EDFish

Ecomarkets: Scaling Up Marine Conservation

By / Bio / Published: January 2, 2013

Originally published in the Huffington Post Green Blog: 12/30/12

The ocean is enormous, supporting a vast array of life while providing food, fuel, recreation, and spiritual rejuvenation.  But efforts to conserve the ocean, though valiant, are meager compared to the scale of the threats to the ocean.  Ocean conservation advocates have achieved many notable successes, such as dramatic reductions in certain kinds of pollution, the establishment of Marine Protected Areas (MPAs), and major improvements in fishery management in some areas of the world.  However, a recent analysis that EDF participated in suggests that 40% of the ocean is still strongly impacted by a range of threats, including shipping, the modification of rivers and estuaries, coastal development, pollution, and overfishing.  How can we scale conservation efforts up to match the ocean’s vastness and the severity of these threats?

To answer this question, we must first accurately diagnose the problem. Conventional markets, which drive so much of mass human behavior, only value a few of the many goods and services that the ocean provides, like fish and oil.  The critically important ocean processes that produce fish, regulate the climate, assimilate wastes, and provide all of the other goods and services on which the diversity of ocean life and we humans depend are generally not valued by markets.  Because markets see value only in parts of the ocean, and not in the whole, the valuable pieces are extracted and the rest is degraded.

Conservation has been pushing back against market forces, among the most powerful forces in the world, in the form of regulation.  While regulations like water quality standards and MPAs can be very effective, they often depend on high levels of enforcement because they are working against market forces and the incentives to exploit valuable resources without stewarding the ecosystems that support them.  Regulations in this context are often perceived as threats to livelihood and human welfare, resulting in opposition and conflict.  It is not surprising that it typically takes many years and sometimes decades to get ocean conservation measures in place. Read More »

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Finding the Ecological Cliff and Staying Away from It: Thresholds for Sustainability

By / Bio / Published: November 13, 2012

In “The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference,” author and journalist, Malcolm Gladwell explains how sociological changes often happen very quickly and unexpectedly.   He describes a tipping point as “the moment of critical mass, the threshold, the boiling point.”

It turns out that many natural ecosystems have tipping points too, called ecological thresholds.  Healthy ocean ecosystems can resist change, exist in alternative states and recover from storms, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions – and even from human activities like pollution and fishing.  Having more than one species that do similar things but in slightly different ways helps ecosystems stay healthy; i.e., makes them resilient.  But when we reduce species so much that they can’t play their ecological roles or when we stress the system too much, these ecosystems can reach a tipping point and change rapidly from beautiful, productive systems to damaged systems that are incapable of creating the wonders and benefits they once produced. Read More »

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Ocean Conservation Should not be a Partisan Issue

By / Published: November 6, 2012
Stetson Bank Coral and Sponges

Stetson Bank Coral and Sponges. Photo credit: Frank and Joyce Burek

No matter what happens at the polls today, the ocean and the fish that live in it will still require our attention and conservation efforts. With all the politics and rhetoric circulating throughout the media, the fact that oceans and other vital ecosystems provide invaluable resources and benefits to the billions of people on this planet tends to go unnoticed. Even worse, there is a tendency to paint the environment as a partisan issue, when regardless of your political beliefs—ensuring we have a healthy natural world is essential to your survival and happiness for the future.

The oceans cover 71% of the Earth’s surface and contain 97% of the world’s water. An estimated 20,000 species of marine fish swim beneath the largely unexplored waters, along with complex plant and animal life including coral reefs, sea grasses, whales and sharks. Billions of people globally depend on fish as their primary source of protein, and the economic value of fishing for their livelihood. Many of these people live in poor, undeveloped countries and will rely more heavily on the ocean as populations increase and global warming impacts their ability to cultivate food on land. The reality of our global dependence on the ecosystem services that the ocean provides becomes more evident with studies such one which recently came out in Science, citing that 80% of the world’s un-assessed fisheries are in worse shape than previously thought. But there is hope if we act now to align the right incentives and increase the economic value of fisheries, while putting fishermen at the forefront of conservation.  Ensuring that the world’s fish stocks are replenished is a human imperative, not a political talking point. Read More »

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Accumulation Limits a Critical Component of Catch Shares to Provide Benefits to Fishing Families and Communities

By / Published: October 17, 2012

Small boatCatch shares, a fishery management system that gives fishermen a secure share of the catch in exchange for increased monitoring and greater accountability, represent a substantial change from the way U.S. fisheries have been managed in the past.

Well-designed catch shares – particularly when they include accumulation limits – can provide safeguards for small boat fishermen, their families, and their communities. Because these are the people who are hurt most when fisheries collapse, EDF believes it is imperative to ensure that management programs take the needs of both fish and fishermen into account.  Catch shares are uniquely suited to do so in a number of ways that conventional fishery management plans could not.

For example, conventional fishery management plans typically call for shortened seasons and even closures when overfishing or other factors deplete stocks. This unpredictability of management can endanger smaller operators more than bigger ones, since they may not have the flexibility to weather the changes.  Because catch shares usually allow fishermen to operate all year long, they provide far greater job stability for fishermen, who know in advance how much fish they can catch during the season and what their needs will be at any given time. They can spread their catch out over the year, avoiding the gluts that occur when everyone brings in their catch at once and timing trips to maximize the price they’ll earn for that catch. Some fishermen are working directly with processors so they are fishing for species that are most sought-after at the most desirable times, earning the highest price per fish. Read More »

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New Science Paper: Status and Solutions for the World’s Unassessed Fisheries

By / Published: September 27, 2012
Grey Reef Sharks (Carcharhinus amblyrhynchos) cruise through the reef passes among large schools of surgeonfish in Fakarava, French Polynesia.

Photo Credit: Gerick Bergsma 2010/Marine Photobank

The world’s fish stocks can be rebuilt to provide more nourishment and economic value to the millions of people who rely on the ocean for food—if we step up now and make aligning these incentives a global priority.

The magazine Science has published a study that provides new insights into thousands of fisheries where scientific data has not been historically available.  These “data poor” fisheries make up a majority of the world’s catch, around 80 percent. According to this new research, many of these fisheries are facing collapse, but there is still time to turn the situation around. The study indicates that it is possible for fisheries to recover globally, which would increase the abundance of fish in the ocean by 56% and in some fisheries’ yields could more than double.

With these new assessments, fishery managers and world leaders can have a more comprehensive view of the status of our global fisheries.  There are many new insights into previously unmeasured fisheries, using new methodology that can have enormous implications for managing the resource sustainably.

The report also provides some hope and insights on how the world can reverse these trends. Read More »

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Bridging the Gulf Report: Preparing for Offshore Oil and Gas Exploration in Cuba

By / Published: September 11, 2012

Oil Rig, Photo Credit: Vidar Løkken

Reprinted with Permission from Center for Democracy in the Americas Center for Democracy in the Americas (September 7, 2012)

The following article was written by Dan Whittle, EDF’s Cuba Program Director for the Oceans Program, and featured on CenterforDemocracyInAmerica.org. In the article, Dan discusses our new report, Bridging the Gulf, which gives great insight into the roadblocks that existing U.S. foreign policy on Cuba has on making environmental protection progress. The article also dives into the constructive conversations the two countries have been having about ways to improve communications and policy keeping the best interest of the environment in mind.

The Environmental Defense Fund recently released a report called Bridging the Gulf, in which we concluded that “current U.S. foreign policy on Cuba creates a conspicuous blind spot” that is detrimental to the interests of both countries.  A failure to cooperate on oil spill planning, prevention, and response in the Gulf of Mexico could result in devastating environmental and economic impacts on a scale greater than the 2010 BP oil disaster.

Recently, I witnessed a potential bright spot in US-Cuba relations that could lead to real and meaningful cooperation in protecting Cuban and American shores from future oil spills. Read More »

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