2024-07-14 07:14:58
In 2012, British and French scallop fishermen clashed in a series of violent confrontations, which the European and international press dubbed “the great scallop war”. The these tensions flared up when Brexit came into effect in 2020 and French fishermen lost their license to operate in British territorial waters.
This year, after the UK banned bottom trawling to protect marine habitats, the French government protested strongly and threatened to respond with trade retaliation.
Such conflicts also occur in other parts of the world, he notes in his detailed report, the Foreign Affairs. In 2022, when a US Coast Guard vessel approached to inspect a Chinese vessel fishing for squid near the Equator, the Chinese vessel used aggressive maneuvers to evade inspection.
In a world tested by wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and worried about a potential conflict over Taiwan—these incidents may seem insignificant. But although they may escape notice, the fisheries disputes they have the potential to escalate into larger conflicts just as disputes over oil, water and grain have done in the past, experts warn.
Food for billions, employment for hundreds of millions
Fisheries are a finite natural resource, they provide food for billions of people. Seafood accounts for almost one-fifth of the world’s consumption of animal protein. Its products are food products with the most commercial transactions in the world.
The fishing sector employs hundreds of millions of people and fuels the economies of many developing countries and small island states. And the industry is already facing increasing pressure as the overfishing, the bad management and the climate change degrade fish stocks across the planet.
THE rising ocean temperatures alone is expected to push nearly one in four local fish stocks to cross international borders over the next decade, restructuring access to this critical resource and incentivizing dangerous illegal fishing and labor abuse in the sector, Foreign Affairs notes. It is not difficult to imagine how, in this context, a fish-related quarrel could become domino effects.
More and more frequent skirmishes
In fact, skirmishes are already occurring with alarming frequency. Battles over fish are not new: during the Cold War, for example, countries that were otherwise aligned often clashed over fisheries.
In 1979, Canada seized American fishing boats in a dispute concerning tone and the cod wars of the 1970s; brought her into conflict Iceland and United Kingdom on fishing rights in the North Atlantic.
However, the frequency of conflicts over fishing resources has increased 20-fold since 1970and the rapid growth of fishing fleets that can travel in distant waters has further increased the risk of serious conflicts.
It is still possible to avoid escalating conflicts over access to this increasingly scarce resource. With sufficient data and resources, scientists know how to rebuild stocks and manage fisheries sustainably, and their ability to predict the effects of new environmental stressors on fish populations is rapidly improving.
When it comes to funding this work and applying its findings to governance, most countries are lagging behind. But with strong institutions, conservation programs and better real-time information about what is happening in national waters, national and international fisheries agencies can make fishing grounds zones of peace rather than sources of conflict. “Now is the time to muster the political will to do just that — and thus prevent tragedy at sea,” the article notes.
The threat of overfishing
However, many countries lack the resources to effectively manage fisheries, and as a result nearly 40% of global stocks are overfished.
Part of this is a mindset problem. Governments have long viewed fisheries either as a marketable good, with an emphasis on maximizing returns, or as an environmental and resource conservation issue. As a result, access to fisheries is often seen as a zero-sum game, while opportunities for diplomacy are overlooked.
In some cases, such as when Nigeria and São Tomé and Príncipe adopted a joint development agreement in 2001, maritime negotiations have led to additional cooperation on resource management. But these cases are rare. Where economic interests drive governments to maximize the yield of a single species, also, fishing practices are usually not designed to exploit the full potential of fisheries to support human well-being.
The geopolitical value of the oceans is untapped
It is not only fisheries whose geopolitical value is undervalued. More than 75% of the earth’s oceans remain unexplored, despite the role these waters play in food supply, economic development, energy sustainability, public health, climate change and security.
When asked by researchers at the College of William and Mary to rank the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals, leaders from the public, private and nonprofit sectors listed “life under water” as the least important.