Overfishing aff inherency
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- Poverty is the worst form of structural violence
Poverty ScenarioMillions of people around the world rely on seafood to avoid starvation and povertyFAO ’11 (Fish Consumption Reaches All-time High February 8, 2011. Food and Agriculture Organization. http://blueocean.org/2011/02/fish-consumption-reaches-all-time-high/) The FAO (Food and Agriculture Organization), an autonomous agency within the United Nations, is a forum where nations convene to debate and develop policies regarding farming, fishing, and aquaculture. On January 31st, they issued their most recent report regarding global fish consumption. The report included some facts and figures that got my attention and I wanted to share them with you.¶ The headline of the report reads “Fish consumption reaches all-time high.” This news did not surprise me in and of itself, but the hard data was still impressive: the global average per person fish consumption was 17 kgs, “supplying over three billion people with at least 15% of their average animal protein intake.” (In the U.S., however, the percentage is much less.) This represents an overall increase, due in large part to the growing production of seafood via aquaculture. Indeed, the supply of fish raised on farms is about to surpass the amount caught in the wild. If that’s not the definition of a tipping point, then I don’t know what is. Needless to say, this means that it’s more important than ever to be aware of the environmental impact of different fish-farming methods, consume it judiciously, and to advocate for best practices.¶ Given the enormous size of the global seafood industry – fish is the most traded commodity in the world – how many people depend on it for their livelihood? According to the report, 45 million work in the seafood industry directly, another 180 million indirectly (i.e., processors, transporters, etc.), and if you include the workers’ families, a full 540 million people depend on some aspect of catching, farming, processing, or distributing fish for their economic wellbeing – in other words, eight percent of the world’s population.¶ The report included some sobering news: “The overall percentage of exploited, depleted or recovering fish stocks in the world’s oceans has not dropped and is estimated to be slightly higher than in 2006. About 32 percent of the world fish stocks are estimated to be overexploited, depleted or recovering and need to be urgently rebuilt…”¶ On a more optimistic note, “15 percent of the stock groups monitored by FAO were estimated to be underexploited (three percent) or moderately exploited (12 percent) and therefore able to produce more than their current catches.” Unfortunately, however, this proportion is steadily decreasing over time.¶ The FAO reported that they examined efforts to control “illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing.” One approach is to use trade measures to block the entry of fish that has been caught illegally. Collapse of the fish industry exacerbates economic insecurity and poverty – loss of tourism, Jobs, and income from exportsHauge et al. 9, Hauge, Kjellrun H., Belinda Cleewood, and Douglas C. Wilson. jellrun Hiis Hauge, Institute of Marine Research, Bergen, Norway; Douglas Clyde Wilson, Senior Researcher and Research Director at Innovative Fisheries Management, Aalborg University; Belinda Cleeland, project officer, IRGC. "Fisheries Depletion and Collapse." (n.d.): n. pag. IRGC. International Risk Governance Council, 2009. http://irgc.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/Fisheries_Depletion_full_case_study_web.pdf Web. 1 July 2014. CS Harvesting fish in an unsustainable manner also means harvesting them inefficiently. When we put fish stocks at risk we also put at risk the economic welfare of millions of people dependent on marine products. Tourism is an important source of income in some countries, where the vibrant aquatic life (around coral reefs, for example) attracts divers, sports fisherman and other visitors. Income generated by tourism could be lost if fisheries are depleted and marine biodiversity is lost. More substantial, however, is the importance of fish exports for developing economies. Indeed, there is a direct link between overfishing and poverty. Approximately half of the total export value of the world trade in fish and fisheries products (US$71.5 billion in 2004) comes from developing countries. Poverty among coastal communities in developing countries is often high (especially in Asia and Africa), and fishing industries help alleviate this, employing 150 million people and 3 providing a last resort livelihood for the poor. The collapse of fisheries can thus have devastating economic impacts for developing countries, as well as for countries whose trade in fishery products makes up a large percentage of their total merchandise exports (Greenland and Iceland, for example) [World Bank, 2005:4-5 and 7]. Poverty is the worst form of structural violenceMumia Abu-Jamal 1998 [“A QUIET AND DEADLY VIOLENCE,” 9/19/98, http://www.mumia.nl/TCCDMAJ/quietdv.htm] It has often been observed that America is a truly violent nation, as shown by the thousands of cases of social and communal violence that occurs daily in the nation. Every year, some 20,000 people are killed by others, and additional 20,000 folks kill themselves. Add to this the non lethal violence that Americans daily inflict on each other, and we begin to see the tracings of a nation immersed in a fever of violence. But, as remarkable, and harrowing as this level and degree of violence is, it is, by far, not the most violent feature of living in the midst of the American empire. We live, equally immersed, and to a deeper degree, in a nation that condones and ignores wide-ranging "structural" violence, of a kind that destroys human life with a breathtaking ruthlessness. Former Massachusetts prison official and writer, Dr. James Gilligan observes;"By `structural violence' I mean the increased rates of death and disability suffered by those who occupy the bottom rungs of society, as contrasted by those who are above them. Those excess deaths (or at least a demonstrably large proportion of them) are a function of the class structure; and that structure is itself a product of society's collective human choices, concerning how to distribute the collective wealth of the society. These are not acts of God. I am contrasting `structural' with `behavioral violence' by which I mean the non-natural deaths and injuries that are caused by specific behavioral actions of individuals against individuals, such as the deaths we attribute to homicide, suicide, soldiers in warfare, capital punishment, and so on." -- (Gilligan, J., MD, Violence: Reflections On a National Epidemic (New York: Vintage, 1996), 192.) This form of violence, not covered by any of the majoritarian, corporate, ruling-class protected media, is invisible to us and because of its invisibility, all the more insidious. How dangerous is it -- really? Gilligan notes: "[E]very fifteen years, on the average, as many people die because of relative poverty as would be killed in a nuclear war that caused 232 million deaths; and every single year, two to three times as many people die from poverty throughout the world as were killed by the Nazi genocide of the Jews over a six-year period. This is, in effect, the equivalent of an ongoing, unending, in fact accelerating, thermonuclear war, or genocide on the weak and poor every year of every decade, throughout the world." 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