Photo courtesy of ecology.com
The Fisheries Economics Research Unit has been working hard to prepare a chapter for the upcoming Green Economy Report, which is part of the United Nations Environment Programme’s (UNEP) Green Economy Initiative. For our contribution to the Report, which is to organize and prepare the fisheries chapter, we have been in collaboration with more than 50 authors and contributors. The report seeks to demonstrate how ‘green’ investment in various sectors of the economy can be positive contributors to economic growth and employment as well as meeting environmental sustainability goals.
Recently some results stemming from the fisheries chapter of the Green Economy Report have been featured in the media. Yahoo News reports on comments by Pavan Sukhdev, head of UNEP’s green economy initiative, saying that:
“[fishing capacity is] 50 – 60% higher than it should be.”
Illegal-fishing.info, a Chatham House, U.K. managed initiative further reports Sukhdev describing the more than $27 billion dollars spent each year to subsidize marine fisheries as “perverse”. This is largely due to the fact that subsidies represent roughly 30% of the value of fish caught each year which create a situation where fishing fleet capacity is “higher than it should be”.
News of this report have reached the shores of China as well where the People’s Daily Online reports comments by UNEP Executive Director Achim Steiner who says that:
“[t]he lives and livelihoods of over half a billion people, linked with the health of this industry, will depend on the tough but also transformational choices the governments make now and over the years to come.”
Our research group, along with many others around the globe, continue work on the fisheries chapter which is scheduled to be released as part of the complete Green Economy Report late this year (2010).