Top environmental ministers from scores of countries allover the world are meeting this week in Hyderabad, India. Their goal: to reachagreement on how to protect 10 percent of the world’s ocean. Actually, they hadset that goal two years ago under the Convention on Biological Diversity. Youmight be thinking, here we go again “ easy to agree on goals; hard to agree onhow to meet them.
But it matters. The US Commerce Department just declaredmajor fisheries in New England, Alaska and Mississippi a “disaster.” Anothernew study found that Australia’s Great Barrier Reef has lost half its coralsince 1985. British and French fishermen have clashed as boats from Britainsailed into French waters on the hunt for scallops. But that bell tolls notjust for the fishermen “ it tolls for us as well. Fish are the primary sourceof protein for an estimated 1 billion people around the world.
The journal Science recently published the firstcomprehensive analysis of more than 10,000 fisheries “ roughly 80 percent ofour global fish catch. The conclusion: fish populations worldwide are swiftlydeclining. This global analysis paints a stark new picture of a global oceanfished to exhaustion in an increasingly hungry world.
So, why are we hopeful? It’s because the analysis of globalfisheries has a silver lining. We have not reached a point of no return. Wehave time. Solutions exist.
The good news is that many large commercial fisheries arealready benefiting from the improved management of the last decade. The harderproblem is with smaller-scale fisheries that local communities rely on for foodand income. The fact is that small-scale fishers “ who fish within 10 miles oftheir coast “ account for nearly half of the world’s global catch and employ 33million of the world’s 36 million fishermen, while also creating jobs for 107million people in fish processing and selling. Mostly poor, they live mainly inareas lacking fisheries management, monitoring and enforcement. No one is in aposition to formally declare their fisheries “disasters.” They must just enduretheir situation. Or take control of it.
A rising tide of local communities is doing just that.Here’s the emerging recipe proposed in that same Science study: Give localfishers exclusive access to their fishing grounds in the form of territorialuse rights, or TURF.
In exchange for the privilege of exclusivity, localfishermen agree to establish and protect no-take zones. Results includeincreased fish populations, richer marine habitats, and coastlines lessvulnerable to climate change “ and more food for people.
Unleashing the self-interest of local fishermen to advanceboth conservation and economic development can create one of those rare win-winscenarios.
A growing body of research shows that fish populationsinside a no-take zone can more than quadruple. Fish numbers outside the reservecan double. And, exclusive access enables investment and better management,increasing the catch’s value.
It works. We’ve visited several local fisheries in Mexicoand the Philippines this year “ with heads of leading research institutions,NGOs and government agencies “ and in each case, we witnessed increasing fishpopulations, increased catch value and better-protected reefs.
TURF reserves are not a silver bullet. They might, however,be the silver buckshot. With nearly one billion people reliant on the ocean fortheir primary source of protein, stakes are high. If the most fish-dependentnations adopted widespread networks of TURF Reserve, they can potentiallycreate enough fish recovery to feed hundreds of millions of people.
That’s a big if, however. The solution is not to fix a smallnumber of fisheries. We need thousands of TURF reserves in dozens of countriesjust to get the ball rolling. Ultimately, we need a commitment of governments,foundations, nongovernmental organisations and the private sector to forge amajor investment in near shore fisheries in the developing tropics. The coastalcommunities themselves must unfurl the ocean’s silver lining.
Protecting 10 percent of the world’s oceans is no smalltask. TURF reserves offer one solution to start us down that path. But they areneither complicated nor expensive. Clearly this problem “ and the opportunity “is bigger than all of us. And there are a billion reasons for us to act likeit.
Carl Safina is founding president of the Blue OceanInstitute at Stony Brook University, where he is an adjunct professor in marinesciences. Brett Jenks is the president and chief executive of Rare, a globalconservation organisation based in Arlington, Virginia
