green Economy report due later this year by UNEP and outside experts argues
this disaster can be avoided if subsidies to fishing fleets are slashed and
fish are given protected zones -- ultimately resulting in a thriving industry.
The report, which was opened to preview Monday, also assesses how surging
global demand in other key areas including energy and fresh water can be met
while preventing ecological destruction around the planet.
UNEP director Achim Steiner said the world was "drawing down to the very
capital" on which it relies.
However, "our institutions, our governments are perfectly capable of changing
course, as we have seen with the extraordinary uptake of interest. Around, I
think it is almost 30 countries now have engaged with us directly, and there
are many others revising the policies on the green economy," he said.
Environmental experts are mindful of the failure this March to push through a
worldwide ban on trade in bluefin tuna, one of the many species said to be
headed for extinction.
Powerful lobbying from Japan and other tuna-consuming countries defeated the
proposal at the CITES conference on endangered species in Doha.
But UNEP's warning Monday was that tuna only symbolizes a much vaster
catastrophe, threatening economic, as well as environmental upheaval.
One billion people, mostly from poorer countries, rely on fish as their main
animal protein source, according to the UN.
The Green Economy report estimates there are 35 million people fishing around
the world on 20 million boats. About 170 million jobs depend directly or
indirectly on the sector, bringing the total web of people financially linked
to 520 million.
According to the UN, 30 percent of fish stocks have already collapsed, meaning
they yield less than 10 percent of their former potential, while virtually all
fisheries risk running out of commercially viable catches by 2050.
Currently only a quarter of fish stocks -- mostly the cheaper, less desirable
species -- are considered to be in healthy numbers.
The main scourge, the UNEP report says, are government subsidies encouraging
ever bigger fishing fleets chasing ever fewer fish, with little attempt made to
allow the fish populations to recover.
The annual 27 billion dollars in government subsidies to fishing, mostly in
rich countries, is "perverse," Sukhdev said, since the entire value of fish
caught is only 85 billion dollars.
As a result, fishing fleet capacity is "50 to 60 percent" higher than it should
be, Sukhdev said.
Creating marine preservation areas to allow female fish to grow to full size,
thereby hugely increasing their fertility, is one vital solution, the report
says.
Another is restructuring the fishing fleets to favor smaller boats that -- once
fish stocks recover -- would be able to land bigger catches.
"What is scarce here is fish," Sukhdev said, "not the stock of fishing
capacity."