Alistair Gammell
Alistair Gammell is director of the Chagos campaign, a project of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Ocean Legacy initiative to help secure the establishment of large, world-class marine reserves.
The Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) is a specialized agency of the United Nations. It was founded on 16 October 1945 in Quebec City, Quebec, Canada. In 1951 its...
Peter Singer is Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University and Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne. His books include Practical Ethics, One World, and, most recently, The Life You...
Arnaud Gossement is a lawyer at the Paris Bar for environmental law and energy. He has a PhD in Law from Paris I University Panthéon-Sorbonne and he is a lecturer at Sciences Po Paris. He has also...
Achim Steiner est le directeur exécutif du Programme des Nations Unies pour l'Environnement (PNUE). Auparavant, il a exercé de hautes fonctions à la Commission mondiale des barrages puis à l'Union...
Antoine F. Goetschel is a laywer who specializes in animal rights.
Alistair Gammell is director of the Chagos campaign, a project of the Pew Environment Group’s Global Ocean Legacy initiative to help secure the establishment of large, world-class marine reserves. ...
Dr. Ahmed Djoghlaf is the Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity established by the United Nations. An Algerian national, Dr. Djoghlaf has pursued a impressive diplomatic...
George Monbiot is a well-known investigation reporter and columnist for the British newspaper “The Guardian” as well as a member of the BBC Wildlife magazine’s advisory board. He is also the author...
Susan Lieberman is Deputy Director of The Pew Environment Group and head of the Cites Pew Delegation at the CITES summit in Doha.
Julia Marton-Lefèvre is the Director General of International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN).Photo: IUCN
Fred Pearce is journalist specialized in the environment and development. He was born in the United Kingdom and studied geography in the University of Cambridge. His latest book is When the Rivers...
Carl Zimmer travaille comme journaliste spécialiste des questions scientifiques et environnementales. Il a rédigé 6 livres et s’intéresse à des domaines aussi variés que la recherche dans les...
Silvia Ribeiro et Kathy Jo Wetter travaillent toutes deux en tant que chercheuses pour l'Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration (ETC Group).
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
Brendan Moyle is a conservationist from New Zealand. Long ago, he used to study tiny pseudoscorpions as a zoologist. He got a PhD in economics because it was rather obvious that a lot of conservation...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
IUCN : Created in 1948, the World Conservation Union or International Union for the Conservation ofr Nature (IUCN) brings together 81 States, 120 government agencies, 800 plus NGOs, and some 10,000...
Jean-Michel SEVERINO has been CEO of France’s international development agency (AFD) since 2001. After graduating from the Ecole Nationale d’Administration and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de...
The Ramsar Convention is an international treaty for the conservation and sustainable use of wetlands, aiming to stop their degradation and disappearance, today and tomorrow, by recognizing their...
François RAMADE, an agricultural engineer who holds a doctoral post-graduate degree in science, is a professor emeritus at the Université Paris-Sud (Orsay). He is a former President of the Société...
New Scientist was founded in 1956, this internationally-focused weekly British magazine aims at giving readers exhaustive information on recent worldwide developments in science from a scientific,...
Solenn Honorine holds degrees from Sciences Po (Bordeaux), the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and the Ecole Supérieure de Journalisme in Lille. Ms. Honorine is a French freelance...
Janet LARSEN is the Director of Research at the Earth Policy Institute (a non-profit environmental research organisation) and holds a degree in Earth Systems from Stanford University. Formerly a...
A giant step for protecting ocean life
26/05/2010 11:20 am
On the first of April, the UK Government took a decision to declare the islands, coral reefs and surrounding seas of the Chagos Islands (a UK Overseas Territory in the middle of the Indian Ocean) as a no-take protected reserve. At 544,000 sq km - an area roughly the size of France - this will be the largest marine protected reserve on Earth and will conserve some of the world’s most important coral reefs, seabird and turtle nesting sites, and contribute to much-needed shark, tuna and deep sea conservation.
The Chagos has some of the cleanest seas in the world and contains as much as half of the Indian Ocean’s remaining healthy coral reefs, making it one of the most ecologically sound reef systems on the planet. These reefs and seas are home to thriving species of corals and reef fish, as well as over 76 species listed on the International Union for Conservation of Nature’s (IUCN) Red List of Endangered Species. Surrounding the reefs is an exceptional diversity of deep water habitats, such as trenches reaching nearly 6000 metres in depth. The islands also provide a safe breeding site for dwindling populations of sea turtles and hundreds of thousands of sea birds.
But despite this biological wealth, all is not well in this paradise. The Western Indian Ocean is a region with some of the most heavily exploited, poorly understood and badly enforced fisheries in the world. The current governance for tuna in the Indian Ocean, managed by the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, has a number of major legal and technical weaknesses. In the Chagos, licensed long-line and purse seine fishing boats have been taking between 700 and 25,000 tonnes of tuna each year.
The bycatch from tuna fisheries in Chagos is also significant; an estimated 60,000 sharks were legally killed in a five year period by long-liners fishing for tuna in Chagos waters. Of these, more than 30,000 were blue sharks, a near-threatened species. It is estimated that in addition to all the sharks, around 60,000 rays were also caught. These two figures take no account of all the other species discarded, mostly dead or dying or those caught by illegal or unregulated fishing. The no-take marine reserve in Chagos will provide a temporary refuge to assist population recovery of migratory species, such as turtles, tuna and sharks.
During the public consultation over a quarter of a million people gave their views and of these, the great majority – well over 90% - made clear that they supported greater marine protection in the Chagos. Nearly 17,000 of these were from France, demonstrating the French people’s dedication to the importance of marine conservation. In July 2009, President Sarkozy announced ambitious targets for the protection of France’s maritime territory, of 10% by 2012, increasing to 20% by 2020. Worldwide, France controls the second largest, and some of the most biologically important, ocean territory anywhere. The Pew Environment Group would like to encourage the French government to establish very large no-take marine reserves in the seas around France, French Polynesia and elsewhere. The world should be looking to France to live up to its position as one of the leading maritime nations, and implement those commitments whilst there is still time to protect our oceans’ future.
By protecting the Chagos, the UK government has demonstrated its leadership in conserving the world’s marine resources and has secured a conservation legacy for the benefit of future generations which is unrivalled in scale and significance. Other than some limited commercial fishing interests, everybody will benefit from the establishment of this reserve. This includes all those benefiting from the replenishment of the Western Indian Ocean’s marine resources, and from the opportunity for improved climate science and marine research.
Since governments around the globe say they want to conserve the world’s resources, let us all press them to emulate the UK and establish large no-take marine reserves. Unless they do so, the world’s oceans will continue to be emptied of fish without the possibility of replenishment, and their future will be very bleak indeed.
If you would like to know more about the campaign to protect the Chagos, visit www.protectchagos.org. To learn more about the work of the Pew Environment Group's initiative to establish large marine reserves, go to: www.globaloceanlegacy.org To know more about the Chagos islands, you can visit www.chagos-trust.org.
Un pas de géant dans la protection de la vie sous-marine
by Alistair Gammell from Pew Environment Group
text courtesy of the author
]
Signaler un abus
