Funding fisheries collapse

Investing around $8 billion a year in rebuilding and 'greening' the world's fisheries could raise catches to 112 million tonnes annually, while triggering benefits to industry, consumers and the global economy totalling $1.7 trillion over the next 40 years. These are among the findings of a new report being compiled by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and economists entitled the Green Economy — part of which was revealed last month in New York. The investment, some of which can be covered by phasing down or phasing out some of the $27 billion-worth of fishing subsidies currently in place, is needed to dramatically reduce the excess capacity of the world's fishing fleets, while supporting workers in alternative livelihoods. Funding is also required to reform and re-focus fisheries management, including through policies such as tradable quotas and the establishment of marine protected areas, in order to allow depleted stocks to recover and grow, the report says. Such measures, backed by forward-looking investments, would not only generate important economic and environmental returns, but would also assist in fighting poverty by securing a primary source of protein for close to one billion people. Achim Steiner, UN under-secretary general and UNEP executive director said: " Fisheries across the world are being plundered, or exploited at unsustainable rates. It is a failure of management of what will prove to be monumental proportions unless addressed. " " The lives and livelihoods of over half a billion people, linked with the health of the industry, will depend on the tough but also transformational choices governments make now and over the years to come, " he added. The Green Economy report " offers a way of maximising the economic, social and environmental returns from rebuilding, reforming and sustaining fisheries for current and future generations. The scenarios recognise that millions of fishers will need support in retraining and that fishery Serious rethinking is under way in a draft of a new UN report looking at the pressure worldwide on fisheries, many of which may have collapsed or become uneconomic within the next 40 years, writes Nigel Williams.