Seventeen regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs) regulate commercially valuable fish species across the world's oceans. The members of these organizations do not publicize their meetings and bar journalists from attending, presenting a barrier for public awareness.
On this episode of the Mongabay Newscast, Africa staff writer Malavika Vyawahare is joined by a fisheries expert, Grantly Galland, and an RFMO secretary, Darius Campbell, to explain how decisions are made in regional fisheries management organizations (RFMOs), the consequences their decisions have on global fish populations, human rights and labor rights on the high seas, and how journalists can better cover these secretive organizations.
“Decisions are being made by RFMOs that impact billion-dollar fisheries and take effect next year [so] these stories deserve to be told,” says Grantly Galland, a project director at the Pew Charitable Trusts.
Also joining the conversation is Darius Campbell, secretary of the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission, an RFMO.
“The sea is [vast and it’s] very difficult to understand what's going on. Most of the [fish] stocks are very difficult to analyze and predict. And it's difficult to enforce [rules],” Campbell says.
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Image credit: Schools of fish at Cayman Islands, Caribbean. Image by Jason Washington / Ocean Image Bank.
Timecodes
(00:00:00) What is an RFMO?
(00:07:37) Who are the key players?
(00:13:18) Who holds the power?
(00:20:32) Strategies for journalists covering RFMOs
(00:29:47) Transparency and secrecy
(00:38:59) Conservation and RFMO decision-making
(00:48:10) Forced labor and human rights
(00:53:29) What happens when an RFMO breaks the rules?
(01:01:13) Common heritage vs high seas
(01:07:13) BBNJ agreement
(01:15:24) Citizen participation
(01:19:09) Resources
(01:21:39) Credits
A new forest finance fund known as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) will work like an investment portfolio (unlike the familiar – and often ineffective – forest conservation loan or grant funds), and if enacted as intended, it will reward 70 tropical nations billions in annual funding for keeping their forests standing.
Co-host Mike DiGirolamo speaks with three people who have analyzed the fund: Mongabay freelance reporter Justin Catanoso, Charlotte Streck – co-founder of Climate Focus – and Frédéric Hache, a lecturer in sustainable finance at the Paris Institute of Political Studies. They tackle the critical questions regarding what the proposed fund could – and would not – do.
“I think that TFFF is an initiative that has great potential because it is put forward and supported by tropical rainforest countries. It is not [a] mechanism that has been defined by donors or by any experts. It is now pushed and promoted by the countries that harbor all this tropical forest,” says Streck.
For additional background, find Catanoso’s report on the TFFF for Mongabay here.
View and hear our podcast team's picks of top 2024 episodes here.
Like this podcast? Please share it with a friend, and leave a review.
Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website or download our free app for Apple and Android devices to gain instant access to our latest episodes and all of our previous ones.
Image caption: Cecropia tree in Peru. Image by Rhett Butler for Mongabay.
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Time stamps
(00:00) A brief primer of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF)
(03:10) Details from Justin Catanoso
(10:24) Digging deeper with Charlotte Streck
(25:17) Critiques and concerns from Frederic Hache
(35:50) Credits
Animal aquaculture, the farming of fish, has outpaced the amount of wild-caught fish by tens of millions of metric tons each year, bringing with it negative environmental impacts and enabling abuse, says Carl Safina, an ecologist and author.
On this episode of Mongabay’s podcast, Safina speaks with co-host Rachel Donald about his recent Science Advances essay describing the “moral reckoning” that’s required for the industry, pointing to environmental laws in the United States, which put hard limits on pollution, as examples to follow.
“In the 1970s in the U.S., we had this enormous burst of environmental legislation. We got the Endangered Species Act, the Clean Air Act, the Clean Water Act, the Toxic Substances Control Act … all of these things were not because somebody invented something new. It's because we felt differently about what was important,” he says.
The global fishing industry also contributes to forced labor and other worker abuses, as revealed by whistleblowers and media outlets, including Mongabay. Read our award-winning 2022 investigation, which revealed systemic abuse of foreign workers by China’s offshore tuna fleet.
Like this podcast? Share it with a friend, and please leave a review.
Subscribe to or follow the Mongabay Newscast wherever you listen to podcasts, from Apple to Spotify, and you can also listen to all episodes here on the Mongabay website or download our free app for Apple and Android devices to gain instant access to our latest episodes and all of our previous ones.
Image caption: An Atlantic salmon. In the U.S., the Washington state legislature banned farming of Atlantic salmon in 2018. A state official banned all commercial finfish aquaculture. Alaska and California have similar bans. Image by Hans-Petter Fjeld via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 2.5).
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Timecodes
(00:00) Aquaculture and its impacts
(15:32) How values shape environmental policy
(32:56) The tragedy of the commons
(35:52) Ecological empathy
(45:07) Credits