[Environment] from [guardian.co.uk]
[Fishing]
French fishermen hit back at stars' bid to save bluefin tuna
Threat to livelihood sparks anger in Mediterranean port as celebrities campaign over plight of species
Jason Burke in Marseille
The Observer, Sunday 28 June 2009
Article history
It has been a long few weeks for captain Jean-Louis Donnarel and the crew of the Provence-Côte d'Azur II. Long, rough and not very profitable. After sailing a total of 6,600 nautical miles - first to Cyprus, then the length of the Egyptian coast, to Malta, around the Balearics and then home - the Provence-Côte d'Azur II returned with 84 tonnes of bluefin tuna, a catch that will barely cover the costs of the voyage.
"We found fish on the last day," Donnarel said last week. "Without that, we would have been finished. Someone has to take a decision. Do they want us to fish or not? If not, they should put us out of our misery."
Donnarel and his crew are at the sharp end of an increasingly bitter row: one that links globally known restaurants, top celebrities, huge international conglomerates, sushi shops and supermarkets across half the world to the livelihoods of a few thousand fishermen.
At stake is the survival of the bluefin tuna, a single specimen of which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars - a price that has seen stocks decline in some areas by up to 90%.
This month Sienna Miller, Elle Macpherson, Jemima Khan, Sting and others signed a letter to Nobu, a famous upmarket restaurant chain part-owned by Robert De Niro, threatening a boycott of their favourite haunt. Stephen Fry, one of the celebrity campaigners, wrote: "It's astounding lunacy to serve up endangered species for sushi. There's no justification for peddling extinction, yet that is exactly what Nobu is doing in restaurants around the world."
The restaurant has so far refused to take it off the menu, citing its cultural importance in Japan and "enormous demand", but the battle goes on. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Atlantic bluefin will be wiped out in three years unless radical action is taken.
Meanwhile, fishermen such as Donnarel are unimpressed by the celebrity-inspired pressure on their livelihoods. "We have become hooligans, bandits," said Donnarel. "Tuna fishing has become politically incorrect and we are pariahs. Once it was fine to fish; now it isn't."
With their 40-metre, £3m boats, the vast nets used to encircle and sweep up entire schools of tuna making their way into the Mediterranean, and their apparent disregard for the limits the EU have previously tried to impose, the French fishermen have been cast as the villains of the piece. The fishermen themselves are very defensive - angry with consumers, governments, conservationists and the EU. Few speak to the press.
And they are now being closely watched. When this year's season ends next week, France's fleet of tuna boats will have fished less than its quota of just over 3,000 tonnes. After seriously exceeding limits in previous years, a huge operation involving French navy ships, observers and constant monitoring of a boat's position and catch has meant "total control and total transparency", according to Bertand Wendeling, spokesmen for the 11 tuna boats working out of the French port of Sète.
Even the campaign groups agree that there have been "steps in the right direction", but they also say it may too little. too late.
Tuna fishing is managed by the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Conservationists claim the body is primarily interested in protecting the fishing industries of its 45 member countries and they also allege that is ignores its own scientists' recommendations, setting quotas twice as high as those believed necessary to allow the bluefin to survive.
The EU has agreed that catches must be cut by 30% by 2010, but conservationists say this will not be enough to prevent the eventual "collapse" of stocks to levels from which recovery will be impossible.
"The real problem is not going to be solved by more controls," François Chartier, a French Greenpeace campaigner, said. "It is only going to be solved by better management. Both the number and the size of the bluefin currently fished remain in serious decline. There's not much time left."
The fishermen, while doubting the scientists' figures, know the boom times are over. For decades, prices for bluefin and other species such as the more common skipjack have risen and EU funds flowed into the industry. That was then.
"It's as if someone gave you a permit to build a house, helped you build it and then told you to knock it down," said Virginie Donnarel, the fisherman's daughter. "These are family businesses that employ scores of people. If they want to close us down, so be it. But it's only right that we are properly compensated."
The environmentalists deny claims that "coastal communities" need to be protected, alleging that many of the crews are recruited in Morocco or Benin and paid a pittance. Donnarel's crew, however, is all French. "Some of these guys can barely read or write. They will need proper retraining and new jobs," he said.
In fact, the big money is largely made by the major conglomerates that buy the Mediterranean tuna for export to the far east. Though the EU may be cracking down, many other fishing countries are not. Turkey, which has a large if inefficient fleet, is asking for a higher quota next year.
The one bright spot for the likes of Donnarel is the skipjack. Unlike the slow-breeding bluefin tuna, skipjack is smaller and spectacularly fecund: the "chicken of the seas" is most likely to be the tuna in your tin or sandwich. But it is a world away from the bluefin.
"As long as people want to eat bluefin, someone will fish it," said Donnarel. "It just probably won't be me."
[Climate Change]
Victory on climate change boosts president's position
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 28 June 2009
Article history
The epic battle over universal health care is still to be fought, but Barack Obama moved to capitalise on a defining moment of his presidency yesterday - a vote in Congress to act on global warming - saying the time had arrived for America to show international leadership on climate change.
The White House shifted the topic of Obama's address from healthcare to energy after the vote, seeking to build momentum for the ambitious climate change bill ahead of its next hurdle in the Senate. The first round, in the house of representatives on Friday night, barely went to Obama. The Democratic leadership, despite making concessions to dissidents from oil and coal states, eked out only a 219-212 victory. A total of 44 Democrats opposed the bill.
But environmentalists claimed the vote as a milestone: the first time either house of Congress had acted to reduce the carbon emissions that cause climate change. It was also a validation of Obama's powers of persuasion. The president put energy reform at the heart of his White House agenda and jumped into a furious lobbying effort for its passage.
In his video address, Obama sought to bring home Friday night's victory, calling on the Senate to approve the bill so that America could catch up to the rest of the world in moving to a cleaner energy economy.
"We have seen other countries realise a critical truth: the nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "Now is the time for us to lead."
The international community had been waiting for America to take action on climate change and the vote gave a boost to efforts to reach a deal to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
India, a key player in the negotiations to reach a deal at Copenhagen, gave a cautious welcome. "Obviously having the US take the lead on climate change would have a significant impact on the current multilateral negotiations," India's climate change envoy said. "We would hope that the US will lead with ambitious actions."
Environmentalists, who had despaired during eight years of George Bush of ever seeing action on climate change, said the bill, though weaker than they might have liked, was still a signature achievement.
"The fact is, just weeks ago, few in Washington believed that this day would come to pass. The best bet - the safe bet - was that after three decades of failure, we couldn't muster the political will to tackle the energy challenge despite the necessity and urgency of action," Obama said on Friday night.
The bill would gradually impose a ceiling on the carbon emissions that cause global warming, ultimately cutting them by 83% from 2005 levels by 2050 by forcing industries to obtain permits for the emissions they release in the atmosphere, or to buy offsets by investing in cleansing projects like planting trees.
The bill would also compel utility companies to obtain a share of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
The biggest weakness in the bill is its target of cutting carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, which represents only a marginal reduction compared with Europe.
However, Greenpeace opposed the package, saying it had been badly weakened by the concessions made to win over conservative Democrats from oil and coal states.
[Fishing]
French fishermen hit back at stars' bid to save bluefin tuna
Threat to livelihood sparks anger in Mediterranean port as celebrities campaign over plight of species
Jason Burke in Marseille
The Observer, Sunday 28 June 2009
Article history
It has been a long few weeks for captain Jean-Louis Donnarel and the crew of the Provence-Côte d'Azur II. Long, rough and not very profitable. After sailing a total of 6,600 nautical miles - first to Cyprus, then the length of the Egyptian coast, to Malta, around the Balearics and then home - the Provence-Côte d'Azur II returned with 84 tonnes of bluefin tuna, a catch that will barely cover the costs of the voyage.
"We found fish on the last day," Donnarel said last week. "Without that, we would have been finished. Someone has to take a decision. Do they want us to fish or not? If not, they should put us out of our misery."
Donnarel and his crew are at the sharp end of an increasingly bitter row: one that links globally known restaurants, top celebrities, huge international conglomerates, sushi shops and supermarkets across half the world to the livelihoods of a few thousand fishermen.
At stake is the survival of the bluefin tuna, a single specimen of which can be sold for tens of thousands of dollars - a price that has seen stocks decline in some areas by up to 90%.
This month Sienna Miller, Elle Macpherson, Jemima Khan, Sting and others signed a letter to Nobu, a famous upmarket restaurant chain part-owned by Robert De Niro, threatening a boycott of their favourite haunt. Stephen Fry, one of the celebrity campaigners, wrote: "It's astounding lunacy to serve up endangered species for sushi. There's no justification for peddling extinction, yet that is exactly what Nobu is doing in restaurants around the world."
The restaurant has so far refused to take it off the menu, citing its cultural importance in Japan and "enormous demand", but the battle goes on. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), the Atlantic bluefin will be wiped out in three years unless radical action is taken.
Meanwhile, fishermen such as Donnarel are unimpressed by the celebrity-inspired pressure on their livelihoods. "We have become hooligans, bandits," said Donnarel. "Tuna fishing has become politically incorrect and we are pariahs. Once it was fine to fish; now it isn't."
With their 40-metre, £3m boats, the vast nets used to encircle and sweep up entire schools of tuna making their way into the Mediterranean, and their apparent disregard for the limits the EU have previously tried to impose, the French fishermen have been cast as the villains of the piece. The fishermen themselves are very defensive - angry with consumers, governments, conservationists and the EU. Few speak to the press.
And they are now being closely watched. When this year's season ends next week, France's fleet of tuna boats will have fished less than its quota of just over 3,000 tonnes. After seriously exceeding limits in previous years, a huge operation involving French navy ships, observers and constant monitoring of a boat's position and catch has meant "total control and total transparency", according to Bertand Wendeling, spokesmen for the 11 tuna boats working out of the French port of Sète.
Even the campaign groups agree that there have been "steps in the right direction", but they also say it may too little. too late.
Tuna fishing is managed by the Madrid-based International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas. Conservationists claim the body is primarily interested in protecting the fishing industries of its 45 member countries and they also allege that is ignores its own scientists' recommendations, setting quotas twice as high as those believed necessary to allow the bluefin to survive.
The EU has agreed that catches must be cut by 30% by 2010, but conservationists say this will not be enough to prevent the eventual "collapse" of stocks to levels from which recovery will be impossible.
"The real problem is not going to be solved by more controls," François Chartier, a French Greenpeace campaigner, said. "It is only going to be solved by better management. Both the number and the size of the bluefin currently fished remain in serious decline. There's not much time left."
The fishermen, while doubting the scientists' figures, know the boom times are over. For decades, prices for bluefin and other species such as the more common skipjack have risen and EU funds flowed into the industry. That was then.
"It's as if someone gave you a permit to build a house, helped you build it and then told you to knock it down," said Virginie Donnarel, the fisherman's daughter. "These are family businesses that employ scores of people. If they want to close us down, so be it. But it's only right that we are properly compensated."
The environmentalists deny claims that "coastal communities" need to be protected, alleging that many of the crews are recruited in Morocco or Benin and paid a pittance. Donnarel's crew, however, is all French. "Some of these guys can barely read or write. They will need proper retraining and new jobs," he said.
In fact, the big money is largely made by the major conglomerates that buy the Mediterranean tuna for export to the far east. Though the EU may be cracking down, many other fishing countries are not. Turkey, which has a large if inefficient fleet, is asking for a higher quota next year.
The one bright spot for the likes of Donnarel is the skipjack. Unlike the slow-breeding bluefin tuna, skipjack is smaller and spectacularly fecund: the "chicken of the seas" is most likely to be the tuna in your tin or sandwich. But it is a world away from the bluefin.
"As long as people want to eat bluefin, someone will fish it," said Donnarel. "It just probably won't be me."
[Climate Change]
Victory on climate change boosts president's position
Suzanne Goldenberg, US environment correspondent
The Observer, Sunday 28 June 2009
Article history
The epic battle over universal health care is still to be fought, but Barack Obama moved to capitalise on a defining moment of his presidency yesterday - a vote in Congress to act on global warming - saying the time had arrived for America to show international leadership on climate change.
The White House shifted the topic of Obama's address from healthcare to energy after the vote, seeking to build momentum for the ambitious climate change bill ahead of its next hurdle in the Senate. The first round, in the house of representatives on Friday night, barely went to Obama. The Democratic leadership, despite making concessions to dissidents from oil and coal states, eked out only a 219-212 victory. A total of 44 Democrats opposed the bill.
But environmentalists claimed the vote as a milestone: the first time either house of Congress had acted to reduce the carbon emissions that cause climate change. It was also a validation of Obama's powers of persuasion. The president put energy reform at the heart of his White House agenda and jumped into a furious lobbying effort for its passage.
In his video address, Obama sought to bring home Friday night's victory, calling on the Senate to approve the bill so that America could catch up to the rest of the world in moving to a cleaner energy economy.
"We have seen other countries realise a critical truth: the nation that leads in the creation of a clean energy economy will be the nation that leads the 21st-century global economy," he said. "Now is the time for us to lead."
The international community had been waiting for America to take action on climate change and the vote gave a boost to efforts to reach a deal to avoid the most catastrophic effects of climate change.
India, a key player in the negotiations to reach a deal at Copenhagen, gave a cautious welcome. "Obviously having the US take the lead on climate change would have a significant impact on the current multilateral negotiations," India's climate change envoy said. "We would hope that the US will lead with ambitious actions."
Environmentalists, who had despaired during eight years of George Bush of ever seeing action on climate change, said the bill, though weaker than they might have liked, was still a signature achievement.
"The fact is, just weeks ago, few in Washington believed that this day would come to pass. The best bet - the safe bet - was that after three decades of failure, we couldn't muster the political will to tackle the energy challenge despite the necessity and urgency of action," Obama said on Friday night.
The bill would gradually impose a ceiling on the carbon emissions that cause global warming, ultimately cutting them by 83% from 2005 levels by 2050 by forcing industries to obtain permits for the emissions they release in the atmosphere, or to buy offsets by investing in cleansing projects like planting trees.
The bill would also compel utility companies to obtain a share of their electricity from renewable sources such as wind and solar.
The biggest weakness in the bill is its target of cutting carbon emissions by 17% from 2005 levels by 2020, which represents only a marginal reduction compared with Europe.
However, Greenpeace opposed the package, saying it had been badly weakened by the concessions made to win over conservative Democrats from oil and coal states.
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