Their report, presented end of June, highlights that fisheries are responsible for an important proportion of “livestock and agriculture CO2 emissions”, but omits to recognize that other ocean-based industries are more polluting
The French “Convention Citoyenne pour le Climat” (Citizen’s convention for climate, CCC), composed of 150 women and men randomly chosen to represent French society, worked for nine months on a report with recommendations for a green “transition”. A first exchange with the French President Emmanuel Macron took place in January. End of June, the members published their final report and were received a few days later at the Elysée where President Macron announced with pomp and circumstance he accepted 146 out of the 149 proposals made by the Convention, including those on fisheries. He also promised to make every effort to “continue the fight” at European level on key environmental issues, mentioning carbon emissions and agriculture policies.
In the report, on the theme ‘feeding ourselves’ (objective 3), the members of the CCC identify fisheries as responsible for “4% of C02 emissions from livestock and agriculture” and propose five recommendations to “encourage the development of low-emission fisheries.” These proposals point at fisheries as the major source that disturbs marine ecosystems, omitting other sources such as recreational boats, land-based pollution, as well as key ‘marine ecosystems disturbing’ industries such as deep-sea mining, and focus on aquaculture as the solution to “avoid catching fish in their natural environment.”
President Macron accepted 146 out of 149 of the proposals made by the CCC and committed to continue the fight at EU level. Photo: elysée.fr.
The Collective Pêche & Développement issued a communiqué on 3 July 2020 highlighting some of the gaps of the CCC report and reminding that “fisheries provide quality protein at a much lower environmental cost than farming” and that aquaculture cannot replace fisheries, qualifying this idea of an “old fantasy.”
Such statements, like those in the CCC report, are blind to the fact that, if integrated aquaculture was to replace fisheries, given the current quantities of fish consumed in France, France would be forced to import large quantities of farmed fish, most of which would be fed with fishmeal made from fish caught in their natural environment. Several NGO reports have pointed at how global aquaculture supply chains are leading to the destruction of wild fish stocks, often depriving people in development countries from food.
This old fantasy and the highly negative view on fisheries, however, are still quite prevalent in the ocean strategy pushed forward by the European Union. In November 2019, CFFA, Pêche & Développement and 14 other environmental, development and professional fisheries organisations already underscored the systematic marginalization of fisheries in the European Commission’s ‘Blue Economy to combat climate change’ in a joint statement sent to the Commissioner for Environment and Oceans, Virginijus Sinkevičius. For these organisations, “fisheries policy should be at the heart of climate action: ending overfishing, together with a shift to low impact fisheries will boost ocean resilience to climate change,” whereas “promoting ocean-based industries that compete with fisheries, such as deep-sea mining and intensive aquaculture, are expected to contribute further to the climate crisis and the destruction of the coastal environment.”
Even though we received a response by the acting director of DG MARE, in January 2020, reassuring us of the EU’s awareness of the “importance of small-scale fisheries in the EU,” this prevalent negative view on fisheries has also been reflected in the recently published EU’s Biodiversity strategy (May 2020). This strategy has taken up many of the demands of the Blue Manifesto, which CFFA and its partners signed in February 2020, including a proposal to limit harmful fishing gear and transition to more sustainable and low-impact fisheries. Nevertheless, the document still presents fisheries in a negative way whilst minimising the negative impacts of other sectors deemed to be drivers of the blue economy.
In an extraordinary fisheries committee, for World oceans day (June 2020), several Members of the European Parliament criticised the strategy, which quotes fisheries as “the most damaging activity of the seabed” excluding other sectors that are also having impact on marine areas. Ms. O’Sullivan, coordinator of the Greens/EFA complained that whereas farmers are described as “guardians of the land,” there is not such a notion for fishermen, and called upon the Commissioner to change the narrative as “small-scale fishers are too the guardians of our seas.”
Banner photo: Convention citoyenne pour le climat.
Closing the funding gap for biodiversity conservation is one of the critical topics at the 16th Conference of the Parties (COP 16) to the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), hosted in Colombia in October 2024. The funding gap has been estimated at $700 billion in Goal D of the Kunming-Montreal Agreement, based on a report, “Financing Nature”, published in 2020. Taking the example of fisheries and ocean conservation, this article shows the $700 billion figure is based on highly dubious calculations and assumptions. The author argues the funding gap report is not a serious effort to estimate the needs for supporting conservation efforts. Instead, it is a performative publication marketing opportunities for private investment and market-based mechanisms. Therefore, the $700 billion figure should be rejected by those opposed to the continuing financialisation of conservation.