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eNewsletter June/July 2022

eNewsletter June/July 2022
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 eNewsletter August/September 2022

Dear Visitor,

 

In this edition we feature the following articles:

 

- An Editorial – Failing the Oceans

- Marine Special and the Habitat

- The Conservation & Livelihoods Digest

‍Editorial

Failing the Oceans

 

-- By Eugène Lapointe

 

We live in a new maritime environment. Once maritime cooperation could be equated with putting down pirates. But Captain John Silver no longer sails the Spanish Main; Henry Morgan long since settled in Jamaica and no-one robs the Spanish treasure fleet for Good Queen Bess. But we still face many miles to walk – or rather – swim before we can bring ourselves to craft a common, cooperative approach to the common protection of our oceans, a policy that is just as needed now as it was 300 years ago. This point has been brought home to many of us by the boarding and ransoming of massive super tankers in the Gulf of Somalia. Given the huge sums involved in the retaking and ransoming of those massive vessels, it may sound strange to read that the ship going nations of the world – and the fisheries in particular – face a common problem that is of both greater immediacy and higher importance.

 

We all know the basics of the global narrative. We have committed to conserve no less than 30% of the world’s oceans but so far as we have been willing to test ourselves and have fallen miserably at the first fence.  Consequently, the vast amount of CO2 emissions discharged on or over land will continue to land in our oceans which, in turn, will acidify at an ever-swifter pace while, in turn, raising ocean temperatures. The men and women who derive their livings from fisheries all seem to agree that, while their local fisheries have not always shrunk, those that have not shrunk have moved in search of cooler climes. How long will nature be willing to spare us this latitude and what happens to our fisheries when the generosity dies out?

 

 

On Saturday, 27 August a group of diplomats, government representatives and NGO’s walked out of a multilateral discussion at the United Nations in New York City, a discussion that was designed to address this question. Is there a government and an economy out there that sincerely believes it can afford to let these discussions just peter out?


Marine Special and Habitat

 

-- Jim Beers IWMC Vice-President for the USA

 

CITES (an International Convention/UN Enforcer) is now considering a proposal to List all 19 shark species of the family Carcharhinidae thereby placing all sharks under their benevolent “protection’, i.e., no use, management or control.  This, while burgeoning shark attacks, shark numbers and shark sizes increase over large swaths of the marine and littoral environments.  Consider how CITES rules the international shipment of trophies or the transfer of wild animals internationally to private or governmental entities and the effects this is having.  CITES also “works with” certain nations and NGOs to eliminate sustainable uses of wildlife parts and products like ivory, feathers, etc.  Today, No-Wildlife Management or Use Mandates from CITES and remote (from Rural Communities) Central Governments are destroying both wildlife and rural families and communities as bureaucratic densities and costs, ironically, go through the roof.  Wildlife’s diversity and abundance, along with rural human prosperity, is being lost worldwide as “protection from any use” and a lack of any management in settled landscapes reduces its value to zero and even less when destructive and dangerous predators are considered.

 

In the United States alone and simultaneously with the creation of CITES in the early 1970’s, 38 major environment and wildlife laws were passed that increased the remote bureaucratic authority and jurisdiction of the Central Government in Washington 10-fold over wildlife at the expense of State governments that were less remote and more accountable, rural communities and the managed wildlife they had each co-existed with for over a century.  This current web of intertwined laws, International Agreements and the steady flow of regulations, rules and mandates emanating from an army of unelected bureaucrats is like a legal fish net constructed by lawyers and bureaucrats determined to vacate rural precincts by devaluing wildlife and its value.  As revenue and enjoyment from managed, used and controlled wildlife disappears, so too does wildlife diversity, abundance and human prosperity.

 

The only sensible and achievable chance for people and wildlife to co-exist is to devolve the authority and jurisdiction over such renewable natural resources such as wildlife back to the Lowest (hence the Most responsive and accountable) possible governmental level.  This would incorporate the will of the local communities after seeing the actual “science” and facts and how they would affect their lives.  They should decide (not be dictated to) what is best for them as far as everything from diversity and predator control to public land management and revenue-sharing of licensing and associated revenue for wildlife communities that are best for the human communities that sustain them.  Wild things and places will ultimately be far safer and more secure under people that have a stake in. and willingly live with diverse and well-managed wildlife communities rather than the current bureaucratic tyranny that exercises authority over them while devaluing them today.

 

The Conservation & Livelihoods Digest

 

The link between conservation and livelihoods has been identified as being crucial to achieve active conservation. To better visualise this link, in 2022 IWMC’s long-time collaborator, Sellheim Environmental, has launched a quarterly publication called The Conservation & Livelihoods Digest, which is available free-of-charge.

 

Apart from semi-scholarly articles, contributions encompass book or video reviews, opinions, or reports. IWMC’s President Eugene Lapointe already contributed one short view on social activism for The Digest’s first issue in March 2022.

 

IWMC encourages the support of this publication, which marks an important way to display the link between conservation and livelihoods and to expose this link to a wider public.

 

If you wish further information on The Digest, please send an email to info@sellheimenvironmental.org. 

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