A NEW WAY TO PROTECT BIODIVERSITY? THE CASE OFSUSTAINABLE SEAFOOD CONSUMER CAMPAIGNS[SLIDE] Today, I will talk about sustainable seafood and the role of consumer campaigns in theUnited States. Since 1998, sustainable seafood has been framed as an important consumptionissue. Seafood is being seen as biodiversity in need of protection whereas it was viewed as simplya resource to be hunted. Now, consumers and chefs are being cast in a new role – that of puttingpressure on industry to change its methods through the marketplace.[SLIDE] This is what I will talk about today. 1. The nature of marine biodiversity.2. The impacts of industrial fishing on fish populations.3. The emergence of private groups in biodiversity policy, especially with regard to market-based instruments.4. The problem of “distance” between seafood producers and consumers.5. The development of seafood consumer campaigns.6. Some issues for environmental politics that such campaigns raise.As you can see, I’m trying to point out some different dimensions. I’ll be mixing togetherecology, seafood industry structure, markets, and policy. The mixture of factors reflects a new eraof biodiversity politics. It’s not just the politics of getting science to influence fishery policies, butthe politics of trying to harness the market in support of biodiversity. I want, in particular, to lookat how private groups can play an important role in framing biodiversity as a resource, not assomething to be conserved. These groups, moreover, can pioneer new ways of using the marketalongside traditional regulatory approaches. This is not necessarily a positive development. We’lldiscuss this at the end.Half-way through the lecture, we’ll break into small groups for 20 minutes and discuss whatinformation you may need to buy “sustainable” seafood at the market. After that, we’ll sum upthe groups by writing on the blackboard. Then I’ll continue with my lecture. As we go throughthe lecture, please write down your questions and pass them to Barbara or Mark.[SLIDE] First, let’s look at marine biodiversity. Compared to terrestrial biodiversity, this area hasreceived far less scientific and policy attention. There was a recent letter to Nature journalpointing out that there is a great disparity between marine and terrestrial biodiversity when itcomes to published research and data. Only 5% of ecology reports deal with marine biodiversity.Even marine ecology journals don’t deal much with conservation issues. Much less information istherefore available as to the numbers of marine species and their rates of extinction.The World Conservation Union estimates that there are at least 1 million species livng on coralreefs and maybe over 10 million in the oceans. No-one really knows because it is extremelydifficult to count fish swimming in the sea. Today’s important statistic is that at least 25,000species of fish are thought to exist, many of these freshwater. The WCU says that it is building adatabase of all species to serve as a baseline, but mentions that marine species will be coveredafter 2008, revealing the paucity of information.On the other hand, we do know that marine ecosystems have higher genetic diversity becausealmost all the major types of plants and animals are found in the sea. The sea has many diversehabitats, ranging from kelp forests, coral reefs, mangrove flats, seagrass bays, continental shelves,1to the deep seas. The numbers of species may not be so important as how the species form part ofmarine ecosystems. The Biodiversity Convention Secretariat publishes the Global Biodiversity Outlook every fewyears to provide a snapshot of trends. Strikingly, the latest edition has almost no quantitative dataon marine biodiversity. In contrast to terrestrial biodiversity, there are no estimates of percentagerates of extinction, or of total marine species. Instead, there are a few examples of endangeredfish, bird, and mammal species. There is also a map showing the total fish harvests for 1995 foreach region of the world. This underscores a pattern that we see across the field. Marinebiodiversity is almost equated to fishing, because there are some statistics available. The report does say: “As a gross generalization, marine species appear to be less prone toextinction than inland water or terrestrial ones”. This is because the oceans supposedly provide abuffer zone: humans don’t live in them. Also, marine species tend to be distributed more widely,making them less vulnerable. But this isn’t reassuring. Over 95% of the oceans are unexplored.The deeper parts of the sea are largely unknown. Equally important, pollution knows noboundaries. Thus, we might be losing species without knowing it. Literally, the sea is far fromsight, therefore out of mind. These gaps in knowledge are also found for terrestrial biodiversity.But they seem much graver in the sea.[SLIDE] We need to keep the broader context in mind. There are many environmental and humanpressures on marine biodiversity. Over-fishing is only one causal agent. Other important factorsinclude agricultural pollution run-off, chemicals accumulating in marine mammals, globalenvironmental change, coastal development damaging habitats, and the spread of exotic species.About 60% of the world’s population lives along coastal areas. So their energy use, buildings,pollution, industry, and garbage are going to affect the sea. The shipping industry generates a vastamount of pollution. Recent research has found that climate has played a major forcing role overthe last few thousands years. Marine species distribution varies with climate. Climate change dueto human emissions will likely be important in the next few decades. So, addressing over-fishingis only one part of marine biodiversity problems.Let’s turn now to the impacts of fishing on marine species. There are a growing number ofscientific papers showing that marine fisheries may be plummeting around the world. The paperby Myers and Worm from Nature journal is a good example. They analyzed decades of fishbiomass data from continental shelf and open ocean systems, starting when these areas first beganto be fished heavily. [SLIDE] This is one chart from the paper. It shows the fish biomass of theTemperate Pacific, which is where we are. As you can see, there is a