全球水產業的雙重考驗：氣候變遷、過度漁撈

Fishing-reliant communities in the developing world are vulnerable to climate change, so the fishing industry and national fisheries authorities must do more to understand and prepare for rising temperatures, says a new United Nations report published Monday.

The UN Food and Agriculture Organization's report "State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture," says existing responsible fishing practices must be more widely implemented and management plans should be expanded to include strategies for coping with climate change.

"Best practices that are already on the books but not always implemented offer clear, established tools towards making fisheries more resilient to climate change," said report co-author Kevern Cochrane.

"So the message to fishers and fisheries authorities is clear," he said. "Get in line with current best practices, like those contained in FAO's Code of Conduct for Responsible Fisheries, and you've already taken important strides towards mitigating the effects of climate change."

Representatives of 80 countries are in Rome this week for the annual meeting of the FAO Committee on Fisheries where they are discussing the issues raised in the new report and the future work of the agency.

Sustainability of the high seas fisheries is crucial, but it is aquaculture that now accounts for 47 percent of all fish consumed by humans as food, the FAO reports.

"Many fisheries are being exploited at the top range of their productive capacity," said Cochrane. "When you look at the impacts that climate change might have on ocean ecosystems, that raises concerns as to how they'll hold up."
Areas with the highest proportions of fully-exploited fish stocks are the Northeast Atlantic Ocean, the Western Indian Ocean and the Northwest Pacific Ocean.

Aquaculture continues to be the fastest-growing animal food producing sector and is poised to provide half of all fish consumed worldwide, finds the FAO report, adding that future developments should move towards hatchery-based aquaculture, cutting dependence on wild stocks.

With aquaculture set to be the basis of all future growth in global seafood production, the global environment organization WWF responded to the new report with an urgent call to put aquaculture on a more sustainable basis.
The shift to aquaculture is as likely to increase as to reduce the pressure on collapsing ocean fisheries, WWF warned.

A series of aquaculture dialogues, coordinated by WWF and involving more than 2,000 farmers, nongovernmental organizations and scientists are currently creating global standards to minimize environmental and social impacts associated with aquaculture - initially for the 12 species with the greatest economic and environmental impact.
The aquaculture dialogues are now considering whether the standards should be administered by an Aquaculture Stewardship Council - a body similar to the Marine Stewardship Council, the leading sustainability certification system for marine capture fisheries.

The WWF proposal to certify farming of one of the 12 species - shrimp - is opposed by an international NGO network. Representatives of local communities, NGOs, social movements and researchers from 17 countries of Africa, Asia, Europe, Latin America and North America signed a declaration against industrial shrimp aquaculture in Lampung, Indonesia in September 2007.

They warn that conversion of wetlands and mangrove forests into shrimp ponds contributes to climate change by releasing stored carbon in the soil into the atmosphere and by nullifying the mangroves' function of sequestering carbon.

With long roots that shelter juvenile fish and protect coastlines from erosion, hurricanes, storm surges, and tsunami, mangrove trees grow in the intertidal areas and estuary mouths between land and water.

Despite the overwhelming evidence of its devastating effects on both coastal ecosystems and local peoples, the NGOs say, the shrimp farming industry continues to expand into new lands and countries, such as Brazil, Nigeria and Kenya, leaving behind degraded land and impoverished communities.

Led by Mangrove Action Project, USA; Asia Solidarity Against Industrial Aquaculture, Bangladesh; African Mangrove Network, RedManglar, Colombia; and Forest Peoples Programme, UK, these and other NGOs expressed their concerns at two WWF aquaculture dialogues last fall in Ecuador and Thailand.

They are still demanding "a moratorium on further expansion of this socially disruptive and ecologically destructive industry" and a halt to the WWF's Aquaculture Stewardship Council initiative.

These groups said last month that they view the proposed Aquaculture Stewardship Council as "yet another attempt by a big international NGO to formulate some ill-conceived plan to remedy the problems of unsustainable industrial shrimp farming."

Saying that there "still is a great need for strict social and rights-based standards, not just environmental and technical fixes at the shrimp farm level," they are seeking "real and meaningful dialogues with affected communities, not just with industry and a few NGOs and academics."

In response, Jill Schwartz, deputy director of the WWF-US Aquaculture Program, told ENS in an interview, "Our feeling with shrimp and all aquaculture is that it is here to stay. Aquaculture is the fastest growing food production system in the world right now - half the fish we eat on the planet is farmed."

"We, like that coalition, recognize that there are some negative environmental impacts assocated with aquaculture, so we are working with industry to set these standards," said Schwartz.

"Producers want to see some change in the industry," said Schwartz. "They are willing to change farming practices to protect the environment. Shrimp dialogue participants have identified some key impacts they want to try to minimize - water pollution, salt water from shrimp farms can seep into the groundwater; chemicals and antibiotics; destruction of natural habitat; and the clearing of mangrove forests."