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By Prof. Dr Rashid Sumaila, Dr Karina von Schuckmann and Rebecca Hubbard

During September, we have had three opportunities to present our work on the interplay between climate change, the ocean and fisheries. These webinars were aimed at helping Members of the European Parliament (MEPs), members of EU Commissioners’ Cabinets, and engaged members of the public and media to better understand the challenges facing the ocean and to spell out the readily available actions that European citizens can take to protect it. We explored how the European Union and its member states can lessen the impacts of climate change on Europe’s seas, by ending the practice of destructive overfishing.

During the same period, commitments made by world leaders on climate action at the UN General Assembly, and the Pledge for Nature at the UN Biodiversity Summit, have highlighted both the global momentum and need for such action to be taken.

These new, increasingly urgent pledges are the culmination of the acknowledgements and ambitions that have been building among the global community for decades, and are most holistically represented by the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) for 2030, which embrace the three pillars of sustainable development: environment, society and economy. In fact, the success of all 17 goals rely, to some extent on the success of one, i.e., SDG14 – Life Below Water, which is the critical component of the founding pillar, the environment. Ocean resources, data, science and services are critical for successful and healthy human life on the planet: it is actually a matter of life or death.

Planet Earth is warming. Or, as our planet is 71% ocean – perhaps we should say Planet Ocean. We are nothing without the ocean – it provides us with roughly every second breadth, a reservoir for biodiversity and all the services it provides humans, and a source of over 90% of freshwater. Yet we are treating our ocean with contempt – as well as overexploiting its natural riches, the ocean is warming due to emissions of heat-trapping gases resulting from human activities; it has taken up 20-30% of the global emissions from human activities over the past three decades inducing ocean acidification, and more than 90% of the excess heat in the climate system, making climate change irreversible. Without the ocean, our air would be an extra 35 degrees warmer.

Despite a multitude of promises from a succession of world leaders, we are clearly struggling to limit the future increases in average planetary temperature to the 2^oC agreed (despite the fact that scientists have repeatedly warned that 1.5^o should be the target). While enormous efforts must be made to limit emissions, there are ways we can ensure that the ocean can continue to absorb carbon emissions and be stronger in the face of future climate change impacts.

With climate change, the ocean is becoming more acidic, less oxygenated, warmer and sea level is rising; it sounds as bad as it is. This is making life harder at all levels in the ocean – from the individual fish, to marine populations, and ecosystems – which in turn, is making it harder for fisheries.

Humanity has a long history of overexploiting fish – the lifeblood of the ocean on which we depend. This never has a good outcome – no fish means no fisheries, jobs, seafood or incomes for coastal communities. Conversely, well managed fisheries means an ocean that teems with life – this life not only provides us fish, it can also play an important role in climate mitigation and adaptation. A healthy ocean ecosystem ensures that high levels of carbon can be sequestered below the waves – a healthy ocean is crucial to bolstering our planet against the worst impact of climate change.

All of these new pledges show that global leaders still aim to get us out of this planetary crisis we have created. But the European Union, and governments worldwide, must match that ambition with action – they must eliminate carbon emissions, effectively protect at least 30% of marine areas by 2030, and reduce destructive overfishing and publicly-funded subsidies that undermine our other efforts – very quickly we will be rewarded with higher catches for more fishers, a healthier ocean, and a stronger defence against climate change.

Healthy fish are like a healthy person; a healthy person is more likely to survive an epidemic than a person who is unwell. Overfishing has severely weakened the ocean’s immune system, and climate change will only make things worse. If we continue to destroy the health of the ocean with destructive overfishing, it will have severe impacts on life in the ocean and on all our lives. The risks and the opportunity here are clear, just as the science is. It is time for EU governments and the European Commission to start delivering on their commitments – and that means fishing within nature’s limits.

Dr Karina von Schuckmann, Mercator Ocean International and IPCC Special Report on the Ocean Cryosphere in a Changing Climate (SROCC) author

Professor Rashid Sumaila, Director of the Fisheries Economics Research Unit, Global Fisheries Cluster, University of British Columbia

Rebecca Hubbard, Programme Director, Our Fish

As climate change begins to bite, ending overfishing will safeguard our oceans’ health first appeated on Euronews View, 19 October 2020.

Today’s endorsement of the EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030 by the EU Environment Council is a welcome sign that the EU’s 27 Member States are ready to act on the nature crisis. Member states specifically acknowledged the serious risk to marine biodiversity, and committed to increased action, including with urgently advancing marine protection and addressing major threats such as ending overfishing.

Member states acknowledgement of the biodiversity crisis and the threat this poses to us, must be followed up with real life action – otherwise it will end up in the ever higher pile of useless political rhetoric. Member states can act decisively in the coming weeks by setting fishing limits for 2021 not exceeding scientific advice, and so finally end EU overfishing.

Now is the time to put aside short-term profiteering, and to make the tough decisions needed to stop the collapse of the ecosystems that support life on the planet.

What is this and why does it matter?

Today’s EU Environment Council conclusions represent Member States’ support for the European Commission’s EU Biodiversity Strategy for 2030. The Strategy outlines pathways for alleviating the biodiversity crisis by 2030, and will inform the EU’s ambition for upcoming global meetings such as the Convention on Biological Diversity COP, as well as providing the basis for member state policy on issues such as fisheries.

Rebecca Hubbard, Our Fish Programme Director

The ocean doesn’t just nourish us with food, it provides our every second breath and has absorbed 90% of the excess heat we have created in the last 50 years. Healthy humans need a healthy ocean. The ocean is under pressure from climate change, pollution, plastic and overfishing. This is not a secret – any policymaker who breathes the same air we do is aware of the enormous pressure we are putting on our oceans and climate. Yet for all the political promises being made on countering the climate and nature emergency, we have yet to realise meaningful, large-scale political action. We need this action to restore ocean health, so that we can all breathe easier.

During her recent State of the Union speech, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, “We need to change how we treat nature, how we produce and consume, live and work, eat and heat, travel and transport.” I could not agree more. This sea change is what scientists have – for decades – been saying is needed to halt biodiversity loss and climate change. These changes are crucial to secure our air, water and food sources; and to protect ourselves from the worst ravages of ecosystem collapse.

There is a genuine appetite for change in Europe, exemplified by the impact on our lives from the COVID pandemic, and the increasingly cataclysmic effects of the climate and nature emergency, but there is a great deal of political inertia holding us back. We seem to have transitioned to acknowledging that green is good, but the political realm is still largely devoid of true-blue action.

The ocean under the EU’s watch is a case in point. The recent European Environment Agency report, Marine Messages II, describes in shocking detail how the EU has not honoured any of the commitments it made to safeguard marine ecosystems by 2020. It has not stopped overfishing, it has not created effective protected areas in the sea, and it has not halted the decline of marine biodiversity due to human activities. This is a catastrophic failure by the EU and its member states, and exemplifies the reasons we are in this crisis. If we are serious about creating a different future, we must change how we do things in the ocean. Rhetoric is redundant in 2020.

In her speech, President von der Leyen said, “We know change is needed – and we also know it is possible. The European Green Deal is our blueprint to make that transformation.” That transformation doesn’t just need new legislation and strategies, it needs the Commission to deliver on the commitments it made years ago. Striking children have said they will go back to school when adults assume their responsibility; President von der Leyen and the adults around her, need to start acknowledging these failures, or any new green commitments will fall on deaf ears.

In the Commission’s defence, many of the refusals to deliver on commitments have been perpetrated by EU member states. For decades fisheries ministers have been addicted to overfishing, unwilling to break their annual habit of setting fishing limits exceeding scientific advice. Overfishing is like burnout for the ocean – too many fish are taken out and the system can’t cope. Unfortunately, the European Commission has enabled this addiction to burnout: they have proposed fishing limits in excess of the scientific advice, knowing that ministers would increase them even further.

This year has been no different – despite President von der Leyen’s impressive rhetoric  on the need for a “transformation agenda”, just days before her speech, her colleague Virginijus Sinkevičius, European Commissioner for the Environment, Oceans and Fisheries, published the Commission’s proposal for fishing limits in the Baltic for 2021. It contains several good suggestions for enhanced ecosystem management, but proposes continued overfishing for the already over-exploited Western Baltic herring. This is not a transformation agenda, it is business as usual.

The Commissioner explained his rationale as, “We are adopting today a realistic proposal, which I am convinced will work for both fishers and fish.” But the only thing realistic about continued overfishing is suffering – there will be less fish, less money, and fishers’ struggles will worsen. We know how this addiction to overfishing ends, and it’s not happy.

The Commissioner is clearly seeking to placate those with an interest in Western Baltic herring – not the herring. This is not the true-blue transformation agenda that President von der Leyen talked of; it is the tired agenda of overfishing and self-destruction. Breaking an addiction is hard, and the Commission needs to push member states to do that, or we will push the ocean beyond its limits with horrifying impacts on human health. While the Commission works on new legislation, it also needs to correct the many failings identified by the European Environment Agency. That would be a real green transformation – acting like adults and honouring the commitments made.

Rebecca Hubbard is the Programme Director of Our Fish, which is working to end overfishing and restore a healthy ocean ecosystem.

Everybody in the EU, and all around the globe, depends on the ocean: it generates every second breath we take; has absorbed 90 percent of the excess heat generated in the last 50 years and has sequestered up to thirty percent of all carbon emissions. Yet this role of supporting life on the planet and regulating the climate has been overlooked. The 2030 Climate Target Plan consultation is an example of this, as it fails to mention the impact from destructive fishing or the contribution that fish populations make to ensuring  a healthy ocean ecosystem. It’s time that the EU woke up to the crucial role this ecosystem plays, by developing corresponding targets and ending destructive overfishing.

We should not be overlooking the ocean’s capacity to mitigate and adapt to climate change, we should be celebrating it. The 2019 IPBES report identified fishing as the largest threat to marine biodiversity and ecosystem services. Ending overfishing is a clear, achievable action that would have a significant, far-reaching, positive impact on the ocean and the climate – and our lives.

Here’s six policies and actions that the EU could take to include fish and the fishing industry in its Climate Target Plan 

1. End overfishing, increase fish biomass and sequestration of CO2 by marine life: the role of fish in the biological pump of the ocean is critical.
2. Cut overcapacity of the fishing fleet; fewer vessels produce fewer emissions (the fishing industry produces one percent of CO2 emissions globally).
3. Prioritise access to fishing resources for those who have less impact on the marine ecosystem.
4. End fuel subsidies and other direct and indirect subsidies that worsen CO2 emissions and perpetuate overfishing and overcapacity of the fishing fleet.
5. Include ending overfishing as an achievable action in states’ Nationally Determined Contributions; prioritise the development of other ocean–focused NDCs as well.

The 2030 Climate Target Plan consultation for public submissions closes at midnight on Tuesday 23 June.

Rebecca Hubbard is the Programme Director of Our Fish