If you’re a fan of clarity of vision and decisive action, the government report published on Wednesday entitled West Coast Fisheries: Sharing the Risks and Benefits is something of a disappointment.
Make no mistake–there are breakthroughs. Important breakthroughs. But what has been missed out is nothing short of staggering.
In attempting to address social justice and economic issues that have plagued constructive discussions about the future of British Columbia’s (BC) waters for decades, the ideas at the core of the report’s conclusions represent nothing less than a seismic shift in government thinking on how to manage BC’s fisheries resource, and perhaps even how Canada approaches resource use in general.
Its a very good thing, and it should get all our support. Even from conservationists. Even from people outside BC.
Why? Because however you think the future of the world’s living ecosystems should be approached–whether you think management is even an appropriate term, from a practical and social justice standpoint, issues such as historical rights of access and the economics of what keeps coastal communities glued together, indeed the economics that keep countries glued together cannot be ignored.
All the evidence we have seen so far indicates that conservation efforts are most successful when they are driven from the hearts and minds of the people who already feel some kind of personal connection to the area that you are focused on conserving.
For a great many reasons it’s not a practical or desirable aim to simply switch all resource use off overnight. Even if it were possible, it would destroy lives and cultures and is simply not tenable in a world where, in truth we all depend on resource use for the time being. Accept this and the question becomes–who do you want to have doing the harvesting such that we can all work together towards the best possible future?
The answer is that you want it to be people who care. People who care about the future abundance of the area because they live there. People who care about the way in which harvesting is conducted because at the end of the day the produce has their name on it. Local owner-operators. Do that and you have at least some chance of effective stewardship.
This is the part that Canada has historically got wrong. No-one should be sentimental about what happened in Canada’s great natural wilderness before current management strategies were implemented. Canada’s history has shown that greed can get a grip at any scale, and individuals and small-scale operators are not immune. However, the opposing strategy–a process of rationalization that denied access to indigenous peoples and cut-out owner-operators in favor of a few, large anonymous concerns–amounted to nothing more than an abdication of duty and a breach of public trust. An error that has resulted in what at this point looks a lot like wholesale destruction. This didn’t just happen in the fisheries, you could say that it has been Canada’s national strategy when it comes to resource extraction of any kind for more than a century.
All the evidence we have seen so far indicates that conservation efforts are most successful when they are driven from the hearts and minds of the people who already feel some kind of personal connection to the area that you are focused on conserving.
Wade through the document published Wednesday, and you’ll realize that here at least, this thinking has been reversed.
Most importantly there is strategic intent to restore equitable access to indigenous groups and small-scale owner-operators.
There are also key measures to address many of the massive inequities and functional problems of the disastrous Individual Transferable Quota system that is currently in place– a system that has commoditized fishing quota such that smaller operators must lease quota from large-scale owners at rates that cut their margins to very low levels.
The importance of all this cannot be understated.
Effective ocean conservation requires the support and participation of everyone on the coast and, wherever you go fishermen are a big part of that, not least because they form the economic backbone of most coastal communities. Reengineering the system so that local communities get the economic benefit of any resources that are extracted is massively important.
The news on this front is so welcome in fact that it makes what’s missing glaringly obvious. There is no meaningful discussion of how the will of the Canadian people should be brought to bear on conservation targets, and a statement by Christina Burridge, Executive Director of the BC Seafood Alliance that management of West Coast fisheries has been “enormously successful on the conservation front” seems complacent in the extreme given the plight of apex predators in the Salish Sea caused in part by a dearth of chinook salmon, and the not-yet recovered herring stocks in the region. The report smacks of a process and an attitude still mired in an antiquated closed door approach– some people have been allowed back into the room who should never have been shut-out, but there is no sense here that discussions around what happens in BC waters will be subject to much widespread public debate, or even comment by anyone other than vested interests. No testimony from independent researchers or scientists is included.
These omissions suggest an unhealthy separation of discussions addressing economic and social justice issues from discussions on environmental concerns. You can’t arrive at any one of those things without discussing the other two, yet the subject of environmental targets has been pushed aside here. Talk of the DFO making “protection of fisheries resources” their “paramount goal” is nowhere near enough. “Protection of fisheries resources” doesn’t sound like a commitment to return biomass to historic levels or to quantitative targets of any kind. If there is a failure to bake-in improvements on how environmental targets are defined and achieved a historic opportunity will have been missed.
Finally, the report is noticeably vague on how any of its recommendations should be implemented.
Having said all that, the approach here does represent a massive step in the right direction on issues that we all should care about. Even Conservationists, even those outside BC.
