The illegal trawling on the African coast by Chinese trawlers are destroying the livelihood in many African countries. I wish the EU would work with those nations affected to intercept and arrest those boats.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9554253/How-China-b...
There has been some speculation that China is effectively trying to take control over Africa and has been rather successful at doing so on some fronts.
https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/18417/china-taking-over-a...
How does that compute?
I don’t think that’s true.
The issue here is that land that no one has authority over means that there is also no enforcement and that it’s a race to the bottom as to who will manage to exploit it to the point where it is destroyed and useless to anyone anymore. And why wouldn’t you, morals aside? It’s basically free resources for the exploiter with externalities shared by everyone. It doesn’t mean the solution is private ownership. Look at national parks, they’re publicly owned but they’re not a no man’s land so a government has authority to enforce conservation rules there and punish those who pollute/damage the park.
That’s what parent comment was perfectly illustrating: “not EU waters, not EU trawlers, why even lift a finger if Africa is too corrupt or financially unable to protect these ecosystems and the Chinese too cynical to refrain themselves?”
It seems solvable with a consensus of the stakeholders.
I mean I'd assume the world police would handle it. The NOAA and FWS currently manage Papahānaumokuākea but it would be quite a scale up for global areas maybe the Navy could enforce a baseline.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exclusive_economic_zone
"China has by far the largest distant water fleet in the world with at least 3,000 vessels, some of which have been spotted off the coasts of Africa and as far as Ecuador. This has raised concerns of overfishing at a time when global fish stocks are plummeting. “It’s their strategy of establishing themselves as a big fishing power,” said Matti Kohonen, executive director of the FTC. “Then they end up breaking a lot of fishing laws by doing that."
https://english.alarabiya.net/features/2022/10/26/Chinese-fi...
The issue with a lot of places globally that Chinese owned fishing fleets(of highly questionable legal status) go is that they will decimate the area like a plague of locus and then just like locus they will move on once there is no longer any viable marine wildlife to catch(or even kelp / sea grass to collect). And the local governments either don't have the resources required to patrol their coastal exclusive economic zone or they intentionally don't want to antagonize China by stopping their illegal fishing fleets either because of political corruption or due to other more serious reasons.
Technically the International Criminal Police Organization (INTERPOL) can enforce Maritime law but I am not aware of them doing anything about illegal fishing fleets.
PRC has largest absolute DWF fleet size, but per capita she's underfishing, especially relative to TW and SKR, and behind TW, SKR, JP in terms of transhipping. Ultimately PRC with relatively small EEZ due to geography is naturally going to fish in the "commons" which she's entitled to, and even then she's still extracting less than her proportionate amount relative to population vs other actors.
>The issue
The issue is:
1) international system can't get shit together to legislate against subsidies to harm their own industries, including western nations like Europe, who also fishes illegally off Africa. There's no reason for PRC make herself less competitive unless there's global agreement.
2) bluntly PRC distant fishing drama is US driven propaganda to rationalize sending US coast guards to enforce against PRC interests. Which she did as new lawfare initiative right after these conveniently timed articles seeded narrative into MSM. But curiously not against the other DWF fleets like TW, SKR, JP that also behaves poorly but are incidentally also instruments US use against PRC interests.
For reference, for PRC's DWF fleet to match other top DWF fleet's capita fishing efforts, she would have to fish 3x more to match JP, 7x more to match SKR and Spain, 30X more to match TW. Unless you think PRC fishermen and citizens shouldn't have the same opportunities or access to seafood. They're certainly getting their disprortionate share of western media hit pieces and biased US enforcement efforts.
Angus's own rebuttal claims, among other points that "it’s shocking to realise that he provided no evidence at all to support his sweeping conclusions. He claimed that the “tragedy” was inevitable — but he didn’t show that it had happened even once."
This is in fact false as even a casual reading of the original essay will show.
Hardin's principle concern was population and the risk of global overpopulation. That presents his first example given the best available knowledge at the time he published the essay:
Has any cultural group solved this practical problem at the present time, even on an intuitive level? One simple fact proves that none has: there is no prosperous population in the world today that has, and has had for some time, a growth rate of zero.
A second more trivial example, involves public parking:
A simple incident that occurred a few years ago in Leominster, Massachusetts, shows how perishable the knowledge is. During the Christmas shopping season the parking meters downtown were covered with red plastic bags that bore tags reading: "Do not open until after Christmas. Free parking courtesy of the mayor and city council." In other words, facing the prospect of an increased demand for already scarce space, the city fathers reinstituted the system of the commons.
Two more substantial examples follow immediately:
Even at this late date, cattlemen leasing national land on the western ranges demonstrate no more than an ambivalent understanding, in constantly pressuring federal authorities to increase the head count to the point where overgrazing produces erosion and weed-dominance.
And, in the same paragraph:
Likewise, the oceans of the world continue to suffer from the survival of the philosophy of the commons. Maritime nations still respond automatically to the shibboleth of the "freedom of the seas." Professing to believe in "the inexhaustible resources of the oceans," they bring species after species of fish and whales closer to extinction (9).
And a fourth:
The National Parks present another instance of the working out of the tragedy of the commons. At present, they are open to all, without limit. The parks themselves are limited in extent--there is only one Yosemite Valley--whereas population seems to grow without limit. The values that visitors seek the parks are steadily eroded.
The fifth is pollution, to which Hardin sees no market-based solution:
The tragedy of the commons as a food basket is averted by private property, or something formally like it. But the air and waters surrounding us cannot readily be fenced, and so the tragedy of the commons as a cesspool must be prevented by different means, by coercive laws or taxing devices that make it cheaper for the polluter to treat his pollutants than to discharge them untreated.
What Hardin's self-described critics seem to miss is that Hardin isn't arguing against commons per se but unregulated commons. That regulation may be provided by the market, through taxation or other incentives, through behavioural restrictions, quota systems, or even social mores. Hardin does suggest that property rights seem to be one of the more effective mechanisms available, but does NOT declare that this is the One True Way to manage all commons.
He, and his commons-defending critics, are in fact arguing for the same thing: a regulated commons serving the interests of the broader community, not of avaricious individuals.