Free to download from the Internet, a new 478-page book on “Fisheries, sustainability and development” is recommended by a Swedish professor as both “encyclopaedia and student literature”.
Thirty-two articles by 52 experts, scientific in scope but popular in style, cover both socioeconomical and ecological aspects of fisheries, as well as aquaculture. The project, chiefly financed by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida) and coordinated by the Royal Swedish Academy of Agriculture and Forestry (KSLA), wishes to “take part in an ongoing discussion, sometimes bordering to a public row, with a scientifically based and easily accessible book”, its cover text notes.
Sture Hansson, a professor of systems ecology in Stockholm and often quoted expert on Baltic fisheries – and not a contributor to the book – said at the launching that he was impressed and would use it both in classes and, personally, for an encyclopaedia.
The “Blue Book” – the Academy published some years ago a “Green Book” on agriculture – focuses on interaction and relations between the industrialised world and developing countries. It is largely divided into four “chapters”:
- The aquatic environment; fish and fisheries. The end conclusion is that marine ecosystems are presently subject to enormous pressures from pollution, acidification, climate change, overfishing and actual physical destruction – e.g. from bottom trawling. “The European Union is far from a role model”, a member of the editorial committee wryly noted at the launching, adding that “Norway, Australia, New Zeeland and the United States, however, have shown examples of interesting test projects”. The book also holds forth the sometimes underestimated importance of leisure fishing – socially but also economically.
- Fisheries management; scientific basis and political decisions. Not surprisingly, studies claim that lacking political will is the most common factor to failed management.
- Fish as food; aquaculture. The latter’s portion of the fish market is steadily growing – mainly out of necessity created by both overfishing and population growth. In many respects this is an ecological threat – pollution, spreading disease, overfishing of the seas to provide meal/fish oil – but the book shows it is not always so, particularly in comparison to how much more fish it takes to provide nourishment for other livestock producing proteins for humans: cows, chicken, pigs.
- Fisheries – Trade – Fighting poverty. “Fisheries play a determining role in many economies, still it’s remarkably absent in most plans to reduce poverty”, one of the contributors said. “For 200 million Africans, fish represents 22-70 percent of their protein intake. If problems surrounding aquaculture could be satisfactorily solved, that sector could possibly satisfy more of those needs.”