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Friday, March 29, 2024

Slash fishing fleet subsidies

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Here’s some friendly advice to the anti-Chinese, anti-Duterte critics. Please visit the South China Morning Post website and read the gist of a global report contained in an article entitled “China urged to cut huge subsidies for unprofitable trawler fleets to curb overfishing and save oceans.”

The report is based on the research made by the National Geographic Society in collaboration with three topnotch universities calling on the world’s top fishing countries led by China to “cut huge subsidies for unprofitable trawler fleets to curb overfishing and save the oceans.”

First published in the journal Science Advances and reported out in the SCMP print edition under the heading “Slash Fishing Fleet Subsidies,” the report can give these critics a kind of science-based platform to somehow give credence to their rabid negative ranting.

Instead of continually haranguing China and President Duterte using the unenforceable award of the Permanent Court of Arbitration at The Hague on the status of the ‘islands, islets and/or rocks’ in the disputed Scarborough area in the SCS/WPS, the critics can now use this report to get some traction in this hot button, on and off debate over these formations and whatever resources maybe there.

I have no idea whether the Chinese fishing fleets which are currently lording over the rich Panatag Shoal fishing grounds are part of those being subsidized by the Chinese government like the ones mentioned in the report as prowling the high seas. If they are, and I presume they must be, considering the high profile, aggressive support being provided by the Chinese Coast Guard, then the critics can very well add the results of this research to their arsenal in their continuing assault against the administration’s SCS/WPS policy. And, if the critics for once play their cards right, they can actually mobilize a good number of Duterte supporters, here and abroad, and even the global anti-trawl fishing network, among others, for their cause. The call to slash fishing fleet subsidies resonates in most countries and among right-thinking people as these marauding fleets are being pinpointed as having done serious damage to the world’s seas.

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In fact, if these critics are so minded they can already organize a slash-fishing-fleet-subsidies movement and invite the scientists and researchers who came out with this study to provide the needed gravitas. The study’s findings are such that any right-thinking person will definitely subscribe to the proposed plan to save the oceans and restrain overfishing in whatever form but principally trawling.

Here are some choice excerpts from that SCMP article:

“..Researchers from the National Geographic Society in Washington, the University of California, the University of British Columbia and the University of Western Australia found that as much as 54 per cent of the high seas fishing industry would be unprofitable at its existing scale without big government subsidies. The research, published on Thursday in the journal Science Advances, found that the global cost of fishing in the high seas ranged between US$6.2 billion and US$8 billion in 2014. Financial results ranged from a loss of US$364 million to profit of US$1.4 billion in that year.

‘I think the top fishing countries, including China, should cut the subsidies to their industrial fleets that support overfishing and destruction of the marine ecosystem, for example by deep bottom trawling,’ said Enric Sala, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence who led a study behind the report.

Japan gave the biggest subsidies to its high sea fleets in 2014, accounting for 20 per cent of global subsidies followed by Spain on 14 per cent. China ranked third, with subsidies of US$418 million, or 10 per cent, earmarked mainly for diesel fuel for its “distant water fishing” fleets.

As fisheries off China’s coasts have declined over the years, Chinese fishermen have been encouraged to head out into the high seas or exclusive economic zones, 200 miles off the shores of coastal countries. China had caught a world-leading 1.52 million tonnes of seafood in the high seas, according to the report. China’s most profitable high seas operations were in the Northwest Pacific, the report said. Most of its other fisheries appeared to be loss-makers.

The most unprofitable Chinese fishing activity was bottom trawling in the Southwest Atlantic, which had an average net loss of US$98 million, even after subsidies were taken into account. Chinese fishermen have been involved in clashes with fleets and coastguards of other countries while operating far afield. In March 2016, Argentina’s coastguard sank a Chinese trawler fishing within its territorial waters.

Beijing has signalled its intention to take steps to protect the environment, targeting at least a 20 per cent drop in ocean catches by 2020 and moving to cap the number of ocean fishing vessels to 3,000 by the same year.

“Whether subsidies enable profitability or not, the magnitude of subsidies, and the fact that many of these subsidies lower the marginal cost of fishing, suggests that high seas fishing activity could be dramatically altered in their absence,” the study concluded.

In December, China, together with eight other countries and the European Union, agreed to hold off fishing in the Arctic high seas for at least 16 years to protect the environment. Sala, the study’s lead author, said the move was a good start but there was still more to be done.

“This is great for the future ocean area that will arise once the summer sea ice is gone because of climate change,” he said. “But it does not solve the current problems of overfishing throughout the ocean. “The high seas offer a unique opportunity for another international cooperation to protect up to two-thirds of the ocean, which would help replenish countries’ waters….”

So there. Out with the old and in with the new. Calling all the critics and their networks: Recalibrate your weapons and for once start the debates with a bit of science-based good sense.

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