TFCs putting fishing communities on the brink

An article published by Italian newspaper Corriere della Sera earlier this year has highlighted how the system of Transferable Fishing Concessions has decimated fishing communities on the Danish island of Bornholm – a shocking state of affairs which may also be replicated across Europe.

Fishing has always been the key activity in the Baltic island of Bornholm, providing a livelihood for small scale fishermen across generations. However, Danish fishermen are facing increasing difficulties – from scarce fish resources to low market prices and high operating costs.

In order to address profitability issues, the Danish government has introduced a system of Transferable Fishing Concessions (TFCs), aimed at promoting economic efficiency in the fishing fleet. Each vessel is assigned a fixed proportion of the annual Danish quota, and this right to fish can be transferred or leased among vessels.

Theoretically, this system provides a natural asset to each operator in the fleet, which should induce stewardship for the resource – collapsed fish stocks will make these concessions worthless, whereas healthy populations of fish would make the concession increase in monetary value.

However, assigning a monetary value to a natural resource and allowing users to trade it effectively resulted in a TFC market – where those with the most money can buy out the smaller vessels. As a consequence, fishing quotas are becoming increasingly concentrated in the hands of just a few industrial vessel owners – while their crew are left with nothing.

Another perverse effect of the TFC system is that the larger vessels, which are usually more destructive, buy out the smaller, generally more environment-friendly vessels.

The decline of coastal fishing has had profound effects in Bornholm’s society and economy. Its once vibrant processing industry, which at one point in time employed almost 2000 people, has all but disappeared. Young people can no longer aspire to become fishermen as the cost of acquiring a vessel and a TFC is estimated at around EUR 1 million.

However, this cautionary tale might not be the last we hear of TFCs and their effect on the fishing sector. The Corriere della Sera points out that such a scenario could be replicated across the rest of Europe due to the European Commission’s proposal to impose the TFC system on all EU Member States through the current reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. The Commission’s proposal has proved to be extremely controversial and has stirred heated debates in the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers.

Seas At Risk is advocating a reform of the CFP which gives Member States the flexibility to choose among a range of fleet management and access management tools. Key among these should be the use of social and environmental access criteria to reward responsible fishing with priority access to fish resources.

By Vera Coelho

Links:

Corriere della Sera article (in Italian): http://assets.ocean2012.eu/content_files/files/158/original/Sette-articolo-Pesca-in-Danimarca.pdf

Corriere della Sera article (in English): http://www.ocean2012.eu/press_releases/66-fishing-at-risk-of-sinking

European Commission’s CFP reform proposals: http://ec.europa.eu/fisheries/reform/proposals/index_en.htm

Cutting back on short life carrier bags

Seas At Risk are calling for a Europe wide ban on short life, disposable carrier bags. With 70% of respondents to a European public consultation agreeing that a Europe wide ban on plastic bags is necessary, the pressure is now on the EU to implement a ban that is reasonable, and reduces unnecessary waste.

Firstly, it is important to recognise that a ban on disposable carrier bags is hardly new nor uncommon. In 2009, the UN Under-Secretary-General Achim Steiner stated that single use plastic bags “should be banned or phased-out rapidly everywhere: there is simply zero justification for manufacturing them anymore, anywhere”.

Bans on short-life carrier bags is also a growing phenomenon across the globe, notably pursued in both developed and developing nations, and of course Europe already has its own Member State with a ban in place in the form of Italy, who implemented one just last year.

Not all plastics are bad, but some are worse than others

Our call for action on carrier bags primarily concerns short-life disposable bags which are distributed within the retail sector. Our broader interest here is in a shift away from the use of disposable products and a move towards long life, sustainably sourced materials. This is the sort of change in habit that is crucial in order to tackle marine litter and particularly plastic pollution.

The notorious short life carrier bags really are the ultimate low hanging fruit. They are relatively unnecessary products, the alternative use of a long life bag is hardly a major drain on the individual and quantities produced are staggering; according to the EU, the average European citizen uses around 500 plastic carrier bags annually, most of which are used only once.

And this does not even take into consideration the impact on the marine environment. According to data from trawl surveys in the UK and the North Sea, plastic bags make up almost 40% of all marine litter in these locations and in the Bay Biscay most of the waste items found on the seabed were plastic and of those 94% were plastic bags. The impacts of course can be shocking as marine life becomes entangled or dies through ingestion or suffocation and other looming concerns relate to the possible transfer of chemicals from plastics to internal tissues of marine life, and potentially to humans along the food chain.

In addition, it is also important here to expel the perverse argument that measures should not be implemented to deter disposable plastic bag use; on the basis that bags made from other materials would have to be used disproportionately more times in order to match the global warming potential of a disposable bag. This argument is perverse because of course a long life bag should be used multiple times: that’s the point!

Banning what exactly

As regards an EU wide ban, our first demand is that all short-life carrier bags, made from plastic or bio based products, should be banned from distribution in the retail sector. Such a ban could be implemented by considering certain criteria such as the thickness and resistance of the bag.

Our second demand is that long-life carrier bags are only allowed for distribution at a cost. Here, criteria for their design would also be needed to ensure against bags being sold as long-life that in reality end up only lasting for a short period time. In addition, we also propose the allowance to set a levy on such bags to ensure against over-consumption if the price signal fails.

The objective of this approach is of course to encourage the use of bagging that lasts, for years; an objective that is implicit within the EU strategy to “to assist consumers to consume differently in order to reduce the resource use and associated environmental impacts.” Short life carrier bags are only one part of the problem, but there must be EU action here to show there is substance behind these words, to respect the overwhelming opinion of EU citizens and of course to help protect the marine environment against plastic pollution.

This blog is an extended and amended version of a letter that first appeared in the European Voice.

From a Clean Concept to Cleaned Up Seas

Just under ten years ago, North Sea Ministers acknowledged that a new approach would be needed to minimise the impact of commercial shipping on the environment. The ‘Clean Ship Concept’ was born and whilst the idea has gained momentum amongst global policy makers and shipping companies alike, the maritime sector still has much to do in order to realise its green potential.

It’s important to acknowledge here why the shipping industry must change. For good reason it is seen as a sector that reacts to environmental incidents rather than acting in advance to stop them, and when it does act, the industry is judged to move so slowly that to the outside world it gives the impression of a sector with little interest in its environmental responsibilities.

This might seem unfair when viewing the numerous environmental initiatives being pursued by the better ship operators and ports, but the list of concerns remains long: non-indigenous species are still being transported by ships with devastating consequences for marine biodiversity; global ship SOx and NOx emissions are still staggeringly high and impacting on life expectancy the world over; negligent operators are still dumping their ship waste at sea, ships are still ending their lives being dismantled on beaches by children, and the industry has very visibly failed to grasp the challenge posed by climate change and put in place measures that will reverse the huge projected rise in ship GHG emissions.

These and many other examples testify to the fact that the Clean Ship Concept is a long way from being properly implemented, and regulators recognise this: according to the OSPAR Commission the approach “still needs to be implemented in maritime and environmental policies” and further efforts are needed “to mitigate adverse effects of shipping”.

What is the Clean Ship Concept?

A Clean Ship is designed, constructed, operated and recycled in a manner that eliminates harmful discharges and emissions, and one that is energy and resource efficient in its daily operation.

A Clean Ship operation maximises the opportunities for safe and environmental navigation while at the same time provides all possible safeguards in the event of an accident. It requires a shipping sector that puts environmental protection first and where a "safety culture" is at its heart.

While the Clean Ship concept reaches into every corner of shipping practice, two areas - GHG emissions from ships and ship-source marine litter - are of particular interest to Seas At Risk.



Clean Ships and Climate Change

Perhaps the most pressing challenge facing the shipping sector is its contribution to tackling climate change. The industry currently emits circa 3% of global GHG emissions and this is projected to rise to 6% by 2020.

First tasked by the Kyoto Protocol in 1997, the shipping sector only in July of this year agreed on a legally binding measure to reduce its GHG emissions in the form of the IMO’s Energy Efficiency Design Index (EEDI). The adoption of this tool should result in slowing the growth of emissions . However, such an outcome will only result in the longer term and it is deep, short term cuts in emissions that are also urgently required if emissions are to peak soon and if warming is to be kept to below dangerous levels. For such a scenario, there is sadly nothing on the table from the shipping sector to deliver anything like this.

If there really were few options then one might have sympathy for shipping, but studies by the IMO have shown that the industry has many technical and operational options for reducing emissions, that deep cuts (up to 75%) are possible with known technology and practices, and that cuts of circa 20% are possible at zero cost.
Apart from the EEDI the response of the IMO has been endless wrangling over matters of principle, and a protracted debate about emissions trading, another approach that will only deliver in the longer-term and likely only result in reductions in other sectors. This is hardly a good advert for the shipping industry.

An area of particular interest to SAR is speed reduction, where deep cuts in emissions are possible in the short term. A study of our own from 2009 showed that a cut in emissions of up to 30% was possible by slowing the fleet down just to the extent that it brought currently redundant capacity back into use. More work is being undertaken by Seas At Risk on the advantages of mandatory slow steaming and how it might be implemented. While the industry has used slow steaming to deal with high fuel prices and fleet overcapacity, it has so far at least refused to support an approach that would mandate slow steaming for the whole fleet and secure those very substantial speed related GHG emission gains in the longer term.

Clean ship options for tackling GHG emissions exist but are not being adopted.

No Place for Waste
Marine litter is fast becoming a major environmental, social and industrial problem, and ships are an important source. The Clean Ship approach would entail minimised onboard waste production, a total ban on dumping garbage into the sea and delivery of non-incinerated waste to port reception facilities. Here, the approach can play a big part tackling this growing problem.

And the enormity of the task is truly engulfing. New ocean garbage patches are being discovered across the globe; beaches in the North East Atlantic have on average 712 pieces of litter per 100m; marine litter costs the Scottish fishing fleet as much as €13 million each year; concerns about plastics entering the food chain are ever growing; and estimates suggest that 6.5 million tonnes of plastics are dumped each year by the shipping and fishing sectors.

Incentives intended to discourage dumping of waste at sea are simply not working and the more unscrupulous operator can make big cost savings by dumping their waste over the side, rather than paying at a port reception facility.

Across the majority of European ports it is the financial disincentive that is a key problem and the use of a direct fee that discourages the discharging of waste in port and rather encourages dumping at sea. In order to truly combat this problem, European ports must have a more harmonised approach, in part following Baltic ports, and administering a No-Special-Fee across the region.

With a more harmonised approach, technologies such as compacting devises will take a precedent over incinerators and the likelihood of serious markets in ship waste recycling will become more of a reality rather than a pipe dream. This can only be a positive for ports.

Cleaner ships in the future

For both the issues of climate change and marine waste, ships can and must move much closer to the Clean Ship ideal.

An important premise of the Clean Ship Concept is that growth in global shipping has to be uncoupled from the environmental harm it causes. Despite taking a knock from the recent recession the shipping industry is still projected to grow dramatically in the years ahead and this makes operationalising the Clean Ship Concept an urgent task. Regulators must move faster to green the sector, shippers must intervene to ensure their goods are shipped in the most environmentally sound manner, and ports must encourage and incentivise Clean Ship practices. With this kind of holistic approach, the concept can become reality.

By Chris Carroll. The article has been amended but first appeared in Green Port Magazine earlier this year.

Stepping off the plank

On the 15th July 2011, the world’s first globally binding climate change initiative for an international industry sector was adopted by the UN’s International Maritime Organisation. It was a fraught and complex agreement that although welcomed by Seas At Risk, is seen only as the first step towards tackling GHG emissions from the shipping sector. Below is the statement of the Clean Shipping Coalition, of which Seas At Risk is a founding member, made shortly after the measure was adopted:

“The [Energy Efficiency Design Index] EEDI is about setting energy efficiency standards for a leading global industry which will reduce long-term costs and environmental impacts. When setting fuel efficiency standards in other transport modes, industry has invariably resisted vehemently. To its great credit, the shipping industry is largely on-board with the EEDI.

Ironically, the difficulty here has not been with industry, nor has any lack of technology been a problem, nor has it been about differences in levels of development between developed and developing countries - ships built in developing countries are some of the most advanced and innovative. Rather the difficulty has been about the political positions of some in other UN forums, and the misconception of others that consensus on its own is a worthy objective. These concerns, regrettably, have seriously undermined the effectiveness of the world’s first globally binding climate change initiative.

During the almost 7 year phase-in period of EEDI, shipping GHG emissions, by the Organisation’s own estimates, will have almost doubled to 6% of global emissions. Environmental NGOs supported this process from the beginning in the belief that the potential for improvements in ship efficiency is significant particularly as many measures can be taken at zero or low cost to industry. Those possibilities risk being set aside with this decision.

If there is a rush to have all new ships take advantage of the waiver by flagging them with obliging registries, this will have enormous implications for the administration of all sorts of IMO rules and conventions, endangering both the environment and seafarer safety.

The CSC therefore calls on all enlightened ship-owners to put the question of delay aside and implement immediately the EEDI as good business sense and sound environmental practice. We call on the European Union to embrace the EEDI as an effective instrument to complement other measures it is now considering. We call on shippers, the logistics industry and harbours to use the EEDI when taking decisions on chartering and when setting port dues.

Mr Chairman, as difficult as today’s decision seems to have been, it is only the IMO's first step to address shipping’s climate change impact. A package of additional market-based and operational measures such as emissions trading, a levy, speed limits and mandatory cuts is urgently needed to properly address the rapidly growing emissions from shipping. This work on existing ships is almost in its 15th year and needs to be accelerated urgently.“ The Clean Shipping Coalition.

Biodiversity can’t be lost at sea

The EU committed itself to halt the loss of biodiversity by 2010. Clearly that target has not been met, and marine biodiversity continues to steadily decline. The main reasons for this failure were threefold: lack of political will to prioritise biodiversity protection, lack of intermediate milestones to assess progress towards the 2010 target, and lack of integration of biodiversity considerations into sectoral policies.

The Council has recently endorsed a new and ambitious target to halt biodiversity loss and restore, where possible, lost or damaged ecosystems by 2020. Meeting this new deadline will be no simple task, and it will demand that the EU seriously addresses the shortcomings which caused the 2010 failure.

A key tool for meeting this deadline will be the implementation of the Marine Strategy Framework Directive (MSFD), whose aim is to achieve Good Environmental Status (GES) in EU marine waters by 2020. The Directive not only mentions that biodiversity must be maintained, it also specifically identifies certain sectoral problems which must be addressed in order to achieve GES. Key among these are overfishing and the accumulation of waste at sea. These problems can only be solved if European policy makers are, firstly, honest enough to acknowledge their magnitude and, secondly, ambitious enough to impose bold measures.

The Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has resulted in 88% of assessed European fish stocks being overfished, and 30% being outside safe biological limits. The CFP has failed not only in environmental terms, but also in social and economic terms. The European Parliament and the Council must take the opportunity posed by the CFP reform to reverse this. Healthy seas are a prerequisite for abundant fish stocks and thriving fishing communities – therefore, the environment must be at the heart of the reformed CFP. This entails providing preferential access to fish resources to appropriately-scaled community-based fisheries, using ecologically responsible fishing practices. Bold decisions are needed - nothing short of a radical overhaul of the CFP will do.

Marine litter is a different, yet also manageable problem. Its impact is obvious; from the harm it can cause through entanglement through to the absorption of micro plastics into foods chains by smaller organisms, its effect is shocking. Seas At Risk’s work is particularly concerned with litter sourced from ships. In this, the EU must impose a number of measures, such as having a fee structure in place across European ports that incentivises ships not to dump waste at sea and enforces adequate port reception facilities for ship waste.

Nevertheless, all our efforts to halt the loss of marine biodiversity will be hindered by the effects of climate change. Changes in the physical properties of oceans and seas are already impacting marine life. Ocean acidification is threatening the survival of several organisms, and the knock-on effects on food webs mean that it is only a matter of time before larger marine organisms are threatened. In light of the stumbling climate negotiations, the EU must increase its own efforts to bring about strong GHG cuts across Europe and use this to further incentivise cuts in other countries.

The Parliament, the Council, and the Commission have their work cut out when it comes to protecting marine biodiversity. I just hope that this UN International Year of Biodiversity has made all three institutions fully aware of the problem, and that all three act in unison to protect not only our seas, but our futures too.

By Monica Verbeek

The article is an edited version of a piece that first appeared in the Parliament Magazine earlier this year.

Marine litter: It’s a global issue, but is there regional ‘will’ to act?

Listening to the opinions of delegates at a panel discussion organised by Seas At Risk at this year’s OSPAR Environment Summit, it seems that everyone agrees marine litter is an issue of concern, it just appears that political will to act, unlike the problem itself, is difficult to find.

This is perhaps surprising when you consider the discovery of ocean ‘garbage patches’, the astonishing findings of national beach clean-ups and monitoring programmes and of course the shocking photographic evidence of marine birds with their stomach’s filled to the rim with plastic remnants. Somehow, however, this evidence has not been enough to propel political will to the extent whereby ambitious and progressive actions are being taken and it is perhaps this disconnect between what we know and what we are doing that is most worrying.

Take the work of the OSPAR Commission on marine litter for example. OSPAR, being the regional mechanism set up to protect the North-East Atlantic, has encouragingly taken measures to monitor the problem of marine litter and raise its profile. What has been lacking however, has been progressive measures to stop the growth in marine litter and ultimately prevent litter reaching the sea from ships and land-based sources.

Of course marine litter is not a simple problem to solve in that inputs come from multiple sources. However, in comparison to other environmental problems, such as the prevention of hazardous substances from entering the marine environment, for which OSPAR does have a strategy, the problem of multiple sources really is no different.

Indeed, in order to act on these sources, OSPAR does have a number of options available to it and during the panel discussion there were two interventions that are worth mentioning.

One suggestion was that a Regional Seas Action Plan on Marine Litter – as is the case in several other regions of the world – would be essential to bring about a concerted effort towards acting on all sources of marine litter. The second view gave a more immediate way forward as a panellist suggested that OSPAR could focus its efforts on at least one of the sources of marine litter.

This latter point is also one that is most opportune and is presented by a golden opportunity in the form of the IMO’s review of Annex V – concerning ship waste dumping. Here lies an opportunity for OSPAR and its contracting parties to support a position of ‘general prohibition’ concerning the dumping of waste, and to ultimately prevent all onboard materials from ending up in the sea. This might only be one source, but it is a significant one at that.

Time, however, is upon us. If OSPAR does intend to use its combined efforts to press for environmentally friendly shipping regulations, it will need to step up its work in order to be part of the IMO’s review procedure that is expected to culminate in amended regulations by around 2012. This won’t be agreed during the OSPAR Summit, but if it can quickly agree to such a strategy, then it might just demonstrate whether OSPAR does have the political will to go beyond monitoring and indeed take measures to help solve this persistent environmental problem.

Needed: Vigorous reform of fisheries policy

Reform of the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) comes around roughly once a decade, and the latest reform cycle is now in full swing. EU Fisheries Ministers have met informally in Vigo, on 4-5 May, to be presented with the Commission’s summary of the public consultation in 2009 and with the orientations stemming from a large stakeholder conference in La Coruña, on 2-3 May.

The CFP’s glaring failures have been recognised by the Commission in its Green Paper, published in April 2009 as a catalyst to the reform process. The CFP has resulted in 88% of assessed European fish stocks being overfished, and 30% being outside safe biological limits – meaning that they are at risk of collapse. If fishing stopped altogether in 2010, more than a fifth of European fish stocks would not be replenished by 2015, according to research conducted last year at the University of Kiel.

In order to find solutions for this state of affairs, the stakeholder conference which preceded the informal Council addressed three issues which Seas At Risk and the OCEAN2012 coalition believe are among the key topics in the reform process.

Governance

Most problems regarding the CFP stem from governance failures. The CFP has long suffered from political haggling and short-termism, with measures of great intricacy being dealt with at the highest political level. Traditionally, national ministers have entangled themselves in debates about issues such as the size of nets and annual quotas. Now, following the Lisbon treaty, the political process also includes the European Parliament in most decisions related to fisheries management. More politicians are, in short, debating issues that do not require political leadership. Urgent technical measures become subject to protracted political discussion.

If European fisheries are to be sustainable, the future CFP must put in place a governance framework that differentiates between long-term (strategic) and operational (management) decisions, with decisions taken and implemented at the most appropriate level. The task of the Council and the Parliament should be to decide on the overarching principles and long-term objectives of the policy; detailed implementation should be left to the Commission or decentralised management bodies.

Access to and management of fish stocks

At present, the CFP allocates access to fish stocks based on the principle of ‘relative stability’, which means that access to stocks is allocated based on individual countries’ historical catches. This model needs to be replaced with one that gives preferential access to fishing resources to those operators who better contribute to the objectives of the CFP, by fishing in an environmentally sustainable and socially responsible manner. Sustainability criteria should also be applied when tackling the deep-rooted problem of fleet overcapacity: the most destructive vessels should be removed from the fleet first.

Small-scale and coastal fisheries

The so-called “small scale” sector represents about 80% of the number of EU vessels. But, in practice, the CFP has so far focused on the management of and support to the large scale sector, which secures most money, using these subsidies to modernise and fuel their fleets. By contrast, operators of small vessels receive the least EU money, and most of the subsidies they receive are for scrapping their vessels.
Small is not always beautiful, and artisanal and coastal fleets do cause some harm. This is, though, the part of the fishing industry that fishes most sustainably. Socially, too, it is the most important, providing 65% of the industry’s jobs (it provides 30% of the catch).

Looking at the numbers, the state of Europe’s fisheries can seem hopeless. But better management could allow fish stocks to revive and ease the economic plight of coastal communities. EU ministers must accept that the status quo is unsustainable. The reform of the CFP poses an opportunity not to be missed if Europeans want to have their fish... and eat them too.

By Vera Coelho