The Global Fisheries Crisis

1. The world's marine catch has increased more than four times in the past 40 years -- from 18.5 million tons in 1950 to 82.5 million tons by 1992. This staggering growth has resulted in overfishing and wasteful, destructive fishing practices worldwide which now threaten the lives of hundreds of millions of people who are vitally dependent on fishing for food and livelihoods. They face resource depletion, competition from industrial and distant water fleets, and loss of access to traditional marine food supplies.

2. Seven out of ten (69%) of the oceans' commercially targeted marine fish stocks are fished beyond ecologically safe limits, being either fully or heavily exploited, overexploited, depleted, or very slowly recovering from collapse after previous overfishing.

3. One-quarter of the planet's biological diversity is in danger of extinction within the next 30 years. In the ocean environment, commercial fishing stands as one of the greatest biodiversity threats.

4.Overfishing damages much more than fish populations. Extracting too many fish from an ecosysten can reduce the survival chances of other predators in the marine food web, including populations of marine mammals, seabirds, turtles, sharks and a host of other species. Large-scale commercial fishing is robbing them of their food source -- fish.

5. The depletion of food supplies is not the only threat to marine wildlife posed by fishing operations. Many millions of animals other than fish are severly injured or killed each year through deadly interactions with fishing gear. For instance, millions of dolphins have died in Tuna purse seine nets in the Eastern Tropical Pacific Ocean. An estimated 44,000 albatrosses are killed each year by Japanese tuna longliners.

6. One-quarter (25%) of all the fish pulled from the sea never make it to market. 27 million tons of unwanted fish catch are thrown back each year on average. Most don't survive. Twenty seven million tons of wasted fish represent more than half of all fish produced annually from marine capture fisheries for direct human consumption. It is also about equivalent to the predicted shortfall in fish for human consumption expected by the year 2000 (an anticipated shortfall of some 20 to 30 million tons means fish is fast becoming a luxury food only the relatively few can afford!).

7. Since 1970, the world's fishing fleet has expanded twice as fast as world catches. As a result, excess fishing capacity has reached alarming proportions (for instance, the fishing fleet in China is now around six times the size it was in 1979). Today, there are over three-and-a-half million fishing vessels operating in the world's oceans, all engaged in a desperate competition over dwindling supplies of fish. Little wonder then that the aggregate global fleet of over a million industrial and semi-industrial vessels has been operating at an annual loss of some $50-billion each year -- a collosal loss that is being compensated by government subsidies to vessel owners, and all at taxpayers' expense.

8.With so many fishing vessels in the world, massive fleets are migrating away from overfished areas and are stalking the planet on a desperate search for less exploited fishing grounds. They are like an invasion armada, disrupting the lives of millions of tradtional fishing peoples, especially in less developed countries, destroying fish stocks and eco systems wherever they go.
But coastal peoples are fighting back: Millions of fisherfolk from coastal villages in India have been staging national srtikes to overturn the national government's policy of licensing thousands of these foreign fishing vessels to fish in Indian waters.

9. Fish is an important part of the daily diets in many nations, providing roughly 40 per cent of the protein consumed by nearly two-thirds of the world's population. For example, over a billion people throughout Asia depend on fish and seafood as their major source of animal protein. Yet, of the approximately 78 million tons produced from marine capture fisheries each year, only 50 million tons is available as food for direct human consumption; the remainder, approximately 28 million tons, is reduced to fishmeal which is fed to livestock such as pigs and poultry, and to other creatures like farmed trout, shrimp and mink for luxury markets. Odd, when we live in a world where a billion people suffer from malnutrition.

10. Worldwide, about 13 million people make all or a major part of their living from fishing. More than 10 million of them work in coastal waters on little boats powered by paddles, sails or sometimes outboard motors, with only a few crew members. Together with their immediate families they comprise some 50 million people directly dependent on fishing for their livelihoods. Another 150 million people are employed on land processing fish and servicing fleets. When the fish go, the jobs do too. In one such calamity, more than 20,000 Canadian fishworkers living in Newfoundland lost their jobs literally overnight when the government banned all fishing for cod in order to protect what remained of badly depleted stocks.

Source:  http://archive.greenpeace.org/comms/fish/amaze.html

Global Warming Sealing the Fate of Coral Reefs

Destroyed by rising carbon levels, acidity, pollution, algae, bleaching and El Niño, coral reefs require a dramatic change in our carbon policy to have any chance of survival.

An aerial view of the coastline along Hawaii Kai on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu where organic sediment is one of the major threats to the reef. Photograph: Ed Darack/Corbis


Animal, vegetable and mineral, a pristine tropical coral reef is one of the natural wonders of the world. Bathed in clear, warm water and thick with a psychedelic display of fish, sharks, crustaceans and other sea life, the colourful coral ramparts that rise from the sand are known as the rainforests of the oceans. 

And with good reason. Reefs and rainforests have more in common than their beauty and bewildering biodiversity. Both have stood for millions of years, and yet both are poised to disappear.

If you thought you had heard enough bad news on the environment and that the situation could not get any worse, then steel yourself. Coral reefs are doomed. The situation is virtually hopeless. Forget ice caps and rising sea levels: the tropical coral reef looks like it will enter the history books as the first major ecosystem wiped out by our love of cheap energy.

Today, a report from the Australian government agency that looks after the nation's emblematic Great Barrier Reef reported that "the overall outlook for the reef is poor and catastrophic damage to the ecosystem may not be averted". The Great Barrier Reef is in trouble, and it is not the only one.

Within just a few decades, experts are warning, the tropical reefs strung around the middle of our planet like a jewelled corset will reduce to rubble. Giant piles of slime-covered rubbish will litter the sea bed and spell in large distressing letters for the rest of foreseeable time: Humans Were Here.

"The future is horrific," says Charlie Veron, an Australian marine biologist who is widely regarded as the world's foremost expert on coral reefs. "There is no hope of reefs surviving to even mid-century in any form that we now recognise. If, and when, they go, they will take with them about one-third of the world's marine biodiversity. Then there is a domino effect, as reefs fail so will other ecosystems. This is the path of a mass extinction event, when most life, especially tropical marine life, goes extinct."

Alex Rogers, a coral expert with the Zoological Society of London, talks of an "absolute guarantee of their annihilation". And David Obura, another coral heavyweight and head of CORDIO East Africa, a research group in Kenya, is equally pessimistic: "I don't think reefs have much of a chance. And what's happening to reefs is a parable of what is going to happen to everything else."

Human impact has tipped that balance. Loaded with the agricultural nutrients nitrates and phosphates, rivers now spill their polluted waters into the sea. Sediment and sewage cloud the clear waters, while over-fishing plays havoc with the finely tuned community of fish and sharks that kept the reef nibbling down to sustainable levels. All of this is enough to wreck coral without any help from climate change.

Global warming, predictably, has made the situation worse. Secure in their tropical currents, coral reefs have evolved to operate within a fairly narrow temperature range, yet, in the late 1970s and 1980s, coral scientists got an unpleasant demonstration of what happens when the hot tap is left on too long. "The algae go berserk," said Rogers. Scientists think the algae react to the warmer water and increased sunlight by producing toxic oxygen compounds called superoxides, which can damage the coral. The coral respond by ejecting their algal lodgers, leaving the reefs starved of nutrients and deathly white. Such bleaching was first observed on a large scale in the 1980s, and reached massive levels worldwide during the 1997-98 El Niño weather event.

For more information see: http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2009/sep/02/coral-catastrophic-future

Third World is Becoming a Toxic Waste Dump

What happened to that old computer after you sold it to a secondhand parts dealer?  Environmental groups say there's a good chance it ended up in a dump in the developing world, where thousands of laborers burn, smash and pick apart electronic waste to scavenge for the precious metals inside — unwittingly exposing themselves and their surroundings to innumerable toxic hazards.

A new report documents one such "cyber-age nightmare" — a cluster of villages in southeastern China where computers still bearing the labels of their one-time owners in America are ripped apart and strewn along rivers and fields. Investigators who visited the waste sites in Guiyu, China, in December witnessed men, women and children pulling wires from computers and burning them at night, fouling the air with carcinogenic smoke.
Other laborers, making $1.50 a day and working with little or no protection, burned plastics and circuit boards or poured acid on electronic parts to extract silver and gold. Many pried open printer cartridges — whose hazards are uncertain — and smashed lead-laden cathode ray tubes from computer monitors, the report said. 

Consequently, the ground water is so polluted that drinking water has to be trucked in from a town 18 miles away, the report said. One river sample in the area had 190 times the pollution levels allowed under World Health Organization guidelines. "I've seen a lot of dirty operations in Third World countries, but what was shocking was seeing all this post-consumer waste," said one of the report's authors, Jim Puckett of the Seattle-based Basel Action Network. "This is all stuff from you and me."Computer waste in particular is becoming a difficult problem, with millions of devices becoming obsolete each year as the technology industry produces faster, better and less expensive equipment. 

The report says some in the industry estimate that as much as 50% to 80% of the United States' electronic waste that is collected in the name of recycling actually gets shipped out of the country. That often involves operations like the dump in Guiyu or similar ones in India and Pakistan, where labor is so cheap it is cost-effective to try to salvage every last screw or bit of silver. "Everybody knows this is going on, but is just embarrassed and don't really know what to do about it," Smith said. "They would just prefer to ignore it."
(Source:  http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2002/02/25/computer-waste.htm)

Global Climate Change is REAL

UN Secretary General's Personal Experience

A shaken United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon reacted to a recent visit to the Arctic region by telling reporters of the "frightening" experience of witnessing first-hand the effects of global warming in the Arctic, calling the region the "canary in a coal mine" warning for all humanity.

Upon his return, as reported in the second video, Ki-moon gave a speech at the World Climate Conference in which he said the world is "hurtling towards a climate catastrophe."
"Our foot is stuck on the accelerator and we are heading towards an abyss," he said. "Scientists have been accused for years of scaremongering. But the real scaremongers are those who say we cannot afford climate action — that it will hold back economic growth. They are wrong. Climate change could spell widespread disaster."

Drought leading to Chaotic Conditions

Mexico is enduring its worst drought in six decades. Crops are drying up in the fields and water is being rationed in the capital. Residents of poor neighborhoods have hijacked water trucks, and there are other signs of social tensions building.  El Niño, a weather pattern that warms water in the Pacific Ocean and leads to changing weather around the Pacific Basin, is causing the drought, Mexican officials say.

Some of Mexico’s neighbors have been grappling with similar problems. Guatemala declared “a state of calamity” last week, because the drought has caused shortages of staples like corn and beans. The government plans to deliver food packages to 400,000 families, Reuters reported. (see Elisabeth Malkin,  "Mexico Now Enduring Worst Drought in Years" at www.nytimes.com, September 12, 2009)

Running Out of Time

We are running out of time.  The world must cut carbon emissions by 80% by 2020 to avert catastrophe, according to paleoclimate scientist Dr Andrew Glikson.  “The ocean/atmosphere system is fast tracking to conditions similar to those of an ice-free earth .. [we need] Urgent deep reductions in carbon emissions, on the scale of at last 5% per year, relative to 1990 … The alternative to urgent fast tracked mitigation efforts does not bear contemplation” (see Andrew Glikson, “21st century carbon blueprints: perspective from the recent history of the atmosphere”, July 2009)

Little U.S. Concern Over Global Warming

While 61% of Americans are aware that the effects of Global Warming have begun, only slightly more than one third say they worry about it a great deal, a proportion that has changed little over the past 20 years, according to Gallup polls. 

Our Wasteful Appetites

“If the consumption aspirations of the wealthiest of nations cannot be satiated, the prospects for corralling consumption everywhere before it strips and degrades our planet beyond recognition would appear to be bleak.”

While there is rising consumption in the developing world, industrial nations remain responsible for the majority of the world's resource consumption and correspondingly the associated global environmental degradation.  There is evidence to indicate that things will only get worse, with energy consumption estimated to grow approximately 44% between 2006 and 2030, with 75% growth in developing countries (non-OECD).

The U.S. Consumer

• The United States, with less than 5 % of the global population, uses approximately one quarter of the world's fossil fuel resources - consuming nearly 25 % of the coal, 26 % of the oil, and 27 % of the world’s natural gas.

• Overall cars have outnumbered licensed drivers in the U.S. since 1972 and gas-guzzling sport utility vehicles and trucks are among the best-selling vehicles.

• New houses in the U.S. were 38 % bigger in 2002 than in 1975, despite having fewer people per household on average.

(sources: www.worldwatch.org, www.eia.doe.gov, www.bts.gov )