If EU citizens had consumed fish from EU waters only, they would have run out of fish the first week in July, a report shows.
The report “Fish Dependence: The increasing reliance of the EU on fish from elsewhere”, published by the new economics foundation (nef), one of the founding members of the OCEAN2012 coalition, puts the finger on the prevailing situation that the rich world in general, and the EU in particular, consumes much more fish than it takes out of its own waters, even though overfishing is still a huge and recognised problem in the Union.
“The EU has some of the largest and richest fishing grounds in the world but at the moment we’re not managing them properly”, says Aniol Esteban, head of environmental economics at nef.
In a free trade world, a market dependent on imports would not be a problem, if EU consumers and importers of fish did not neglect even more unsustainable fishing methods in the exporting countries, often third world nations that would need the fish for their own populations.
Also, illegal, often industrialised, fishing in Africa or Asia – to sell the fish at high profits to markets with a high demand, apart from Europe also the United States, China and Japan – is threatening the livelihoods of local fishermen and quickly depleting those fish populations.
While the European Union recently has taken steps to combat illegal fishing, more needs to be done to protect the marine ecosystems, nef writes in its report.
The group calls on the EU to “turn this situation around and provide a policy framework that will restore marine ecosystems to healthy levels and deliver a fair allocation of resources internationally.”
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OCEAN2012 is an alliance of organisations dedicated to transforming European Fisheries Policy to stop overfishing, end destructive fishing practices and deliver fair and equitable use of healthy fish stocks. FISH was one of five founding members in June 2009; it has now 70-plus members, and is still growing.