SUNS  4331 Wednesday 25 November 1998



ENVIRONMENT: FISHWORKERS BUILDING COASTAL COMMONS

New Delhi, Nov 23 (IPS/Mukul Sharma) -- Coastal fishworkers from Africa to South America, Asia and North America, are demanding an end to overfishing and the destruction of fragile marine habitats. An international campaign, coordinated by the year-old World Forum of Fish-harvesters and Fishworkers, was galvanised by rallies, exhibitions, street plays and festivity in different parts of the world on Nov. 21, World Fisheries Day.

The day was declared a "fishing holiday" in both India and Pakistan and thousands of people converged on Chaupati, on the western coast in Bombay, in solidarity with the world-wide campaign for protection of traditional fisherfolk.

In Chile, hundreds assembled in harbours to protest against the huge factory fishing ships that have pushed fishing communities to the verge of collapse all over the world.

In Brazil, the long calendar of activities around World Fisheries Day included a seminar on gender relations in artisanal fishing, and an extraordinary general assembly of the fishermen's forum against predatory fishing.

Fisherfolk unions in Senegal called a nation-wide strike on Saturday, while thousands of South African fishworkers gathered in a large auditorium in Bellville under the banner of 'Informal Fishing
Communities' on the same day.

In Sri Lanka, fisherfolk attended a mammoth convention to highlight the fisheries issue on Nov. 20 and 21 to which 21 participants from abroad had been invited.

The Penang Inshore Fishermen's Welfare Association, in Malaysia, and unions in the United States handed out "free fish" to the public to draw attention to the plight of traditional fishing communities.

Organised by fishworkers unions in their countries, the activities were held to commemorate the formation of the World Forum at a meeting in New Delhi attended by more than 100 representatives of fishworkers from 32 countries on Nov. 21 last year.

The World Forum was the culmination of a 14-year movement that began at the International Conference of Fishworkers and their Supporters in Rome in 1984 when fishworkers mainly from the developing countries decided to first build up their national organisations before joining hands internationally.

Indian activist Thomas Kocherry, general coordinator of the World Forum, and among the most ardent supporters of the cause of international action, says: "The oceans of the world, the fishes and all too frequently the fisherfolk themselves, observe no political boundaries. Hence it is futile for any one nation to act unilaterally."

The Forum has pledged to work together to stop "reckless plunder of the seas by industrial fleets owned by transnational corporations, leading to substantial depletion of fish stocks and endangering the food security of millions of people."

In its 1995 'State of World Fisheries and Aquaculture' report, the U.N's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) warned "fisheries are undergoing the most serious crisis ever recorded. At least 75 percent are in, or verging on, a state of collapse due to the ravages of overfishing and destructive fishing ..."

Kocherry thinks if fishing communities, not the profiteering business people, were to own the rights to fishing grounds and manage the marine resources the damage could be halted.

"These rights should be secured by law towards the end of saving all those whose lives are dependent on the sustained bounty of healthy oceans," he wrote in a press release last week.

The FAO estimates that nearly all important commercial fisheries are depleted, exploited to such an extent that no increase in catch is possible without leading to population crashes.

Another report titled 'Imperiled Waters, Impoverished Future' released in 1996 by Worldwatch, the environment watchdog, had estimated that 20 percent of the 9,000 fish species are either extinct or in danger of dying out.

Faced with livelihood losses and impoverishment, fisherfolk have been vociferously protesting. In India, coastal fisherfolk successfully opposed the introduction of foreign fishing vessels in their deep seas through a series of strikes, blockades, demonstration and hunger protests.

In Senegal, the 'National Collective of Artisanal Fishermen' has been mobilising fish harvesters for the past seven years to fight against their country's fishing agreements with the European Community.

In Canada, the 'Canadian Council of Professional Fish Harvesters' has organised against industrialised fleets, both foreign and domestic, that have significantly depleted stocks of mackerel, capelin, turbot and other species, important to Canadian fisherfolk.

Destructive fishing practices, the impact of coastal industrial aquaculture like shrimp farming and coastal industrial pollution are depleting the world's marine resources.