Imran Khan was sworn in as Pakistan’s new prime minister on Saturday, nearly 22 years after the former cricket hero entered politics. Khan, 65, the chairman of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf, was administered the oath of office by President Mamnoon Hussain at a simple ceremony held at the Aiwan-e-Sadr (the President House) in Islamabad.
Clad in a black sherwani, Khan was seen little nervous as he faced difficulties in pronouncing some Urdu words during the oath. Khan, who famously captained the national cricket team to World Cup glory in 1992, has also invited some of his former teammates to witness his formal ascension to the top ministerial job in the country. Army Chief Gen Qamar Javed Bajwa, former Indian cricketer Navjot Singh Sidhu, cricketer-turned-commentator Rameez Raja, former paceman Wasim Akram were among the special guests present at the ceremony. Khan’s third wife Bushra Maneka was also present at the event. The Oxford-educated Pasthun yesterday defeated his only rival and Pakistan Muslim League-Nawaz chief Shahbaz Sharif in a one-sided election for the top post in the National Assembly. Khan secured 176 votes while Sharif got 96 votes. A total of 172 votes in the 342-member lower house of parliament are needed to form a government. In his first address to parliament, Khan had vowed to act against those who looted Pakistan. “I promise my nation today that we will bring the tabdeeli (change) that this nation was starving for,” Khan said yesterday after winning the election. “We have to hold strict accountability in this country; the people who looted this country, I promise that I will work against them,” he vowed. “The money that was laundered, I will bring it back – the money that should have gone towards health, education, and water, went into people’s pockets,” Khan said. IMAGE: Imran’s third wife Bushra Maneka was also present at the event. Photograph: ANI Khan, who described Pakistan’s founder Mohammad Ali Jinnah as his hero, has promised to transform corruption affected Pakistan into an Islamic Welfare state. He has the support of smaller parties including Muttahida Quami Movement with seven seats, Balochistan Awami Party five, Balochistan National Party four, Pakistan Muslim League three, Grand Democratic Alliance three, Awami Muslim League and Jamori Watan Party one seat each. The PTI emerged as the single largest party with 116 seats in July 25 elections. Its number increased to 125 after nine independent members joined it and final tally reached 158 after it was allotted 28 out of 60 seats reserved for women and five out of 10 seats reserved for minorities. Khan’s government will be the third consecutive democratic government in Pakistan since 2008 when military ruler Gen Pervez Musharraf announced elections after serving as president from 2001 to 2008 following a bloodless coup in 1999. The PPP formed the government in 2008, followed by the PML-N led by jailed former prime minister Nawaz Sharif in 2013. Pakistan’s powerful military has ruled the country through various coups for nearly half of the country’s history since independence in 1947.
He passed away peacefully on Saturday 18th August after a short illness, the Kofi Annan Foundation said in a statement.
Geneva: Former United Nations Secretary General and Nobel Peace Prize laureate Kofi Annan died at the age of 80 on Saturday after a short illness, his foundation announced.
“It is with immense sadness that the Annan family and the Kofi Annan Foundation announce that Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations and Nobel Peace Laureate, passed away peacefully on Saturday 18th August after a short illness,” the foundation said in a statement.
It is with immense sadness that the Annan family and the Kofi Annan Foundation announce that Kofi Annan, former Secretary General of the United Nations and Nobel Peace Laureate, passed away peacefully on Saturday 18th August after a short illness…
“His wife Nane and their children Ama, Kojo and Nina were by his side during his last days.”
The Ghanaian national, who lived in Switzerland, was a career diplomat who projected quiet charisma and who is widely credited for raising the world body’s profile in global politics during his two terms as UN chief, from 1997 to 2006.
He quickly became a familiar face on television, with his name making newspaper headlines, and he was a sought-after guest at gala events and New York dinner parties.
Current UN chief Antonio Guterres voiced deep sadness at the news, describing his predecessor as “a guiding force for good”.
“In many ways, Kofi Annan was the United Nations,” he added.
“He rose through the ranks to lead the organisation into the new millennium with matchless dignity and determination.
“Like so many, I was proud to call Kofi Annan a good friend and mentor.”
The first secretary general from sub-Saharan Africa, Annan led the United Nations through the divisive years of the Iraq war and was later accused of corruption in the oil-for-food scandal, one of the most trying times of his tenure.
In 2001, as the world was reeling from the September 11 attacks, Annan was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize jointly with the world body “for their work for a better organised and more peaceful world”.
‘Humanity’s best example’
Born in Kumasi, the capital city of Ghana’s Ashanti region, Annan was the son of an executive of a European trading company, the United Africa company, a subsidiary of the Anglo-Dutch multinational Unilever.
After ending his second term as UN chief, Annan went on to take high-profile mediation roles in Kenya and in Syria.
He later set up a foundation devoted to conflict resolution and joined the Elders group of statesmen which regularly speaks out on global issues.
The UN high commissioner for human rights Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein said he was grief-stricken over Annan’s death.
“Kofi was humanity’s best example, the epitome, of human decency and grace. In a world now filled with leaders who are anything but that, our loss, the world’s loss becomes even more painful,” he said.
“He was a friend to thousands and a leader of millions.”
Eleven people have been arrested after a man was beaten to death and three others critically injured by a mob in Assam’s Biswanath district that suspected them to be cattle thieves on Thursday. All those arrested are from the Adivasi community who work in the Diplunga Tea Estate, about 250 km from Guwahati.
According to police sources, the incident took place early Thursday when a mob intercepted a small pick-up van and brutally beat up its occupants Deben Rajbongshi, Phoolchand Sahu, Bijoy Nayak and Pujen Rajbongshi suspecting them to be cattle thieves. Deben died of his injuries. The three others were admitted to a hospital. All of them are also from Adivasi community.
There was a fifth person in the van, one Papu Nayak, who fled before the attack took place and was believed to have been leading them.
In a video of the attack that has gone viral, the victims are seen bleeding and asking for mercy.
“We were in formed by the villagers that they caught cattle thieves with a van and cattle and some of the locals are brutally beating them. It was about 4:20 am that we got this phone call. We sent our team that took about 20 minutes to reach and rescued them. The video is part of the investigation and all angles are being looked at,” said senior police officer Diganta Kumar Choudhury told NDTV.
Police sources have also added that two cows recovered from the spot belong to Shankar Tanti, a resident of the area and the attack took place apparently after Tanti raised an alarm.
Tanti has filed an FIR, alleging that his cows were stolen and named the five men. The police too have also registered a case of mob lynching.
This incident comes close on the heels of the brutal killing of two Assamese young men in Assam’s Karbi Anglong districts after locals mistook them as child-abductors over BJP-RSS rumours. It follows a nationwide alarm over increasing incidents of mob lynching that have prompted the Supreme Court to ask the centre and state governments to act sternly against them.
New Delhi: Activist Swami Agnivesh was reportedly assaulted and heckled in the capital today, while on his way to pay respects to late former Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee at the Bharatiya Janata Party office.
In a video doing the rounds on social media, a group of men and women are chasing the activist and roughing him up. A woman also raises her slipper to hit Agnivesh with at one point in the video.
Exactly one month ago, on July 17, Agnivesh was attacked in Jharkhand allegedly by BJP Yuva Morcha workers. The attackers had then hurled slogans like “Jai Sri Ram” and “Go back Agnivesh”, beat him, pushed him to the ground and tore at his clothes. Ten days ago, Agnivesh said he would approach the Supreme Court as those who attacked him were still roaming free and nobody had been arrested.
The BJP had denied that its party workers were responsible for the attack in Jharkhand, but also said that the incident wasn’t surprising considering the activist’s “track record”.
Seeing the last few crimes against women we cannot say that women are safe in India. Women generally feel frightened while going alone outside from their home. Woman safety in India is a very big concern nowadays which has been a most important topic regarding women safety. It is a very sad reality of the country that it’s women citizens are living with fear all the time.
Women are harassed not only in the night or evening but also in the day time at the their home, working place, or the other places like streets, club etc. It is found through the survey that the reason of sexual harassment is the lack of gender-friendly environment and improper functional infrastructure such as consumption of alcohol and drugs in open area, lack of adequate lighting, safe public toilets, sidewalks, lack of effective police service, lack of properly working helpline numbers etc.
Likewise, security and safety for women in Assam exposes as very poor. Many incidents took place in last one month and the crimes against women are increasing day by day. Two recent incidents took place within 24 hours, a student of the Assam Agricultural University in Jorhat was found dead in a toilet of the Kamakhya Express on Tuesday morning while the body of another was found in a toilet of the Avadh-Assam Express on Wednesday. According to the police both the victims were killed in a similar fashion. A few weeks back, a female journalist was harassed in a lady’s compartment in Nalbari district.
Assam government revealed in the last February that 29,223 incidents of violence against women were reported from various against women were reported from various parts of the state in past two years. Since April 2016, 1786 people have been arrested in 3009 rape case filed in the different police stations.
Measures taken by Assam Government are not enough to stop crimes against women. Equally Railway Department is responsible for incidents that recently took place on the moving train. Most of the measures promised and taken by the government are failed or incomplete. In the wake of increasing crimes against women Assam CM Sarbananda Sonowal launched “181 Sakhi” the toll-free number for women.
But it is claimed that the number do not respond when a women ring up to get rid of a situation in danger. According to the safety for women becomes a major concern among people but the government has not been taking the problem seriously. According to the available data, between 2005 & 2014 in Assam, around 60,000 women were raped, around 1400 killed for dowry and over 120 lynched in a name of witch-hunt. This is the government data which was submitted in the state assembly in 2015.
In this 21st century, women should not be trapped because of all this crimes going on they should get enough safety and security so that they can fulfill their dreams and make their future bright.
Author Vanessa Brown is a young journalist based in Guwahati, Assam
The drills, carried out by the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) digital combat unit in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, mainly tested the complete digital combat system in the extreme environment.
A digital combat unit of China’s military has conducted live-fire drills in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, which Chinese experts say displayed the country’s determination to build a strong army capable of winning a war in all weathers and territories, official media reported.The drills, carried out by the People’s Liberation Army’s (PLA) digital combat unit in the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau, mainly tested the complete digital combat system in the extreme environment, Beijing-based military expert and TV commentator Song Zhongping told Global Times yesterday.
Chinese pilots ‘likely’ training for U.S. targets: Pentagon
A new Pentagon report says China’s military has expanded its bomber operations in recent years while ‘likely training for strikes’ against the U.S. and its allies.
Such a practice is not targeted against any particular nation near the area, but forms the part of China’s bigger plan to build a strong army capable of winning a war in all weathers and territories, he said.
Song said that almost all units will regularly practice in the area.
Hundreds of military vehicles carrying advanced weaponry including drones, early warning radar, howitzers and air defence missiles participated in the PLA manoeuvre, state-run China Central Television (CCTV) reported on August 11.
The PLA digital combat unit is able to independently perform counterfire missions including anti-tank and air defence tasks, the Times report quoted CCTV.
The exact location of the drill is not identified in the report.
An article published by the Sina military channel yesterday said that the artillery deployed in the drills were PLL-09, a Chinese 122-millimeter self-propelled howitzer.
Although it is less powerful individually than the 155-millimeter cannons, its manoeuvrability is better and it can respond quicker in the battlefield to be transported thousands of kms through air.
PLA naval vessels from three theater commands have also conducted air defence and anti-missile live-fire exercises in the East China Sea, PLA Daily reported last week.
The native of Assam becomes the first athlete to win gold at IAAF U-20 championship.
Assam’s Hima Das created history by winning the gold medal in the women’s 400-metre event at the IAAF World U-20 Championships held at Tampere, Finland, on Thursday.
Hima clocked 51.46 seconds in the final at the Ratina Stadium to become the first Indian athlete to win gold in a world championship across all age groups.
Hima had fared well in the earlier rounds, too, winning Heat 4 with a time of 52.25 seconds. She emerged on top in the semi-finals as well, winning her race in 52.10 seconds.
From Prime Minister Narendra Modi to Indian football captain Sunil Chhetri, Hima’s historic achievement garnered praise from all quarters.
India is delighted and proud of athlete Hima Das, who won a historic Gold in the 400m of World U20 Championships. Congratulations to her! This accomplishment will certainly inspire young athletes in the coming years.
Hima Das the nation is so proud of you. My congratulations to you for your Under20 win in Finland. Your historic achievement of winning India’s first ever track athletics world title will inspire girls to believe that nothing is impossible
Congratulations to our sensational sprint star Hima Das for winning the 400m gold in the World Under-20 Championship. This is India’s first ever track gold in a World Championship. A very proud moment for Assam and India, Hima; now the Olympic podium beckons! #PresidentKovind
“The biggest positive to come out of what Hima Das has achieved isn’t the medal, it’s the hope that India can. Take a bow, champion!” wrote Indian football team captain Sunil Chhetri.
The biggest positive to come out of what Hima Das has achieved isn’t the medal, it’s the hope that India can. Take a bow, champion!
You have done an incredibly inspiring job by becoming the first Indian track athlete to win a gold medal at a World event Hima Das. We are so proud & happy. Your Gold at women’s 400 m World Under-20 Championships is a priceless jewel. Keep it up!
T 2865 – CONGRATULATIONS .. #HimaDas , the first Indian Women to win a GOLD in World Athletic track event EVER ! INDIA is proud of you .. you have given us reason to hold up our heads HIGH ! JAI HIND !!
‘95% of Indian men (including me) can’t match that speed. A brilliant message for all those who think/ say that women are physically weaker sex,” wrote one Twitter user.
Hima Das created history, became the FIRST EVER Indian to win a gold at a World level track event. She clocked 51.46 sec for 400m.
95% of Indian men (including me) can’t match that speed. A brilliant message for all those who think/ say that women are physically weaker sex.
HISTORIC!! Hima Das, from Dhing village in Assam storms to victory in the women’s 400m at World U-20 Championships. Clocks a time of 51.47 seconds and becomes the first Indian track athlete to win a medal at any global event. pic.twitter.com/GDjZ6rCMJ0
Congratulations #HimaDas for this stupendous feat. Winning the title track for 400mts in world under 20 Championship. The first Indian athlete to win a title in any track event. Huge day 4 Indian athletics. 400mts in 51.4 seconds is no joke and you did it with a smile. #girlpowerpic.twitter.com/iudVlWgyYl
Songbird owners and breeders have denounced the Indonesian government’s recent decision to add hundreds of bird species to the national list of protected species.
Birdkeeping has long been a popular and highly lucrative pastime in the country, with deep cultural roots.
The government has sought to accommodate the owners’ concerns by insisting that enforcement of bans on capturing and trading in the newly protected species will not be applied retroactively.
It has also given owners and breeders a generous window in which to register their birds — an opportunity that conservation activists say could be exploited by people looking to stock up on wild-caught birds.
JAKARTA — Songbird owners in Indonesia are up in arms over the recent inclusion of hundreds of bird species in the national list of protected animals.
The owners plan to protest outside the Ministry of Environment and Forestry in Central Jakarta on Aug. 14, according to the Indonesian Songbird Fan Club (FKMI), a coalition of owners’ groups.
The move comes in response to the ministry’s expansion of the list of protected species to 919, from 677 previously. The majority of the listed species, which are prohibited from being traded or hunted, are birds, at 562, including species typically caught and caged for the popular and highly lucrative songbird trade. These include the white-rumped shama (Kittacincla malabarica), greater green leafbird (Chloropsis sonnerati) and straw-headed bulbul (Pycnonotus zeylanicus).
“We call for the support and participation of all songbird fans, including bird sellers who have been immediately impacted [by the updated regulation],” the head of the songbird owners’ group Indo Jaya Nusantara, who is identified as Christ Murdoch, said in a statement on Omkicau, one of the biggest songbird enthusiast forums in Indonesia.
The FKMI has also taken its movement to Facebook and Twitter, where it is spreading the hashtag #TolakPermenLHK20, short for “Reject ministerial regulation No. 20.”
The group says the ban on buying and selling commonly traded songbirds lacks scientific and cultural bases. It says several species included in the update are currently bred on a large scale, and are far from endangered.
Designating these species as off-limits could put captive-breeding facilities for songbirds out of business, said a man identified as Bang Boy who is the head of BnR, another songbird owners’ group. This new policy, he said as quoted by local media, “has created worry among vendors, captive-bird breeders and songbird fans.”
Birdkeeping is a popular pastime in Indonesia, particularly among the Javanese, in large part because it signifies status and is thought to promote peace of mind. Songbirds are also prized for use in contests, which have spawned thriving networks of clubs, online forums and blogs.
The hobby has grown popular beyond Java, thanks largely to the government’s transmigration program that relocated residents of the densely populated island to other parts of the country. That allowed Javanese customs like birdkeeping to take root in those regions.
But Indonesia is also home to the largest number of threatened bird species in Asia, according to TRAFFIC, a wildlife trade monitoring group.
Bird markets in large cities such as Jakarta are also hotspots for the trade, legal and illegal, in other wildlife species. Jakarta’s Pramuka Market, in particular, is a notorious hub for the illegal wildlife trade. In 2016, TRAFFIC carried a comprehensive survey at the market where the group’s researchers, posing as buyers, counted 87 shops selling a total of 16,160 birds comprising 180 different species.
The white-rumped shama is now a protected songbird species in Indonesia. Image by Koshy Koshy/Flickr.
The songbird owners say their biggest concern is the question of whether the new policy renders illegal their ownership of birds not previously listed as protected.
Indonesia’s conservation act prescribes jail sentences of up to five years and/or fines of up to 100 million rupiah ($6,800) for trading in, keeping, distributing or killing a protected species.
The environment ministry, however, has said the updated list will not be enforced retroactively.
“It’s not true that people who already own or captive-breed [newly protected] birds like white-rumped shama, straw-headed bulbul and such will be charged [under the revised list],” Wiratno, the ministry’s director general for conservation, said in a statement.
“It’s also not true that captive breeding of birds is now prohibited,” he added. “What we want to do, instead, is to manage it and get everything in order so that we can properly document each species’ population in its natural habitat.”
A 1999 government regulation on the natural resource management allows registered facilities to catch a protected species in the wild for captive-breeding purposes and to sell the offspring, which are not designated as protected species. For their part, the facilities must release 10 percent of their captive-born stock back into the wild as part of ex-situ conservation efforts, i.e. outside the species’ native habitat.
“We need to realize that pet ownership must also guarantee the population of songbirds in the wild,” Wiratno said. “We are calling all stakeholders to support in-situ conservation of bird species with the help of ex-situ conservation.”
He added that his office would discuss the ongoing concerns with the songbird owners’ groups.
The ministry has also given owners and breeders of newly protected species time to register with local-level government conservation agencies, known as BKSDAs. During this grace period, they will be required to show ownership documents and captive-breeding permits, as well as have their animals tagged.
“We are establishing posts at every provincial BKSDA to collect data of people who own these newly protected bird species,” Wiratno said. “It’s free and we won’t make the process difficult. It’s going to be easier because we want valid data. I think there are millions of songbird fans in the country.”
The chattering lory is now a protected songbird species in Indonesia. Image by Raphaël Anjou/Flickr.
Wildlife conservation activists have welcomed the expanded list as a major step forward in the protection of Indonesia’s threatened animals and plants, even though enforcement of the policy isn’t retroactive.
However, they have warned of a potential surge in the illegal trade by unscrupulous parties trying to obtain newly protected species and get them registered during the grace period.
“The most challenging task will be to prove whether an animal has been captured before or after the new list came out,” Sunarto, a wildlife ecologist at WWF-Indonesia, told Mongabay. “Another challenge is whether people will voluntarily come forward to the BKSDA and report their ownership of a protected species.”
Sunarto called on the environment ministry to actively raise public awareness about the new list of protected species.
Sofi Mardiah, a wildlife policy program manager at Wildlife Conservation Society-Indonesia, who was involved in discussions with the environment ministry about the grace period, said capturing newly protected species from the wild after the publication of the updated list would constitute a violation of the conservation act.
“The transition period is for those who already own these species before the decree came into effect,” she said.
Sofi added the grace period could start as soon as next week and conclude by the end of the year. “If it runs for too long, then it’s going to confuse people,” she said.
Sofi also said the data collection effort during this period would allow the establishment of a comprehensive, publicly accessible catalogue of pet owners and captive-breeding facilities.
“Legal ownership of protected species often falls into a gray area. This is an opportunity to improve the system and have complete data on domestic sales and transactions [from captive breeders], so monitoring them can be easy,” she said.
Another anticipated outcome from the imposition of the updated list is whether some owners will feel compelled to turn in their now protected animals to the authorities.
“But it’s up to the owners whether they decide to keep or hand over their animals,” Sofi said. “If they decide to hand them over to the authorities, then there are procedures in place to rehabilitate the animal before it gets released back to the wild.”
A study led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the United States shows that wealthy countries’ industrial fishing fleets don’t just dominate Earth’s oceans, they have a virtual monopoly on them, especially on the high seas.
The researchers found that vessels registered to wealthy countries are responsible for 78 percent of trackable industrial fishing in the waters of less-wealthy countries and a whopping 97 percent on the high seas, international waters that are outside of any one country’s jurisdiction.
Five higher-income countries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the industrial fishing effort on the high seas: China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Spain (in order of dominance).
Recent research found that, despite having expanded into 90 percent of the world’s oceans, the industrial fishing fleets of the top 20 fishing countries in the world are catching less than a third of the fish they hauled in prior to 1950.
Findings like these are increasingly calling into question the sustainability of how we exploit global fisheries even as the global human population continues to climb. The more humans there are on the planet, the more we will have to rely on fish as an important source of food — and there are already about 3.2 billion people who rely on fish for 20 percent or more of their animal protein, which has driven 33.1 percent of the world’s fisheries to be operated at “biologically unsustainable levels,” according to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization.
Another study, published earlier this month in the journal Science Advances, helps put a finer point on just why access to declining fisheries could be a major food issue going forward. The study, led by researchers at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB) in the United States, shows that wealthy countries’ industrial fishing fleets don’t just dominate Earth’s oceans, they have a virtual monopoly on them, especially on the high seas.
The researchers found that vessels registered to wealthy countries are responsible for 78 percent of trackable industrial fishing in the waters of less-wealthy countries and a whopping 97 percent on the high seas, international waters that are outside of any one country’s jurisdiction. What’s more, just five higher-income countries dominate the vast majority of industrial fishing on the high seas.
6,500 semi-trucks could fit inside the net of a single large industrial fishing vessel’s trawl net. The researchers focused their analysis on industrial fisheries because of the massive scale of these fisheries. Industrial fisheries also control most of the world’s fish. Graphic courtesy of Douglas McCauley.
“Seafood keeps millions of people on our planet a hair’s breadth away from diseases associated with malnutrition,” Douglas McCauley, an assistant professor in UCSB’s Department of Ecology, Evolution, and Marine Biology and co-lead author of the study, said in a statement. “This means that accurately describing these patterns by which seafood is shared matters as much for our own future as it matters for the future of fish.”
McCauley and team analyzed 22 billion data points from a tracking system that ships use to avoid collisions at sea known as the Automatic Identification System, or AIS for short. The data was processed using machine-learning algorithms by Global Fishing Watch, an NGO that tracks and shares global fishing data in near-real time. This allowed the researchers to determine the amount of industrial fishing done by vessels flagged to higher-income nations — a combination of the countries the World Bank categorizes as “high income” and “upper middle income” — and lower-income nations — the World Bank’s “lower middle income” and “low income” categories combined.
“Advanced machine learning techniques allow us to identify fishing behavior without needing an analyst to look at the tracks of every single vessel,” study co-author David Kroodsma of Global Fishing Watch said in a statement. “It would take an analyst years, if not decades, to make the same number of judgements about vessel behavior.”
The results of the team’s analysis show that the exploitation of global fisheries is highly unequal. Less than 3 percent of industrial fishing on the high seas is conducted by vessels flagged to lower-income nations. When it comes to national waters, or the Exclusive Economic Zones (EEZs) that extend 200 nautical miles from all non-landlocked countries’ coastlines, vessels flagged to higher-income nations are just as dominant, making up some 97 percent of all industrial fishing effort tracked in 2016.
As might be expected, domestic fishing fleets dominate the national waters of wealthier countries, responsible for 89 percent of fishing efforts in the EEZs of higher-income nations and 93 percent in the EEZs of upper middle-income countries. Meanwhile, 84 percent of the industrial fishing effort in lower-income countries’ EEZs is done by vessels flagged to foreign countries — and 78 percent of those vessels are flagged to high- and upper middle-income nations.
Five higher-income countries are responsible for a disproportionate amount of the industrial fishing effort on the high seas: China, Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, and Spain (in order of dominance). Just China and Taiwan together account for about 52 percent of industrial fishing tracked on the high seas, “which, by reference, is an amount approximately 12 and 27 times greater than the high seas fishing effort detected for the United States and Russia (two other large nations), respectively,” the researchers write in the study.
There are only two lower-income nations among the top 20 in terms of the amount of AIS-detectable industrial fishing on the high seas: Vanuatu and Ukraine. And even that may be a deceptive statistic, given that Vanuatu has an open vessel registry, meaning it is what is often referred to as a “flag of convenience” state, and many vessels controlled by higher-income foreign nations are reported to mask their activities by registering in Vanuatu.
China and Taiwan also account for 44 percent of foreign fishing vessels that operate in the EEZs of other countries. “We detected fishing effort from China alone in the marine waters of approximately 40% of all non-landlocked nations,” the researchers write. “China, Taiwan, and South Korea (from high to low) also carried out the highest amounts of foreign fishing effort recorded globally in lower-income EEZs, or approximately 63% of all such effort detected.”
This analysis is especially timely given that the UN is set to convene the first intergovernmental talks for a treaty to protect marine biodiversity and govern the high seas in September. The researchers say they plan to engage with the UN to make their data readily available. The available data on industrial fishing, McCauley and team suggest, is more detailed than for any other natural resource and can help inform decision-making around the design of the treaty
“We cannot track assets in mining or forestry with anywhere near the precision that we are now able to track fishing vessels,” McCauley said. “This is a game changer when it comes to empowering both international leaders and on-the-ground citizens to make intelligent decisions about how best to manage the future of their own marine resources.”
by Mongabay.com on August 14, 2018
CITATION
• McCauley, D. J., Jablonicky, C., Allison, E. H., Golden, C. D., Joyce, F. H., Mayorga, J., & Kroodsma, D. (2018). Wealthy countries dominate industrial fishing. Science advances, 4(8), eaau2161. doi:10.1126/sciadv.aau2161
