ANGELES CITY – The Ecosystems Improved for Sustainable Fisheries (Ecofish) Project, jointly launched last week by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the Department of Agriculture (DA) would soon lead to fishing ban in eight major “biodiversity areas” to adversely affect millions of fishers in the country.
While the objective of Ecofish Project “to replenish fish and ensure good catches for fishermen” appears worthwhile, fisherfolk alliance Pambansang Lakas ng Kilusang Mamamalakaya ng Pilipinas (Pamalakaya) warned of a “hidden agenda” in it.
“The overriding objective is to make sure that First World industrial fishing fleets would continue to enjoy stable supply of fish in the near future,” said Pamalakaya chairperson Fernando Hicap.
Pamalakaya cited a 2010 report of the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (UNFAO) indicating that 67 percent of the fishery exports of underdeveloped fishing nations “were served on a silver platter to developed nations, of which 54 percent were directed to the US, Japan and the European Union.”
“In return, the underdeveloped nations in Asia continue to play their roles to the hilt as receiving ends of surplus fish and second hand fishing technologies from the developed countries,” Pamalakaya noted.
Hicap said he expected the imposition of another “across-the-country fishing ban to the detriment of small fisherfolk and even commercial fishing operators all over the country” as part of the Ecofish Project.
“The Ecofish Project supported by USAID will soon impose a total fish ban in Calamian Group of Islands in Palawan, Lingayen Gulf in Pangasinan, Ticao Pass-Lagonoy Gulf-San Bernardino Strait in Bicol and Samar region, Danajon Double Barrier Reef in Bohol and Leyte, Southern Negros Occidental, Surigao, the Sulu archipelago, and the Verde Island Passage between Batangas and Mindoro,” he warned.
Hicap said “the ulterior motive is to reserve the resources for the industrial fishing fleets of global exploiting economies and fisheries” but he expected Philippine authorities to deny this.
Earlier Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala maintained that the Ecofish Project was designed “to contribute to priority goals laid out in the Philippine Development Plan, particularly in the areas of sustainable agriculture and fisheries and the conservation and rehabilitation of natural resources.”
He said the closed season for sardines, herrings and mackerels in the Visayan Sea which will take effect on November 15, 2012 to February 15, 2013 is part of the country’s efforts to replenish fish populations.
But Pamalakaya, in a statement yesterday, said the Ecofish Project “is an offshoot of the current World Bank campaign purportedly to save oceans and seas which is nothing but the grandmother of lies and deceptions.”
It asserted that “the World Bank- initiated Global Partnership Oceans composed of governments, non-government organizations, scientists and businesses would lead to transnational plunder and corporate raid of oceans and seas across Asia and the Pacific.”
“World Bank to save oceans and seas? It sounds like the Ecofish of USAID and the Philippine agriculture office in Manila. May heaven forbid this institutional instrument from fooling the global people once again under the pretext of Blue and Green Economy,” said Pamalakaya.
In February this year, outgoing World Bank President Robert Zoellick announced that a global alliance had pledged as much as $1.5 billion to the initiative over five years.
Pamalakaya noted, however, that World Bank’s “neo-liberal globalization policies have led to an increase of fishing vessels by a million worldwide, as he cited a report by the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization that some 4.6 million fishing vessels now fish in the world’s bodies of water as of 2010.
Of these, 3.23 million operate in marine waters, while the remaining 1.13 million are inland waters.
Pamalakaya also noted that Asia has the largest fleet of 3.18 million vessels or 73 percent of the total, followed by Africa with 11 percent, Latin America and the Caribbean with eight percent. North America and Europe had three percent each.
But most of the owners of these vessels, the group noted, are rich capitalists from North America and Europe.
“It is interesting to note that globalization and the deregulated regime in global fisheries led to the deployment of large investments on large-sized fishing vessels. It started to peak in the mid 1980s and in 1999,” Pamalakaya added.
