The Tangled Web

As if on cue, the New York Times published two articles the day before and the day of my MLK-inspired post. One describes the growing black market trade in fish that are caught off the African coast and sold primarily in Europe. Depleted fisheries in European waters have opened markets for fish caught overseas, but often in places where fisheries are themselves in dire straits, where fishing practices are destructive and unregulated, and where the effects of large industrial fleets compromise what could be sustainable, small-scale fisheries by coastal communities. These fisheries are prosecuted to some extent by vessels from the countries that own the resources, but more and more the harvest is taken by Chinese and European boats. This means that any economic benefit derived from these mismanaged or unmanaged fisheries does not remain in the typically impoverished countries from which the resources originate.

Not only does this illegal trade compromise the economies, communities and natural resources of Africa nations, it also is leading to illegal immigration problems for Europe itself. Deprived of their fishing livelihoods, increasing numbers of migrants from North African nations are leaving for Europe, often to take up jobs on the same heavily subsidized vessels that sail from European ports to catch African fish and bring them back for the dinner tables of Spain, Italy, France, etc. Those Africans that remain in Ghana, Nigeria, Senegal and elsewhere are not only unable to earn a living off fishing, but they are also deprived of a healthy and inexpensive protein source.

This has brought the United States into the picture to some extent, with exports of Atlantic herring to Nigeria growing since the mid-1990s. Herring are small, low-value fish, typically sold as bait for lobster traps or to be processed into fish meal for aquaculture or livestock feed. With higher value fish products leaving African waters in the hands of foreign vessels, herring seemingly is one of the few protein sources that is affordable. Nigerians must therefore pay American fishermen for fish while earning little or nothing off of their own fish that go overseas and line the pockets of foreigners. The inefficiency and greenhouse gas emissions required to move these fish so far from where they are caught to where they are consumed only exacerbates the environmental costs.

Coastal fisheries in Nigeria, which are small-scale and operated by locals, also suffer from petroleum pollution caused by large international companies extracting oil for use overseas and again with little to no local benefit.

This web of fisheries imports and exports, emigration/immigration, climate change and petroleum pollution is increasingly typical of complex environmental, social, economic and political interactions that entangle the globe. Sadly, it seems that often the nations causing the damage and those suffering the greatest effects are not the same. Not surprisingly, the sources of the problems often lie in wealthy, northern developed nations while the victims lie in the developing world. As nations like the United States continue to make progress in managing environmental problems on local, regional or even national scales, our greatest challenges will lie in expanding environmental management to an international and global scale.