Translator: Elena Montrasio Reviewer: John Ockey
If we peeked into the future,
and looked at fishing communities as being the ones who make decisions
on how the world consumes seafood,
we'd see a radically different world,
to the one we inhabit today.
We'd see a world
that produced food to work with nature,
a world where food was produced by local people,
for local markets;
a world where food was nourishing, diverse and culturally appropriate.
We'd live in a world that valued its food providers;
a world that safeguarded its rivers, its lakes, and its oceans;
a world that opposed the corporatization of food for profit,
and embraced the idea of food as a universal human right.
Now, I'd like us to keep this vision,
this image of food producers being at the center of our food systems.
And I'd like us to come back to it today.
Now, there's no denying the fact that the oceans are in trouble.
This study of the trends over the last 40 years
points towards one of decline.
Every successive food and agricultural organization report
shows that there are more fish now in the overfished category,
in the fully-fished category,
where today, as for the latest report,
one in three fish comes from an overexploited source.
During the same time -
During the same time of decline,
we have geographically moved our fishing operations
away from the coastline.
The reds in this image display how we were fishing in the 1950s,
and by 2015,
we had used technology and fossil fuels to power fishing vessels
to fish from the South Pole to the North Pole,
and across all the oceans.
Now, if we add the effects of climate change,
with ocean warming,
ocean acidification,
sea level rise
and the cascading effects that this has on weather and marine wildlife,
then it does seem that everything related to the oceans is gloom and doom.
And we haven't yet spoken about the massive problem of plastic pollution.
Now, seafood plays a very important role in global trade.
So, along with that importance, and the narratives of food security,
sustainable development, poverty alleviation, and ocean health,
a range of actors have begun to come together.
Now, the declining trends, the geographical scope of fishing,
and the international trades
means that there's a mismanagement in the ocean,
and a recent World Bank report lists the economic losses
from this mismanagement at 83 billion dollars a year.
Now, these actors, ranging from state governments to philanthropists,
to investment bankers, conservation organizations,
educational institutions,
all look at solutions
as being able to transact business with the ocean better.
This 83-billion-dollar loss, if we can make that up,
then it is believed that we'll be able to solve
the problems of the oceans.
And therefore, using technology to trace the journey of the fish
from the oceans to the plate, has come to the forefront.
Now, looking at the problem and therefore the solutions from this lens
relies on one basic belief.
And that is that population, and therefore humanity,
is responsible for destroying the oceans.
This leads to the term "overfishing," or too many fishers chasing too few fish.
And it results in what is possibly the most cited example of theory,
known as the Global Tragedy of the Commons.
And therefore, monitoring the contact between humanity and the oceans
becomes paramount,
and in extreme situations, even severing that contact completely.
So, today's technology increasingly uses surveillance, enforcement,
satellite mapping, sustainable seafood labels,
risk management tools to supply-chain management,
blockchain technology, and the list goes on.
Seafood traceability, that's the buzzword today.
Now, in my past life as a conservationist, as at least I used to like to call myself,
this was my existence,
taking these problems, amplifying the crisis.
I used to believe
that if I just shouted out louder the crises of the oceans,
we'd be able to wake everyone else up,
and get towards moving towards these solutions.
But then something changed.
On the 6th of April 2015, I was on a campaign,
when the illegal fishing vessel in question was scuttled.
It sank to the bottom of the ocean, and while it was sinking,
I had a chance to rescue the fishermen who were on that boat.
I spent about seven hours with them,
and during that time something became really apparent.
These men were the very antithesis of the evil humanity
which was destroying the oceans.
Intrigued, I joined some researchers and I went and met these men.
And I sat in on interviews, every day, listening to the same stories,
stories of unpaid wages, of inhuman working conditions,
of indenture, of abandonment, of trafficking, of abuse,
and at times even of murder.
It began to prick my conscience, that for all these years,
I had blamed them for the destruction of the oceans,
without ever having a chance to speak to them.
Now, overfishing is a problem.
There's no denying that overfishing is a problem.
But focusing all of our attention on overfishing takes the focus away
from the consumers, from the political systems,
from the economic model that drives overfishing,
and places it squarely
on the people who are in contact with the oceans every single day.
Who is overfishing?
Why are they overfishing?
Where are they overfishing?
When I took some of these questions and went back to my work,
a different kind of trend began to emerge.
In 2015, the Stockholm Resilience Center,
which is a very influential scientific institution,
came up with a report that said that just 13 companies
control the trade of 40% of the world's seafood products.
In the words of the authors,
"These companies,
with their capacity of catching more fish than some of the nations of the world,
dominate all segments of the seafood industry,
operate through a global network of subsidiaries
and are profoundly involved in fisheries and aquaculture decision-making."
Their importance was considered such, that the report elevated them
to the position of a keystone actor,
crucial to the functioning of the entire global seafood trade.
And yet, there are men, hundreds of thousands of men,
who are barely making a living.
Bring that closer to home.
As for the latest census,
India has a fisherfolk population of a little more than 40 lakh.
Fishers, fisherfolk,
or small-scale fisheries, as they are known,
are fishers for whom fishing is an occupation through ancestry.
It forms not just an occupation;
it is a cultural identity, and the sustenance of that community.
Globally, small-scale fishers account for two-thirds of the fish
that is directly consumed for food.
They employ 90% of the workforce of fish harvesters and fish workers,
And in addition to their local food systems,
and the entire value chain of fisheries,
they sustain the livelihoods of millions.
So it's apparent that small-scale fishers catching the majority of the world's fish
have diverse ways of catching that fish,
a system in which women's labor is valued,
and which sustains local economies.
And yet, they have not been elevated to the position of keystone actors.
Instead, under the dominant narrative of overfishing,
of too many fishers chasing too few fish,
they have been relegated to shouldering the blame of emptying the oceans.
Who is overfishing?
Why are they overfishing?
Where are they overfishing?
These questions never get asked.
In our urgency to resolve the crisis,
we stopped at just accepting overfishing,
but not questioning the driver of overfishing.
I started this talk by asking us to imagine
food producers as being at the center of the food systems on this planet.
But if we have to imagine, and make that reality,
then we have to ask ourselves some difficult questions.
Why is it that we elevate corporations,
but put down communities?
Why do we refer to them with words as "teaching them,"
"helping them," "educating them," "uplifting them"?
How do we value traditional and indigenous knowledge?
Why do we look at people as being in need of modernization,
just so they can transact business better?
Therefore, the political act
of inverting top-down technocratic solutions
through bottom-up democratic solutions
doesn't rest with conservationists, it doesn't rest with scientists,
and it definitely doesn't rest with big businesses.
It rests with all of us.
Because what drives overfishing
is the political and the power inequalities in society.
And therefore, we must locate ourselves in these power inequalities
of patriarchy, of race, of religion, of class,
of cast, of sexuality, of gender, of disability.
And we must break these power structures down.
We must unlearn biases that these power structures have given to us.
If we want fishing communities and food producers
to be at the center of decision-making,
then we have to actively vacate that center.
We have to remove ourselves from top-down decision-making positions,
and then, wherever we position ourselves,
we have to feel discomfort.
Saving the oceans cannot be another business option,
it cannot be a well-paying, comfortable job,
because that, itself, is a part of the problem.
To this team, it's transcendence.
"Transcendence" comes from the Latin words "trans,"
meaning "beyond,"
and "scandare," meaning "to climb."
But if we are to truly resolve the problems of the oceans,
then we have to go beyond comfort,
while actively climbing down from positions of power,
because only then
will we be actually dealing with the power inequalities
that drive overfishing, and drive the destruction of the oceans.
And once we start doing that,
we'll begin to get a sense of how hollow
2-degree technical limits to climate change sound;
how corporations and their conversations blur the lines between profit and people.
Our sense of crisis is manipulated, and matched.
So, let's once and for all challenge ourselves,
challenge our power structures,
and once and for all put an end
to capitalism which keeps big businesses
and the historically dominant in positions of power.
Thank you.
(Applause)