Posted on 31 January
2011 - Rome, Italy: The conflict between
increasing demand for fish and failing fisheries
has enormous implications for world food
security and the state of our oceans, lakes
and rivers, WWF said today.
The global environment
organisation was welcoming the latest State
of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture
(SOFIA) report, issued today in Rome by
the UN Food and Agriculture Organization
(FAO).
SOFIA 2010 recorded
a rise to 85% in the number of fisheries
that are fully exploited (53%) or over exploited,
depleted or recovering from depletion (32%)
while noting a significant trend towards
increased demand for fish – setting a new
record in 2008 of 17 kg live weight equivalent
of fish from all sources per person.
Meanwhile, says the
report, the proportion of under or moderately
exploited fisheries able to produce higher
catches is – at just 15 per cent – the lowest
level recorded since the mid 1970s.
“In a world likely to
face a future of increasing food prices
and decreasing food security it is becoming
more and more apparent that running down
one fishery after another is a disaster
in the making,” said Alfred Schumm, leader
of WWF’s global Smart Fishing Initiative.
Mr Schumm is in Vancouver,
Canada for the annual Seafood Summit, where
WWF is lobbying seafood producers, distributors
and retailers to continue to improve an
array of measures to increase seafood sustainability
– including the ability to trace fish products
from capture to plate.
“There are many promising
initiatives and it is important to give
recognition to the fisheries and fish farms
that have achieved or are working towards
operating sustainably. What this report
show us is that we cannot relax our efforts
to bring long term sustainability to a key
element of global food security,” Mr Schumm
said.
The SOFIA report shows
employment in the primary and secondary
fish sector supports the livelihoods of
about 540 million people, or eight per cent
of the world’s population.
“That’s a lot of people
relying on a sector dependent on a declining
resource, at least as far as fisheries are
concerned,” said Dr Robin Davies, WWF Smart
Fishing Initiative deputy leader, who is
attending a key fisheries meeting at the
FAO’s Rome headquarters.
“If we don’t properly
manage our oceans, we face not only an environmental
disaster, but a social one too,” Dr Davies
said.
WWF also welcomed the
SOFIA report’s emphasis on the need to cut
down on illegal, unreported and unregulated
(IUU) fishing.
“IUU represents the
ugly underbelly of global fisheries and
we must all rally to eliminate the loud
minority that stains the silent majority,”
Dr Davies said. “We hope the SOFIA 2010
report will stimulate nations and Regional
Fisheries Management Organisations to clamp
down and lend support to emerging trade
measures such as the EU IUU regulation .”
The SOFIA report recommends
better use of technological advances to
aid fisheries management. Combating IUU,
for example, can be done with video surveillance,
something already proving effective in trials
and providing an opportunity for the good
players to prove their credentials, whilst
exposing the bad.
The report also highlights
the need to enhance biosecurity in aquaculture,
which is supplying most of the increased
supply of fish.
In
2009, WWF and IDH (Dutch Sustainable Trade
Initiative) established the Aquaculture
Stewardship Council (ASC) which aims to
be the world's leading certification and
labelling programme for responsibly farmed
seafood – following a course pioneered for
wild caught fisheries by the Marine Stewardship
Council.
