Raül Romeva i Rueda

Dilluns vinent marxo cap a Marraqueix, per participar a la reunió anual de la Conferència Internacional per a la Conservació de la Tonyina Atlàntica (ICCAT). La situació és més que dramàtica (veure apunt anterior Salvar o no salvar la tonyina atlàntica: aquesta és la qüestió ), i molt em temo que les mesures que es prenguin quedin lluny de les que realment fa falta emprendre. Almenys aquesta és una de les impressions que em va quedar després de l’entrevista que vaig mantenir ahir amb el Comissari Europeu d’Afers Marítims i Pesca, Joe Borg. Per exemple, malgrat que nombrosos països de la UE van signar una resolució en el marc de la UICN demanant una moratòria per a la pesca de la tonyina (veure apunt Tonyina: toca complir
els compromisos adquirits), sembla ser que aquesta no és una postura majoritària ara com ara en el sí de la UE, i per tant a la reunió de Marraqueix el més probable és que es limitin a proposr una rebaixa de les TAC (quotes autoritzades de pesca) a més a més d’un avançament en quant al tancament de la temporada. Sigui com sigui el tema serà políticament viu i mediàticament present durant els propers dies, tal i com es posa de manifest amb l’article que apareix avui a The Economist (Tuna in the Mediterranean. Gone fishing) i en el qual es recullen les opinions d’algunes de les persones que hi estem treballant. (segueix…)

Tuna
in the Mediterranean

GONE FISHING (Nov
13th 2008, From The Economist print edition)

The
European Commission is accused of withholding embarrassing data

ON
NOVEMBER 17th an international meeting in Morocco will consider how much
bluefin tuna should be caught in the Atlantic and Mediterranean next year. But
it may lack crucial data. The group, called the International Commission for
the Conservation of Atlantic Tunas (ICCAT), meets every year to argue over
quotas, of which the European Union’s is the biggest. The EU divides this among
its members in December (when the big row will be about plans to slash cod
quotas).

The
population of bluefin tuna is crashing after decades of overfishing, mainly by
Europeans. This year a European body, the Community Fisheries Control Agency
(CFCA), has gathered data on bluefin and conducted inspections. Green members
of the European Parliament asked for the study in September. But nothing
materialised until Philippe Morillon, the French chairman of the parliament’s
fisheries committee, got the CFCA to produce a ten-page summary on November
6th. It concludes that “it has not been a priority of most operators in the
fishery to comply with ICCAT legal requirements”. Rules on reporting catches and
banning spotter planes have been flouted too.

Yet
Raül Romeva, a green MEP from Spain, says this summary is a “sanitised”
version. He believes the full report has been suppressed by the commission at
the request of national governments because its contents are so embarrassing.
The full report is said to contain details about the scale of infringements,
including which countries are responsible. One-third of inspections, says Mr Romeva,
led to an apparent infringement, such as inadequate catch documentation. The
commission, he says, is covering this up.

Mielgo
Bregazzi,
a fisheries consultant, says he saw a copy of the full report in August, just
before it went to the commission. He confirms that it contains the detailed
data that the greens and the fisheries committee have been asking for. If the
report does not materialise before November 17th, the ICCAT meeting will not
have the full picture at a critical moment. In a letter to delegates, Fábio
Hazin, ICCAT’s chairman, says this is its “last chance to prove we can do
our job properly. If we fail, other institutions will take over.”

Mr
Hazin is reluctant to spell out what this means. But a spokesman for the
UN agency that regulates trade in endangered species, CITES, confirms that
“some countries” want to put bluefin tuna forward for CITES protection if the
results of the ICCAT meeting are unsatisfactory. This would make the politics
of bluefin even more fraught, as the Americans believe that for many years the
bluefin population in the Atlantic has been consistently overfished by
Europeans.

Font foto: Wildelifeextra.com