00:00The UN's Food and Agriculture Organization putting out a report that says humanity can eat more than enough fish without plundering the seas.
00:10Manuel Barange is Assistant Director General and Director of Fisheries and Agriculture, Aquaculture, excuse me, at the FAO.
00:18Thank you for joining us from the UN conference in Nice.
00:23Thank you for having me.
00:25So your report, which you put out Wednesday, shows that already something like 77 percent of the fish consumed globally still come from sustainable sources.
00:37And you have alternatives to super trawlers.
00:42Yes, the report that we released shows both positives and negatives.
00:47On average, 35 percent of fish stocks around the world are overfished.
00:52This is a global average and there are places where fisheries is very sustainable.
00:58In some places, 85, 90 percent of the fish stocks are sustainably exploited.
01:03And in other regions, only less than 50 percent of the stocks are sustainably fished.
01:09So we know what works.
01:11We know that management works.
01:13And what we need is political commitments and we need data, information, institutions and partnerships and financing to make fisheries completely sustainable in all parts of the world.
01:25We rely on fish for our food.
01:28We rely for livelihoods.
01:30600 million people depend on fisheries and aquaculture for their livelihoods.
01:34And we need to protect them as well as we protect the natural environment.
01:38I protect them.
01:39You heard our correspondent talking about the concept of ocean cops.
01:44Your thoughts on that?
01:47Well, the ocean is actually very regulated.
01:50Fisheries is actually very regulated in the ocean.
01:54We have, of course, countries are responsible for managing their resources in their waters, in their exclusive economic zones.
02:01And outside the economic zones, we have about 23 regional fisheries management organizations.
02:08And we need more of those.
02:10We need more and more commitment.
02:12And those organizations, when they are established, they tend to have scientific structures.
02:17They tend to have compliance mechanisms and observing mechanisms and inspection mechanisms to make sure fish that is caught in the high seas is regulated and it is sustainable.
02:28But many areas of the world do not have these regional arrangements.
02:32And we think that this biodiversity beyond national jurisdiction agreement will actually encourage more countries to establish these regional structures because that's the best way of managing resources in different parts of the world.
02:45And can this put an end to super trawlers?
02:48Well, FAO establishes whether a fisheries is sustainable or not.
02:56The way that that fisheries operates, what sort of gear they use, what sort of boats operate, that, of course, is up to the countries themselves.
03:04We don't have an authority over that.
03:07There are trawlers that are doing a very good job in providing food and livelihoods in a very sustainable manner.
03:13And there are others that do not.
03:15And we do not blame a particular target of particular ways of operating, rather specific places where certain fisheries are not sustainable and perhaps the way of fishing is also not sustainable.
03:29Manuel Branche, you're a marine biologist by training.
03:32When do you reach a point of no return when it comes to a fish species?
03:36Well, yes, I'm a marine biologist, and I was interested when I was seeing the clip of that young girl on the ship visiting the Norwegian ship and saying that countries need to listen.
03:53And I was one of a child as well, feeling exactly like her.
03:57And I think that what is very important in these conferences is to bring the young generations forward, to make them interested in the sea, to see what works and what doesn't work.
04:08And they will become scientists and they will become politicians and they will become managers of the sea.
04:13I have not seen points of no return in the work that we do.
04:17What I see is points that need to change.
04:20And we are following trends.
04:22We are following patterns.
04:23And we are working with countries and institutions and scientists to make sure that we pick up the signals and we act when the signals tell us to act.
04:32So I'm not about looking at no returns.
04:35I'm actually positive.
04:36I think that there are many things that are working out there, many fisheries that are sustainable.
04:40We, for example, mentioned in the report that 83 percent of all the tuna stocks around the world are sustainably fished.
04:49And this is a very good figure, something that has changed over the last two decades.
04:55And I think that we need to start sending positive signals and positive solutions to a world that needs those positive solutions and positive messages.
05:03Because we had a Monday in the France 24 debate, we had a panelist, a marine biologist who, after the show, said, yeah, tuna can make a comeback.
05:13But, for instance, cod in the North Atlantic cannot.
05:16That was his view.
05:20Well, no, that's not entirely correct.
05:21There are many different stocks of cod.
05:23There are some cod stocks that are not doing very well.
05:25Some of them because of climate change, because of warming of the ocean, particularly the more southerner stocks around, so still northern Europe, but in the southern part of northern Europe.
05:36Some of the cod stocks in the Barents Sea, you know, Norway are doing very well.
05:40So this is very important.
05:42When FAO analyzes 2,570 marine fish stocks, it's because there's a lot of variety out there.
05:49There's some stocks that are doing well, even from the same species, in some areas are doing well, in some others are not doing well.
05:55We need to understand the context of every fisheries, because only by understanding the context, we can turn sustainability failures into sustainability successes.
06:06And when you take a look at the warming temperatures, is that the biggest threat or is it the overfishing?
06:15No, climate change is possibly the biggest threat, much more than overfishing.
06:24I see climate change as the biggest disruptor, because when you see what we see, climate change is causing three things.
06:31It's causing species to move away from their natural habitat to different areas.
06:38It is changing their productivity.
06:41And in some cases, it's changing the seasonality of what they do, whether they reproduce.
06:44And those three phenomena are creating changes in the way that we manage the stocks, the way that we fish the stocks, and the way that we consume the fish that we catch.
06:57So I think that it's very important to start developing fisheries management measures that are adaptive to climate change, to consider the changing environment.
07:06And if we don't do that, then we will have significant problems.
07:08Are you sensing progress?
07:11I ask the question because countries are happy to sign on the dotted line, but environmentalists say they give the example of France, where you have protected areas for the fish, but they're not very well enforced.
07:23Well, I think protected areas are one management measure that countries can implement.
07:31There are others as well.
07:33And I think that countries need to decide what works for them.
07:35And they certainly need to stand by those decisions.
07:38Whether it doesn't matter so much what measure they take, whether it is a protected area, a no-take zone, or whether it's protected for certain times of the year, or for certain species, or for certain habitats.
07:51The important thing is to take management seriously.
07:55What we can't do is, as you say, sign dotted lines without any meaningful action behind.
08:02One final question for you, Manuel Barange, what constitutes sustainable fishing?
08:11Just explain that to us.
08:14Well, thank you very much.
08:15Yes, this is a very technical term.
08:18In the UN Convention of the Law of the Sea, in the Sustainable Development Goals, there is a definition for it, which is keep populations at the level that they can produce the maximum yield.
08:29That means if we use a banking equivalent to keep the deposits in the bank to a level where you only extract the interest that the bank is giving you, as long as you only extract the interest, then that is sustainable.
08:43And when we say that 35.5% of fish stocks are not sustainable, it means that we are extracting more than that interest.
08:52As long as we keep the capital, as long as we keep that biomass in the ocean to a certain level, and we do not extract more than the interest, we will keep those populations sustainable.
09:04Manuel Barange of the Food and Agriculture Organization.
09:07So many thanks for being with us from the UN Ocean Conference in Nice.
