UN Says World Fisheries Face Collapse
MONACO - A deadly combination of climate change, over-fishing and pollution could cause the collapse of commercial fish stocks worldwide within decades, said Achim Steiner, head of the United Nations Environment Program.
“You overlap all of this and you see you’re potentially putting a death nail in the coffin of world fisheries,” Steiner told reporters on Friday on the fringes of a climate conference involving more than 150 nations and 100 environment ministers.
Some 2.6 billion people worldwide depend on fish for protein, said a UNEP report “In Dead Water” published on Friday.
Climate change has compounded previous problems such as over-fishing, as rising temperatures kill coral reefs, threaten tuna spawning grounds, and shift ocean currents and with them the plankton and small fish which underpin ocean food chains.
“The question is not whether we should stop fishing but to address climate change, which is creating a degree of impact we’ve not seen before,” said lead author of the UNEP report, Christian Nellemann.
“We are getting more and more alarming signals of dramatic changes in the oceans. The recovery from the changes we’re making will probably take a million years.”
The report found the most affected areas included those responsible for half the world’s fish catch.
A slowing of ocean currents as a result of climate change may over the next 100 years interrupt the transport of nutrients to the most valuable coastal fishing zones, and the flushing away of pollution.
In other impacts, Nellemann said he expected more than 50 percent of coral reefs to die by 2050 as a result of rising temperatures, with resulting impacts on tourism.
Carbon emissions from burning fossil fuels create an acid when dissolved in water, and could over the coming decades make the sea more acidic than at any time in the past 65 million years, and by 2100 could prevent mollusks in some seas from forming shells.
© 2008 Reuters
Anyone surprised? Ye reap what ye sow
“i belive that man and fish can live… “
Check out more about this, http://www.fishinghurts.com/
Just another example of the problem of civilization… Growth in population * growth in consumption = unsustainable and ecologically devastating behavior.
Coastal indigenous peoples the world over coexisted in harmony with sea life (and terrestrial life) for geologically significant timescales, and this new culture based on exploitation and greed has virtually vacuumed the oceans in a few thousand years. We did most of our damage in the last 200 years.
Isn’t it about time to get back to lifestyles that we know will sustain our species for as long as we’d like?
Same stuff, different day… how sad. We have known the potential results of human overpopulation, pollution and exccessive natural resource consumption for how many decades now?
And those of us who have been sounding the alarm are still marginalized, made fun of and pushed off the field to the side lines to watch our predictions come true on a daily basis.
It’s like being stuck on a ship of fools that won’t change course even though you can hear the thunder of the water fall just down stream.
I was trained in traied in geology. There have been some pretty bad, catastrophic, sudden mass-extinctions in the geologic past which were caused by smaller forces than human activities. I think the world’s scientists and the IPCC in particular need to stop this goddamn over-cautiousness and start explaining that we may be on the verge of whole lot worse things than just severe storms, famines, plagues and dissapearances of polar bears.
We cannot afford to wait until we are certain that we are on the verge of wiping out life on earth, so the only sane course is to take draconian action now.
This isn’t even new. There have been warnings about this for decades - just like every major environmental problem. Humanity is so incredibly myopic and dysfunctional …
So become a vegetarian. Ride a bike. Reuse stuff. Recycle. Buy used. You all know the tune. I’ve been living like this for nearly three decades now since i first fully grasped what was going on in 1980 (my first year in college). That was back when doing so (assuming everyone did) would have made a difference. It would still make a difference, but how much damage has been done since then? And most people are too egotistical to make this sort of change. Like someone said above, you reap what you sow …
Worldwide fishing stocks are destined to change, so we need to press our government on that as well as reduce consumer demand. Sushi restaurants needs to be more sensitive about serving tuna; it’s really in their industry’s best long term interest not to kill off the stock and force huge prices. Some types of fish stocks are increasing like squid, too so consumers can motivate sellers by eating/buying more of these.
The Approach:
To be right on the environment is not enough. The main goal needs to be winning hearts and minds to environmental stewardship. The pro-environment community needs to do a helluva better job convincing Americans that we’re on a unsustainable path AND that change is possible.
It’s easy to assume the worst and not address change, which is the goal. It’s also not enough to accept the status quo, so much remains to be done. I think we can lead by example, but none of us are perfect, so it’s best not to set goals that can’t be achieved.
The sustainability community needs to realize that apathy and despair are the fruits of anger and disaffection. Making changes requires support, cooperation and the seed of hope.
This will be solved just like the oil addiction problem. By looking deeper and into more sensitive areas and fighting over the last remaining bit of the resource. Golly we sure are smart!
Remember when those large Russian Trawlers were trolling along the Grand Banks of New England
with those large vacumn sucking hoses, removing all the fish that were in existence at the time.?
That my friends was the begining of the
“New World Order”, as the Bushco were promoting it. The Carlyle Group, another Bushco is basically doing the same thing to the World economy by buying it out, however, since the press is now owned by Corporatists, they have become complicit in the destruction of the food chain, by keeping all this a secret.
USAn,
I’m just finishing the excellent book “Under a Green Sky” which makes the scientific case for what you are saying. We are proceeding headlong into climate change that in the past has resulted in mass extinctions. Past climate change has been caused by such things as extensive volcanic activity, but now we are creating it by human means. Global warming caused 90 percent of species to disappear in the Great Permian Extinction and that is exactly where we are heading.
I agree with you USAn, but there is no need for a Draconian change.The Earth is just doing its natural thing that it does once in awhile.Nothing we can do about it but be prepared as best as possible and maintain a good solid network of friends and family since as the saying goes….there is strength in numbers.
I vaguely remember the Canadian Navy or Coast Guard once threatening use of force against foreign factory fleets in its waters. This sort of thing could become more frequent. There was a photo from space showing the lights from the fishing fleets off South America brighter than the cities. We will need international agreements on limits, methods of fishing, and preserve areas that are not fished.
What to do about acidification and warming? Dunno. The deniers are still in charge, and global warming is still a “liberal conspiracy”. I guess things will have to get a lot worse to get the attention of the “movers and shakers”.
The author says it may be a matter of decades. I humbly disagree, I think it may be a very few years, maybe only three or four. Anyway, show me a fish now and I’ll show you poison. What a shame, and what is being done to stop the train and attempt to correct it?
Our very existance depends upon life in the oceans, the phytoplankton, which are disappearing at an alarming rate. It takes less than a minute to read this link.
Http://www.whyplankton.com
The global signs are alarming.Greed and privatization are the main causes of the current downward-spiraling of the ecosystem.
Why can’t people see the obvious, global diversity of all life is decreasing and at the same time the human population is growing. WOW, people these two things are related!!!! What do you think we are made of, stones.
C’mon, we need to realize all non-human populations will continue to decline until we stop growing the human population. We can do that by ending the FOOD RACE.
It’s all collapsing, and it can’t be otherwise with our dumb ape attitude: more and more and more - never enough!
ok, fools,
true 6 billion people on a planet made for 1/2 b.
true
however, it is NOT overfishing idiots, from here in Redneck Riviera
it is HABITAT DESTRUCTION!
too many gd golf courses and condos on wetlands
especially here in the Carolinas
thank God soon for large tsunamis and tidal surges and hurricanes to clean up the coasts,
too bad for people,
not a shame, an awakening
best to be at 500 ft up
KEM PATRICK
I think it may be a very few years, maybe only three or four.
You might be right, since virtually no salmon returned to many Pacific NW streams to spawn this season. Why is a mystery, but something definitely has gone very wrong somewhere in their travels. A few more years of this and those runs are gone.
BE CAREFUL WHAT YOU WISH FOR………or the UN will “take care” of all us humans. The true reason for the problem. Remember, if guns are outlawed, only your government will have guns.
Don’t be stupid, Homeland Security will confiscate your guns just like the Nazi troops did.
But the point here is humans are destroying the rest of the earth with their almighty greed, unbridled pride and sense of entitlement.
Example: Third world African countries that harvest chocolate for the big corporate boys could feed their families for an entire week on the price Americans pay for one chocolate bar. Sound fair?
So fish and animals? Rights? Humane treatment?
You don’t know what you got till it’s gone…
WTF February 22nd, 2008 12:32 pm
Anyone surprised? Ye reap what ye sow
True, but the third world countries we poison and exploit don’t have the choice of our answers that disregard all but our cozy little world. They will die first and be deprived of their homes and livelihood in answer to America’s greed. This is not just about global warming, it’s about humanity and caring about our environment and knowing that our environmental decisions impact us all.
Well, there have been several very good artilces posted here at Common dreams about the acidic oceans, monstrous dead zone areas the size of the United States in the Pacific, that are floating cess pools of plastic and other human tossed garbage. The whales did not arrive in Hawaii this year, the first time in recorded history that has ever occurred. There are huge signs along our shorelines that tell us it is only safe to eat one helping of fluke or flounder a year and three or four blue shell crabs a year. Safe?
We have spread thousands of TONS of depleted uranium all over the planet durng the past 20 years and 70% of our planet is oceans. That microscopic DU dust will float on water, along with the ocean’s plankton and DU will kill any living thing, down to the microbal level. Add that poison to the others we dump into our oceans and eventually we kill off the one form of life reqired to supply most of the oxygen in our atmosphere. __ Stupid is stupid.
Learn to enjoy mud cookies!
There are a lot of monied/power interests continuing to fund global warming/environmental degredation/peak oil denying.
Add to that, people being in denial aided by MSM not covering it systemically.
Our beautiful planet and its ecosystems is sick. It won’t die but the catastrophic damages done can forever change our overall environment. And as always the poorest will feel the burden most accutely.
Google Abrupt Climate Change and National Security and you should get the Pentagon report on global warming. Although it’s a “what if” report, it should be noted the Bush Administration has declared war on science.
I’m afraid Kem is right in timeframe. Years or a decade, not several decades.
Even an omnivore like myself has to take notice. I’m working on it. I’ve been working on other environmental problems for almost 40 years. Waste stream, reducing, transportation.
The problem is that the people in charge are tooo busy gaining wealth and power rather than planning for SOCIETY. It’s kind of like they’ve taken out a life insurance policy on the rest of us and hoping we’ll die off. Giveus a nudge down the stairs too.
Oh I forgot, companies are buying life insurance policies and betting on demises.
I have yet to hear anyone address the real root of the problem…OVERPOPULATION!!!! The severe need to reduce populations that are making demands upon a planet that can not sustain them. The more people there are making demands for food, shelter, clothing and etc. The worse the problem is going to get! But, instead we have Christian lunatics who are trying to outlaw abortion and birth control both. Trying to deliberately destroy us with more people than the planet is capable of taking care of. Which in the end will only bring on disaster. I guess when there are whole continents of starving dying people, humans might wake up to the problem.
When you cannot even talk about the root causes of the accelerating crisis in “polite” company, what possible foundation is there for hope?
I talk about the root causes of the accelerating crisis everywhere, and if people think I’m “impolite” because I don’t want our world to be poisoned to death, well, that’s just too bad.
Give a man a fish,… teach a man to fish.
Who said that?
Climate change is driven by a radical ideology coupled with unbridaled greed and ignorance but the potential for this sociological phenomenon has existed for many millenia. Only since the developments of the industrial revolution, extraction of fossil fuels, and the current consumption rate has the biosphere become threatened with mass extinctions and other macro-destructions. Human over-population and plunder of aquatic resources follows a related trajectory and it’s clear from all of this that humans will have to regulate themselves and will have to start by reigning in the political hegemons that are pushing the ideology of plunder off on the unwitting masses. Liberal tolerance will have to fall by the wayside, and a non-violent war has to be executed, NOW, against these extremist networks. The ideology of plunder (laissez-faire capitalism) must be banished ASAP.
I don’t think, Tumbleweed that the overpopulation problem is being caused by the Christian right wanting to ban abortion and birth control. They haven’t been able to control these yet. I think we must look at other places where the populations are rising.Overpopulation is a problem,but discussing it has become politically incorrect,mainly because it isn’t in the west where the main problem lies.
go nuclear
It is a little unnerving when your employer takes out a life insurance policy on you with them as the benficiary, and then doesn’t provide health care. Welcome to Wallmart and tuna is only 50 cents a can. Brought to you by slave labor from the south pacific and brokered by TOM DELAY. Tom gets his inspiration for subversion of a living wage at the nudie places in the south pacific where people actually sell themselves. I’m not sure what the moral to story is, I don’t think there is one.
There is some comfort that I and my kids live in the US. Our population density hasn’t stretched the potential food supply to anywhere near the limit, our Navy can keep foreign fishing fleets away from our shores and even follow the migrations off shore or patrol preserves. (And we grabbed Iraq’s oil!)
On the other hand, when fishing, water supplies and agriculture fail elsewhere, we will have to watch as millions starve, and thousands of species become extinct. We also will know that America is responsible for much of global warming and resource depletion, and we had the chance to take the lead - and didn’t.
Maybe that’s why Bush and company don’t act on global warming. They figure it will be someone else’s problem. America will get a free ride. Wrong!
From my cold, dead hands! let it be known this is Elly, from Eugene, Ore. Liberal, Progressive to the core. Native to one of the last true “freer” frontiers in the States. If someone declares martial law, Nazi, Homeland Security, or UN, and they come to the property YOU OWN (or do you??) and they say your property is no longer yours, and you have to move to their COMPOUNDS away from our damaged WATERSHEADS!! WHADDAYAGONNADOOOO??? Say, “OK, well start packing right now!!” NO! Your gonna use your right to bear arms, cuz THEY ALREADY TOOK ALL YOUR OTHER CIVIL LIBERTIES AWAY, and they know that as one of the last countries on the planet where we have a Constitutional right to protect ourselves. Oh, and as such we as American civilians make up the LARGEST ARMED force in the world. Check it out…theres a lot of government owned land you cant live on, and the fed has too much control on your OWN land. that is, if you even own it, mortgage free. Trust me i feel as responsible as the next human an my impact on our earth, but ANY excuse to control should be questioned. i believe the US has a responsibility to the rest of the world as a leader in environmental issues, but strongly object to PLANNED GLOBAL DIVERSITY, unless they call for volunteers to commit suicide for the good of the Planet. If shit gets that bad, YOU give em the last of your freedoms.Id rather die free than live a slave. But id rather useless, McDonald eating, Fox News believin, fat assed haters died before me. Cuz i’ve been trying all my life to make a difference for the world.
Poor fish but nobody who can properly help them will
Fish are dying by the hundreds of thousands in Hong Kong, Taiwan and off the coast of China to to exceptionally COLD sea temperatures.
http://www.growfish.com.au/content.asp?ContentId=10954
Funny how the environmentalists dont mention it. Of course, this is a regional and not global event, so does not mean anything.
And what else is Homo Stupidus willing to kill off for the sake of a few extra dollars??? Are outright greed and stupidity that hard to eradicate?
MiMi:
I’m sure the climatologists in China and at NOAA are checking this cold snap out. Is it just a weather freak or is it climate change related? They are scientists and will want to find out. They don’t have to have “an agenda”.
Right now the Chinese are mostly concerned about the shrinking mountain glaciers that may some day stop feeding their major rivers, the growth of the desert, and horrible air pollution. Then there is that colossal dam they built. Hope it works out for them.
Not to worry, the world isn’t going anywhere, we are pack your bags, that was from George Carlin, so doing something is like spitting into the wind, you just don’t have the power. Joining in with others of like minds, just makes targetting you easier. Nope, we are out of here, this is just the last throes of a dying species with opposable thumbs. That experiment is over, it failed. 2012? Sounds about right to me. Besides who wants to live on a world without whales, tigers, elephants, butterflies, frogs, and all the other wonderful critters that truly deserve to be here?
Its easy to pick on GM. Their quality is fair at best and they have made so many mistakes, but GM is also a victim of globalization and the race to the bottom for low cost labor. The “free trade” playing field is not level, and the American “Big Three” are stuck with expensive labor agreements made when they had no real competiton and it took a lot of people to build a car. Now GM has to support these agreements with decreasing market share, fewer workers contributing to the retirees, and almost no profit per vehicle. Small wonder Michigan is in such bad shape.
Dr. Lizard: You got it right about ethanol. What a waste! The journal Science did the math 30 years ago and again this week. Same result. More energy consumed than produced plus a mess to clean up. Not to mention inflating food prices and fertilzer runoff!
Oops, wrong article but still related!
Because of over-fishing, some rivers in Alaska no longer have certain species of fish. During the last 15 years they’ve been dwindling to practically zero.
How did that happen? I had looked at both articles, but I was scrolling up and down on the GM article. ??????
Gremlins BBr. __ they are all over the place.