Water is a basic right. It is so because without water people would die. We take it so for granted: you turn on a tap and there is water; we do not often think about how that water came to be in our household, or the complex system behind it.
If someone wastes water, they are not just wasting their own but they are taking from water which could be used by others. We believe in limiting water usage by individuals and companies because water is a right only for basic use- additional usage is a commodity as it is so limited. However, we should not just limit usage but extend rainfall water catchment.
Malta should implement a sustainable water catchment plan that also takes into consideration valleys and roads. Pipe systems need to be built or extended and more reservoirs are needed. Each time it rains, precious water is lost. This is especially so during storms, where not only is water lost, but destruction due to its free flowing in the streets is abundant .
Moreover, 30% of Maltese groundwater bodies are ‘at risk’ and this is due to excessive groundwater abstraction. The solution suggested by the EU was multifaceted; some of the points include: putting a price tag on groundwater (that applies to everyone), more efficient distribution and application of resources (financial, infrastructural and human), fostering an emergence of a water-saving culture and efficient technologies and practices. So far Malta has not followed any of these suggestions.
The water framework directive was transposed into Maltese legislation with the aim of achieving a ‘good status’ for our ground water by 2015. This date was set back to 2027, as it was deemed impossible to reduce salinity and nitrate levels to an acceptable level by then.
Having said that, there are still to this day 3,500 registered boreholes extracting water ad libitum from our aquifers. The installation of meters should be reaching an end next May, after which another year of monitoring needs to be done before quotas are drafted. There are no concrete plans for possible pricing of the water used from boreholes. This is particularly shameful when seen in the context of an arid country which relies mostly on reverse-osmosis plants, with the common family paying hefty water bills. Anyone using a legal (or illegal) borehole gets their water for free, so they have no incentive for cutting down on use. We hope that World Water Day will serve as a reminder to all stakeholders that water is a finite resource, and the current situation needs our urgent attention.
Water is precious, and like all things precious its use should be protected. The 22nd of March should be a wakeup call for everyone to realize the importance of water, and we hope that this long overdue realization will be followed by action
Part one of a three-part article on The Common Fisheries Policy
Anthony Debono
A quick Google search for the EU’s Common Fisheries Policy (CFP, started in 1983) shows that it is considered to be a complete failure and that there is a great need for change. Some British parliamentarians have even suggested that the UK should opt out of the CFP and set up their own sovereign fishing zone.[1] But what are the main problems with the current CFP? Is their any way to fix this mess that Europe’s seas are in?
Last year Greenhouse joined Ocean2012, an international coalition of organisations that have teamed up to promote a successful CFP reform, which is set for 2012. We posted an article[2] on this blog several months ago, announcing the beginnings of our Fish4Tomorrow campaign, alongside other local NGOs (Nature Trust Malta, Sharklab (Malta), Din l-Art Ħelwa and Get Up Stand Up); this campaign is well underway and you will definitely hear more about it closer to summer.
Ocean2012 identify three main areas where the CFP has failed us:[3]
·Overcapacity: It is estimated that some fleet segments in the EU are two to three times the size required to catch the available fishing quotas - we can fish more fish than there are fish. Newer boats with better and better technology are exhausting the stocks we have.
·Catch limits: Overcapacity creates political pressure to set higher and higher fishing quotas to keep all the boats working. In the last years, the catch limits agreed were on average 46 percent higher than scientific advice. In 2007, the quota for one population of Scottish haddock was set at eight times the recommended level.
·Harmful subsidies: The EU continues to provide subsidies to modernise fleets rather than focussing on mitigating overcapacity or investing in technologies that could support more sustainable fisheries. Furthermore, exemption from fuel tax, the cost of national administration, fisheries research and control measures could also be considered a subsidy to the fishing sector. “In several member states, it has been estimated that the cost of fishing to the public budgets exceeds the total value of the catches.” This means we are paying for our fish twice, through subsidies and at the counter.
These are three very direct problems which need to be fixed by the next reform, in 2012, however it’s easy to predict that there will be tremendous political pressure to limit change: cuts to catch limits/quotas and to industry subsidies are not exactly welcome by the multi-billion Euro fishing industry and the economies that they support. A clear example of the lack of political will is the result of the ICCAT meeting in Paris last November, where the quota for Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna was discussed. The world quota for Mediterranean and Eastern Atlantic Blue Fin Tuna, in 2010, was 13,500 tonnes. WWF were supporting Commissioner Damanaki’s call for a 50% slash to the world quota for 2011, however all we go was a drop to 12,900 tonnes.[4, 5]
Fishing quotas are a hot issue locally, in the EU and on a global platform. Unfortunately, scientific recommendations for sustaining healthy fish stocks, which we could harvest for centuries to come, are being drowned out by the industry; an industry that keeps on insisting that more and more and more is what we need. It is a sad fact that even though we have technology, know-how and incredible information on fish stocks, we can’t even manage our fish stocks as successfully as our ancestors, who had none of this.
Our members and followers of this blog might ask the most obvious – what doesGreenhouse have to do with all this? Greenhouse is a student organisation, based at the University of Malta. What do we have to do with fish stocks in the Mediterranean and rest of the world? Why should we interfere in the industry, even locally?
One of our main objectives as an organisation is to raise awareness locally on environmental issues and this is one of those issues in which awareness is paramount. Why? So what if the man in the street or the student on campus is aware of the issue of over-fishing? Well, the most significant cause of overfishing is in fact a lack of consumer awareness. It’s all about supply and demand. Fishermen catch fish to sell to the consumer. Most consumers, locally at least, do not make an informed choice when deciding what fish to eat – a survey carried out by the Fish4Tomorrow team found the following results: [7]
70% of respondents do not take sustainability into account when deciding on what fish to eat.
48 % eat Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (a species whose stock is known to be threatened).
81% said that if they knew a fish was endangered/threatened they would not eat it.
96% said that they would choose their fish differently if they were more informed.
A list of fish-species, which are quite popular in Malta, has been drawn up by the Fish4Tomorrow team and these were sorted into categories, based on various criteria, as to whether the fish stocks on these species are sustainable, not-sustainable or somewhere in-between. This information will soon be developed into a handy booklet (a little one that can fit into a wallet or pocket) for everybody to carry around when they go fish shopping or out to eat. This is being done in the hope that the man in the street will start to consider fish sustainability and encourage a change in the everyday habits and attitude we take towards the food which we eat.
On Friday, I will be representing Greenhouse and the Fish4Tomorrow Campaign at "Fished Out?" a conference organised by Din L-Art Ħelwa on the issue of the local fisheries industry. I will be introducing the campaign and the philosophy behind it. Other speakers at the conference include Dr Joe Borg (ex-Fisheries Commissioner, EU), Dr Alan Deidun, Dr John Refalo (Representative, Azzopardi Fisheries), Ms Caroline Muscat (Journalist), Prof Victor Axiak (Marine Biologist) and Dr Robert Vassallo Agius (Aquaculture Scientist). There should be some interesting and lively discussions.
Over the past few months a number of local NGOs have come together to create the Fish4Tomorrow campaign. The main aim of this campaign is to raise awareness on sustainable fishing within the local context. It also plans to provide guidelines to fish consumers helping them determine which Maltese restaurants serve sustainably caught fish. This idea is similar to the international Fish2Fork campaign (3). Also, Coalitions such as Ocean 2012 (2) which includes high profile members such as Greenpeace, Birdlife International, WWF as well as local NGOs like Nature Trust, Greenhouse and Sharklab (Malta) are on the forefront of raising awareness by campaigning for entire reforms such as the 2012 CFP Reform (Common Fisheries Policy Reform) which aims for healthy oceans and putting an end to overfishing amongst other issues. All this is done in the hope of ensuring that our oceans are preserved for us and our future generations.
Despite its large size, the ocean is not inexhaustible or exempt from the effects of human activity. Over the past decade or so the ocean has suffered irreparable damage and one of the major components is the issue of overfishing. Due to factors such as Globalisation, high levels of demand for certain species of fish have come about. Such is this demand, that governing bodies like the EU have pumped large amounts of money into companies providing them with highly sophisticated equipment and fishing vessels. This in turn has left fish with not enough time to reproduce and therefore giving the species very little chance of survival. The Atlantic Bluefin Tuna (Thunnus Thynnus) is possibly one of the most high profile cases of overfishing the world is currently facing. In fact ICCAT (International Commission for the Conservation of Atlantic Tuna) have assessed that there has been a strong decline in its spawning stock biomass since 1993.
Catch limits of Bluefin Tuna are currently higher than scientific advice. In 2010 this was averaged to be at 34% higher. In attempt to counteract this, a quota is set by ICCAT which determines the amount of Tuna that is allowed to be caught per year. In 2008, this was set at 28,500 tonnes and has since been reduced to 13,500 tonnes for 2010. This, scientists believe, is still not low enough to give the Tuna a fighting chance of survival. Currenty, ICCAT is facing a lot of criticism from European countries like Malta, Italy and Spain for suggesting a significant drop in the quota down to 6,000 tonnes for 2011 and has had to reconsider this decision since.
Malta is one of the countries which is on the forefront of this issue since it plays one of the most important roles in the ranching of the Tuna which comes into the Mediterranean to breed. In 2006, the MCFS estimated the Bluefin tuna production in Malta to be at 3,000 tonnes, worth around €46,000,000 (1). One of the main reasons why Tuna stocks have been depleting so rapidly is because it is so far impossible to farm the fish, it being a migratory animal. This means the tuna is caught and ranched in large amounts, fattened for 6 months and finally exported, mainly to Japan.
On Saturday the 18th of September, I joined Greenhouse on an afternoon’s experience at Birdlife’s Raptor Camp. Raptor camp takes place twice a year during the migratory seasons where birds fly from Europe to Africa for the winter and back to Europe in spring. Its aim is to keep track of raptors and other migratory birds flying over Malta and discouraging and reporting and illegal hunting and trapping.
Most of the volunteers are foreigners who fly to Malta each year to help out...and it’s no easy business. Volunteers are split into groups of four, each is assigned a location in Malta in which there is a dense population of hunters and where they spend hours keeping watch, starting as early as 5am.
Before we left for the afternoon watch, Geoffrey Saliba, the project’s campaigns manager , took us to one of their rooms where they had a dead Grey Heron which they had collected that morning.
“This is what we’re fighting.”
I was sent to a spot at Tal-Virtu where we spent from 3pm to 8pm. I was amazed at the sheer number of raptors that actually pass over Malta to take shelter before completing their journey to Africa. We spotted around 90 Honey buzzards, a few Marsh Harriers and heard a good deal of Bee-Eaters. Large numbers of Marsh Harriers were seen in other sites on the Island.
There are 32 birds that can be legally hunted. During this time of year, hunting is only legal till 3pm. This is because after this time, raptors start flying low in an attempt to find a suitable place to roost, making them extremely vulnerable. Despite the laws, illegal hunting persists and the number of cases is alarming. Just recently the discovery of 80 Raptors buried under stones in Mizieb shows that little has changed from a year ago where 200 birds were found in the same conditions.
The main problem is the attitude that a handful of hunters take towards entities such as Birdlife, CABS and the ALE. Last Saturday I got shouted at by a hunter for standing too close to the concrete leading to his land. In the worst cases volunteers have been shouted at, some spat at and a few have even been beaten up. There is no doubt that the tension is high between hunters and conservationists, but unless there’s a radical change in mentality or proper enforcement of the law the chances of bringing illegal hunting to a stand-still seem to be slim.
However, the lack of local volunteers is upsetting. Birdlife Malta strives to understand and protect wild birds while conserving their habitat with great dedication and enthusiasm. I’d like to take this opportunity to encourage as many people to actively help in these local conservation projects. More information regarding illegal hunting and daily Raptor Camp updates can be found on www.birdlifemalta.org.
This is a video taken by Anthony Debono, one of the members who attended the Raptor Camp.
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