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Over-fishing the World's Seas
by Peter Denton
In 1992, some 30,000 Canadians were suddenly without work when once plentiful stocks of cod off the coast of Newfoundland completely collapsed. The area had been a key source of employment for Canadians and one of the most productive fisheries in the world for hundreds of years.
According to the new report Fishing for Answers: Making sense of the global fish crisis, the Canadian debacle was a dramatic warning sign that the world's fisheries face serious issues of ecosystem degradation, overfishing, and increasing consumer demand. The report was written by Yumiko Kura, Carmen Revenga, Eriko Hoshino, and Greg Mock of the World Resources Institute.
"A tide of new technology has swept aside the limits that once kept fishing a mostly coastal and local affair," says Fishing for Answers co-author Yumiko Kura, "resulting in a rapid depletion of key stocks and serious disruption and degradation of the marine and freshwater ecosystems they live in - what many have termed a global fisheries crisis."
While fishing is an ancient activity that has long provided food and income for its practitioners, the practice is still an essential component of not only local livelihoods, but also the global economy.
Approximately 1 billion people, many of whom live in developing nations, depend on fish for their main source of animal protein, Fishing for Answers maintains. In addition, 35 million people rely on either fishing or aquaculture as a source of income. The global fish catch for 2000 was valued at US$81 billion, and the international fish trade was worth US$55 billion.
Overfishing - the action of fishing beyond the level at which fish can naturally replenish themselves - was first recognized as a local problem in the early 1900s. After World War II, the report asserts, overfishing became a widespread issue as the capacity and range of commercial fishing vessels increased rapidly.
"Since 1992, overfishing has become one of the major natural resource concerns in the industrialized world, and increasingly in developing nations as well," Fishing for Answers reports. "Seventy-five percent of commercially important marine and most inland water fish stocks are either currently being overfished, or are being fished at their biological limit."
The report cites controversial research estimating that the quantity of large, commercially desirable fish such as cod, tuna, swordfish, and salmon has dropped more than 90 percent in the world's oceans since the start of large-scale industrial fishing. While some marine fishery experts quibble over exact figures, they largely agree that key commercial fish stocks have experienced significant decline.
According to Fishing for Answers, these overfished stocks will only experience more stress as the demand for fish increases rapidly. Over the last thirty years, demand for seafood products has doubled, the report claims, and is anticipated to grow at 1.5 percent per year through 2020. In addition, the number of people employed through fishing has doubled in the last twenty years. The report notes that this unsustainable growth is nearly three times faster than the general population growth.
"Most people have little idea of what the 'fisheries crisis' is, or what it means to them," said Kura. "From a consumer's point of view - at least in most developed nations - the sad condition of fish stocks is not obvious. There are still plenty of fish available in markets and restaurants, although the types may have changed and the prices may be higher."
Fishing for Answers calls for specific changes to the habits of consumers, fishers, and politicians in order to stem the global fisheries crisis. Through a strong commitment to the sustainable management of marine ecosystems, the report emphasizes, and the education and encouragement of fish consumers to take an active role in supporting sustainable fisheries, the world's fisheries can be managed appropriately and more crises like the collapse of the Newfoundland cod population can be averted. (WRI Features, 631 words)
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Peter Denton is managing editor of WRI Features, an international news and features service on environment and development issues.
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Travelling to Sustain - and Degrade - Nature
by Wendy Vanasselt
As Dave Williams dips his kayak paddle into the languid waters of Khao Sok National Park in southern Thailand, he states the obvious: "Most people who work 9-to-5 jobs for their entire life will never experience the beauty of a place like this."
Williams, owner and founder of Paddle Asia, moved to southern Thailand from the United States in 1992 and has become a part of the burgeoning global ecotourism industry. From African wildlife safaris, to diving tours in the Caribbean's emerald waters and coral reefs, to guided treks in Brazil's rainforests, nature-based tourism is booming.
According to latest available statistics from the World Tourism Organization (WTO), in 1999 there were more than 663 million international travelers who spent more than US$453 billion. This figure is expected to grow by 4.1 percent annually over the next two decades, with 1.6 billion international travelers projected for 2020. More than 200 million jobs, or 10 percent of all jobs globally, are generated by tourism.
Ecotourism and nature-related forms of tourism account for more than 20 percent of total international travel, the WTO claims.
This burgeoning interest in traveling to wild or untrammeled places offers a way for developing countries to finance preservation of unique ecosystems with tourist and private-sector dollars and to provide economic opportunities for communities living near parks and protected areas.
For Costa Rica, tourism generated $654 million in 1996, and for Kenya $502 million in 1997, much of it from nature and wildlife tourism. Tourism has been influential in helping to protect Rwanda's mountain gorillas and their habitat in Volcanoes National Park. Prior to the outbreak of civil war, tourist visits provided $1.02 million in direct annual revenues, enabling the government to create antipoaching patrols and employ local residents.
But nature-based travel can both sustain ecosystems and degrade them. Much nature-based tourism falls short of the social responsibility ideals of "ecotourism," defined by the Ecotourism Society as "travel to natural areas that conserves the environment and sustains the well-being of local people."
Destinations and trips marketed as ecotourism opportunities may focus more on environmentally friendly lodge design than local community development, conservation, or tourist education. Even some ecosystems that are managed carefully with ecotourism principles are showing signs of degradation.
"The term 'ecotourism' is misleading," said Williams. "It is nearly impossible to visit and learn from an area without leaving footprints, but some tour operators do a better job than others."
At first glance, Ecuador's Galápagos Islands epitomize the promise of ecotourism. Each year the archipelago draws more than 62,000 people who pay to dive, tour, and cruise amidst the 120 volcanic islands and the ecosystem's rare tropical birds, iguanas, penguins, and tortoises. Tourism raises as much as $60 million annually, and provides income for an estimated 80 percent of the islands' residents.
The tenfold increase in visitors since 1970 has expanded the resources for Ecuador's park service. Tour operators, naturalist guides, park officials, and scientists have worked together to create a model for low-impact, high-quality ecotourism.
But closer examination reveals trade-offs: a flood of migrants seeking jobs in the islands' new tourist economy nearly tripled the area's permanent population over a 15-year period, turned the towns into sources of pollution, and added pressure to fishery resources. Only 15 percent of tourist income directly enters the Galápagos economy; most of the profits go to foreign-owned airlines and luxury tour boats or floating hotels-accommodations that may lessen tourists' environmental impacts, but provide little benefit to local residents.
This pattern has unfortunately been repeated in many eco-tourism hot-spots around the world. By investing in park management, protection, and planning, these impacts can be minimized. Developing countries, however, often lack the resources to monitor, evaluate, and prevent visitor impacts, and infrastructure and facilities may be rudimentary or nonexistent.
With well-established guidelines, involvement of local communities, and a long-term vision for ecosystem protection rather than short-term profit by developers, ecotourism can provide breathtaking experiences for tourists and important revenues for cash-strapped developing economies.
"One could argue that just visiting natural areas, to some degree, has a negative impact," said Williams. "But by showing our guests the wonders and beauty of these destinations, we are generating awareness. This awareness will hopefully, in turn, spawn a desire among our guest to help preserve these few remaining natural wonders." (WRI Features, 719 words).
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Wendy Vanasselt was senior associate/editor of World Resources Report 2000-2001, from which this feature was adapted. The full report is available at www.wri.org.
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Nutrient Runoff Creates Dead Zone
by Paul Faeth and G. Tracy Mehan, III
Every summer, a Massachusetts-size section of the Gulf of Mexico is transformed into a vast tomb containing millions of bottom-dwelling sea creatures. Runoff of nutrient pollution from farms and factories along the Mississippi River feed massive algal blooms in the Northern Gulf that trigger hypoxia – the draining of oxygen from the sea – and the creation of an extensive Dead Zone.
Excess nitrogen and phosphorous releases by agriculture and industry throughout the Midwest are the main culprits. While scientists are still sorting out the relative contributions of these two nutrients to the problem, we are now in a position to move forward and identify concrete solutions to reducing nutrient runoff in an economical and cost effective manner.
Analysis and research performed by the World Resources Institute (WRI) shows that the use of market mechanisms like nutrient trading provides not only the greatest overall environmental benefits, but also is the most cost-effective strategy to reduce the Gulf’s Dead Zone.
The idea of trading nutrient credits to fight hypoxia is based upon straightforward economic theory.
Some farms or factories will find that reducing their nutrient runoffs will cost them significantly less than their neighboring polluters. For example, an older factory may already require major upgrades to its infrastructure. When nutrient control measures are tacked on to the overhaul, the costs to comply with the regulations are low. Upgrading a newer plant, however, to meet the regulations would be comparatively expensive.
The older factory can therefore decrease its nutrient outflows beyond the required limits for a relatively low price, and sell the extra reductions as credits to companies in their area who would have paid much more to reduce their own runoff. Non-point sources, such as large farms, often incur much lower costs when reducing their nutrient runoff, and can serve as key players in a nutrient trading scheme.
Before implementing a trading system, however, EPA and state agencies must continue to refine and implement adequate water quality standards to provide targets for agriculture and industry to reduce their outflow of nitrogen and phosphorous into waterways. These targets can serve as the caps necessary to make a "cap and trade" system work. The EPA has previously set a goal of reducing nitrogen runoffs in the Gulf of Mexico by 30% by 2015 and is currently exploring curbs on phosphorous discharges.
The restoration of wetlands along waterways that feed the Gulf of Mexico can also serve as a compelling way to shrink nutrient outflows and stem hypoxia. According to The Wetlands Initiative, three Midwestern states (Iowa, Missouri, and Illinois) in the Upper Mississippi River Basin have drained 85 to 90 percent of their wetlands in the last 200 years. By isolating rivers from their backwater lakes and floodplain wetlands, the group contends that we have eliminated natural solutions to the nutrient problem.
Landowners who restore these natural habitats will both reduce nutrient outflow and provide additional benefits for their local biodiversity and wildlife. Through a nutrient trading system, the landowners can also sell their reduction credits to other neighboring sources of nitrogen and phosphorous.
This market-based approach has also proven remarkably successful in other environmental arenas. The Chicago Climate Exchange – which counts companies such as Ford, DuPont, and Motorola as members – actively trades credits for the reduction in emissions of global warming-causing greenhouse gases.
It has been five years since EPA first officially recognized the Gulf of Mexico's Dead Zone and over a year and a half since it released its new Water Quality Trading Policy. We are ready to move beyond the debates and finger-pointing and focus on solutions. Nutrient trading, coupled with strong and enforced regulations on the runoffs of both nitrogen and phosphorous, clearly presents the most effective and economical approach to solving the hypoxia dilemma. (WRI Features, 641 words)
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Paul Faeth is executive vice president and managing director of the World Resources Institute.
G. Tracy Mehan, III, was assistant administrator for water at EPA (2001-2003). He is presently an environmental consultant in Arlington, VA.
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