0.19 Natural capital: fisheries  (Page 10/14)

If the threats from environmental and disease issues involved in fish farming can be resolved, the industry will not only be able to provide a more stable, sustainable supply of fish for a growing worldwide population, it will also sharply reduce stress on natural fisheries everywhere. But, in the words of former Chinese premier Chou En-Lai, it is still too early to tell whether this will be the case.

Freshwater fisheries: is sustainable freshwater fishing attainable?

The preceding discussion has focused upon salt -water fisheries. But, there are increasingly serious problems facing sustainability of fresh water fisheries. The problem is of course inextricably related to unsustainable utilization of fresh water . This is an example of another of these ecological/economic inter-relationships that policy makers, social scientists and scientist rarely ever notice.

Unsustainable use of fresh-water fisheries around the world has become serious enough to threaten inland fisheries that are especially important in poor countries. These fisheries supply fish and therefore protein in diets of poor people.

In emerging nations, consider a list of rivers whose waters no longer reach the ocean. These include the Indus (India), Yellow River (China), and several rivers in Java, Indonesia. In rich nations, rivers that dry up before reaching the sea include the Rio Grande (Texas), Colorado River (Colorado/Arizona), and Murray/Pearl Rivers in Australia.

As it happens, all of these rivers are extremely important in supplying water for grain and cattle agriculture which make very heavy use of water, as we have seen. To review:

• To grow 1kg wheat requires 1,000 liters water
• To produce a kilo of beef requires at least 12,000 liters of water

In many emerging nations, the rate of decline of freshwater fishing has reached disturbing proportions. According to the World Wildlife Fund (WWF), since 1970 fish stocks in freshwater lakes and rivers have declined 30%.

Societies rightly worry about ecosystem loss and biodiversity loss in the jungle (see Chapter___). But the 30% drop in freshwater fish stocks represents a drop in biodiversity that exceeds that of animal losses in jungle and temperate forests in past 40 years. A principal reason in emerging nations has been the draining of wetlands for agriculture and commercial development. Half of the world’s wetlands were drained in 20th century. Remedies require enforceable regulations. Such regulations have worked reasonably well in Alaska and the lower 48 States, but have largely failed in Africa (Lake Victoria) and other poor nations.

Here we make use of one of Winston Churchill’s many famous quotes:

“The hedgehog knows one thing very well. But the fox knows many things well”.

Now yet another illustration of inter-dependency in economic issues. Fisheries and other natural resource issues clearly show the need in economics for more foxes and fewer hedgehogs, or at least hybrid “hedgefoxes”, equipped to understand economic issues closely related to ecological ones.