Michael Richardson, for the Straits Times 4 Jun 08;
THE United Nations is holding a summit in Rome this week to find solutions to the global food crisis. The focus is on the grain shortages and high prices that have recently caused mass protests and political instability in Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Improvements in food production, particularly in poor countries, are urgently needed. Research and development in agriculture has long been neglected.
But there is another looming food crisis - this one at sea, as too many fishing boats chase too few fish. It has not yet attracted much attention from Asian governments and policymakers. But it will in future, as the shortage of fish intensifies and prices rise.
Asia has the world's largest fishing fleet, with 42 per cent of registered tonnage. Major Asian fishing powers include China, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Thailand.
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) says that these vessels, often subsidised by governments, have twice the capacity needed to extract what the oceans can sustainably produce. The result is 'a vicious circle: as catches per vessel fall, profits plummet, and fishers overfish to maintain supplies, causing depletion of stocks and endangering long-term availability'.
This is a global crisis but its implications for Asia are particularly serious. Fish is a staple food in the region and a major source of protein. The ADB predicts that demand for fish in Asia will reach about 69 million tonnes by 2010 and account for 60 per cent of global fish demand, compared to 53 per cent in 1990.
Although Japan will remain the biggest fish consumer on a per capita basis, China will take by far the largest amount of fish by 2010 - an estimated 28 million tonnes. Can wild fisheries and aqua-
culture meet the demand from Asia and the rest of the globe?
The UN Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) has issued a grim snapshot of the state of world fisheries. It warned of pressures on stocks, adding that this was unsustainable. It said 52 per cent of world fish stocks were fully exploited, compared with 47 per cent in 2002, while nearly 25 per cent were over-exploited. Seven of the top 10 marine fish species were already stretched to their limits or in decline.
The UN agency forecast that world consumption of fish may rise by more than 25 per cent to 179 million tonnes by 2015, underscoring the urgent need to rebuild depleted wild fish stocks while raising coastal farm fish production. Yet the latter, now widely practised in Asia, is problematic because it can cause environmental damage.
Over the past few decades, coastal aquaculture in Asia, especially shrimp farming, has led to the destruction of mangrove forests, which are vital for filtering nutrients, cleansing water and protecting coastlines from floods and storms.
In the Philippines, for example, it has been estimated that as much as 65 per cent of its original 450,000ha of mangroves have been converted to other uses, chiefly brackish water fish ponds.
Effluent from aquaculture ponds and pens is frequently released, polluting surrounding waterways. The effluent includes fertiliser, undigested feed and biological waste from the fish. Farmed fish that escape into the wild can threaten native species by acting as predators, competing for food, or inter-breeding and changing the genetic pools of wild organisms.
Increasing demand for animal feed with high fish-protein content is also contributing to pressure on wild stocks. Meanwhile, imposing quotas so that over-fished areas can recover is unpopular and difficult to enforce.
Can Asia meet future fish demand? The ADB says that depends on strong action being taken to improve wild fisheries resource management, develop aquaculture in a responsible way and better protect the environment. Otherwise, the region could face a serious shortage of fish.
One promising avenue would be to reduce waste. Wild-fishing operations capture, kill and discard a massive quantity of by-catch - fish that are the wrong size, commercially unattractive or otherwise undesirable. The boats concentrate on filling their freezers with only the most profitable fish.
The International Food Policy Research Institute in Washington DC has calculated that more than 20 million tonnes of fish and other marine organisms are discarded each year. This is the equivalent of nearly 20 per cent of the annual amount of fish eaten in the world. Asia can no longer afford waste on this scale.
The writer is a security and energy specialist at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.
