Brussels, 31st December 2009. The call for responses on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy closed on 31st December 2009 and SAR contributed several submissions.
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Copenhagen, 19th December 2009. The failure of COP15 to progress the issue of GHG emissions from shipping should be seen as a green light for the EU to push ahead with an emissions trading scheme for ships visiting EU ports.
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Copenhagen, 17th December 2009. With less than two days of Copenhagen climate negotiations to go NGOs are calling on the EU to fight back on a deal that could be key to billions in climate finance for the poorest countries.
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Brussels, 16th December 2009. After lengthy and difficult discussions, the Council reached agreement on fishing opportunities for 2010 on 15 December.
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Brussels, 16th December 2009. The conclusions from Seas At Risk’s conference on capacity reduction and fleet restructuring can be downloaded from a link to this article in the form of a report.
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Copenhagen, 14th December 2009. A deal on including aviation and shipping emissions in the Copenhagen climate agreement is being blocked by China, India, Saudi Arabia and The Bahamas, putting the 2 degrees Celsius target and $30bn of adaptation funding at risk.
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Brussels, 1st December 2009. With the coming into force of the Lisbon Treaty today, the decision-making procedure under the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) has changed significantly.
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New York, 4th December 2009. The UN General Assembly calls upon all high seas fishing nations to intensify their efforts to protect vulnerable deep-sea life in the international waters of the world’s oceans.
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Brussels, 24th November 2009. The forthcoming climate negotiations in Copenhagen provides the world's leaders with the opportunity to reach an agreement that is truly a show of leadership.
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Brussels, 27th November 2009. Environmental NGOs working on GHG emissions from marine and aviation bunkers have published a joint position ahead of the Copenhagen climate change summit.
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Brussels, 25th November 2009. A European Parliament resolution on the EU strategy for the Copenhagen Conference on Climate Change has upped the stakes on targets for marine bunker emissions.
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Brussels, 20th November 2009. The EU Fisheries Ministers failed to reach any agreement on a new technical measures regulation at their November meeting.
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Recife, 15th November 2009. ICCAT slashes blue fin tuna quotas by a third, thereby rejecting a complete ban.
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London, 9th November 2009. Seas At Risk is currently participating in the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) Annual Meeting. Opening statement from SAR,WWF and DSCC can be found at the bottom of this article.
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Barcelona, 6th November 2009. Among the few positive signs from Barcelona, was tangible progress on emissions from the aviation and shipping sectors, with the debate moving into real negotiation mode and Parties coalescing around options.
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Luxembourg, 28th October 2009. Twelve years after Kyoto EU states have agreed a 2020 target for GHG emissions from shipping that allows a substantial increase in emissions over 1990 levels.
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Luxembourg, 21st October 2009. The Dutch government has urged action on marine plastic debris.
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Luxembourg, 20th October 2009. Conclusions of the Fisheries Council meeting in Luxembourg on 19 and 20 October.
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Brussels, 15th October 2009. Seas At Risk held its annual conference on 21st October on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy.
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Brussels, 15th October 2009. The European Commission has published a progress report on the EU’s Integrated Maritime Policy (IMP). The report evaluates actions undertaken since 2007 to date, and outlines strategic policy orientations of the future of the IMP.
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Brussels, 12th October 2009. SAR has teamed up with the Fish Secretariat to prepare monthly briefings ahead of each Agriculture and Fisheries Council for Fisheries ministers across Europe.
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Bangkok, 9th October 2009. The text to emerge from the most recent round of UNFCCC negotiations suggests campaigners face an up hill battle to get a progressive agreement on bunkers in Copenhagen in December.
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Bangkok, 6th October 2009. After an earlier call by the EU for Copenhagen to set bunker targets EU states have failed to produce a detailed proposal on figures in Bangkok.
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Brussels, 29th September 2009. 150 participants attended the joint OCEAN2012/WWF conference “Regional Fisheries Management: How to make it work for fisheries and the environment”.
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Brussels, 28th September 2009. President Barroso says that the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy is an opportunity for "root and branch reform" during the Spring Alliance conference.
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Brussels, 22nd September 2009. Six countries in the Mediterranean region have stood in the way of co-sponsoring a proposal on a ban on trading blue fin tuna.
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New York, 21 August 2009. The UN Secretary General Review of UN resolution 61/105 was published today.
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Baiona, 16th September 2009. Environmental organisations present at the Ministerial gathering of 47 countries from five continents emphasize the fisheries ministers’ recognition that “a new scenario for the seas and the oceans” is urgently needed.
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Baiona, 11th September 2009. The 5th World Conference of Fisheries Ministers will take place in Bayona, Spain on Tuesday 16th September. More than 60 Fisheries Ministers from five continents will meet to adopt a ministerial declaration bound to guide the future policy of sustainable fishing worldwide.
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Brussels, 8th September 09. Commissioners Joe Borg and Stavros Dimas have backed a proposal to suspend international trade of Atlantic and Mediterranean bluefin tuna to protect ailing stocks from overfishing.
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Sweden, 19th August 2009. Many Swedish fishermen have applied for subsidies to scrap their boats. In the UK it is estimated that 20% of west coast fishermen would welcome a similar scheme.
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Washington, August 20th 2009. July was the hottest month for the world's oceans in almost 130 years of record-keeping. The average water temperature worldwide was 17 Celsius, according to the National Climatic Data Center, the branch of the U.S. government that keeps world weather records. June was only slightly cooler, while August could set another record, scientists say. The previous record was set in July 1998 during a powerful El Nino in the Pacific.
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Los Angeles, 5th August 2009. Marine scientists from California are venturing out into the Pacific to find out more about the "Great Pacific Garbage Patch".
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Paris, Tuesday 4th August 2009. According to SeafoodSource.com, the French government will invest more than EUR 7 million in a range of projects aimed at reducing the fishing fleet’s fuel consumption.
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Copenhangen, 4th August 2009. Svend Auken, Danish environmental minister from 1993-2001 and long-time MP for the Social Democrats died in the early hours of Tuesday 4th August 2009.
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Marine pest species costing billions in damage to fisheries, coastal communities and infrastructure are spreading as the world’s shipping nations continue to largely neglect bringing into effect an international treaty setting out requirements for consistent handling and treatment of ships’ ballast water.
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Scotland, 29 July 2009. A new scientific discussion paper released yesterday outlines mounting evidence that human activity is changing the world’s oceans in profound and damaging ways.
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Germany is the latest country to support Monaco's call to list Atlantic bluefin tune on Appendix I of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES.
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Brussels, 17th July 2009. President Sarkozy has announced France's support for a ban on international trade of bluefin tuna. Monaco and the UK have supported France's position.
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London, 17th July 2009. Despite growing pressure from the UNFCCC and a strong push by the International Maritime Organisation’s Secretary General, the IMO has made little progress this week on developing measures to reduce GHG emissions from shipping.
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Brussels, 25th June 2009. The Pew Environment Group and EU Transparency launched www.fishsubsidy.org, a new website dedicated to presenting data on fishing subsidies between 1994 and 2006.
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London, 13th July 2009. A meeting in London this week will be the last chance for the IMO to agree on GHG emission mitigation ahead of the crucial UN climate conference in Copenhagen in December.
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Brussels, 25th June 2009. The OSPAR Commission’s annual meeting in Brussels on 22-25 June did not adopt the Charlie Gibbs Marine Protected Area, despite an earlier agreement by all Contracting Parties to do so.
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The world’s seas are gradually filling with an increasing volume of waste, with plastic making up the single largest part of pollution in the marine environment.
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One of the priorities for the Swedish Presidency of the EU, which takes over the presidency in 1 July, is environmental degradation in and around the Baltic Sea.
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France, 30 June 2009. Surfrider is currently working on a study to evaluate the impact of the new European directive (2006/7/CE) on the classification of European beaches.
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Brussels, 17th June 2009. The Spring Alliance is a movement created by three civil society organisations, the European Environmental Bureau, the European Trade Union Confederation and Social Platform, later also joined by Concord. Although formed and steered by these four organisations, the alliance is supported by a large network of organisations.
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Overfishing and other human activities are encouraging giant jellyfish to prosper and take over parts of the sea. Jellyfish are normally kept in check by fish, which eat small jellyfish and compete for jellyfish food such as zooplankton, researchers said. But, with overfishing, jellyfish numbers are increasing.
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London 24 June 2009. The Marine Conservation Society, a SAR member is working to prevent scallop dredging damaging current European Marine Sites.
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According to a new investigation of the greenhouse gas’s role in ice ages over the millennia, Carbon dioxide in the earth’s atmosphere has risen to its highest level in at least 2.1 million years. Researchers including Columbia University’s Baerbel Hoenisch drilled into the ocean floor off the coast of Africa to remove shells of ancient marine animals called foraminifera that contain climate records, according to the study published today on Science’s Web site. Previous evidence of CO2 concentrations found in columns of Arctic ice go back just 800,000 years.
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The famous oceanographer Sylvia Earle has won the 2009 TED prize for her inspirational work at the frontier of deep ocean exploration for four decades.
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Bonn, 11th June 2009. In an attempt to break the political deadlock preventing action on GHG emissions from international shipping and aviation, Australia has called for reduction targets for these sectors to be agreed at the Copenhagen climate talks in December.
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Brussels, 8th June 2009. Today sees the launch of OCEAN2012, a new coalition of NGOs dedicated to transforming European fisheries policy. Its mission is to prevent over-fishing and enhance human well-being, and Seas At Risk is one of its founding members.
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London, 1st June 2009. The world's scientific academies have issued a warning that ocean acidification must be on the agenda when countries attempt to forge a new global deal on cutting emissions in Copenhagen in December.
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London, 1st June 2009. A UK Parliamentary Committee has branded the IMO "not fit for purpose" and the shipping industry as "irresponsible" for not doing more to tackle GHG emissions from ships.
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Bonn, 19th May 2009. The latest negotiating text for the UNFCCC climate change negotiations has been published and includes draft content on marine bunkers.
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London, 22nd May 2009. A coalition of NGOs from around the world are calling on the International Maritime Organisation to agree binding GHG emission reduction targets and measures for shipping ahead of December's UNFCCC climate meeting in Copenhagen.
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London, 20th May 2009. A newly published International Maritime Organisation study shows that technical and operational measures could reduce CO2 emissions from shipping by up to 75%, with a cut of around 20% possible without additional costs.
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London, 17th May 2009. A new direct action group - Ship of Fuels - has been created to raise the profile of shipping's contribution to climate change and to urge governments to include shipping in the global climate deal to be reached in Copenhagen in December.
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Brussels, 19th May 2009. As part of its work to include transport bunker fuels in the December 2009 Copenhagen climate change agreement, Seas At Risk has signed up to a joint-NGO submission to the International Civil Aviation Authority (ICAA).
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Brussels, June 2008. European NGOs Seas At Risk, BirdLife, Greenpeace, IFAW, Oceana and WWF have issued a common statement on the new European Maritime Policy, advocating that environmental legislation, namely the Marine Strategy Framework Directive, should be at the heart of all maritime initiatives.
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Brussels, 16th July 2008. The EU’s Council of Fisheries Ministers yesterday agreed an emergency response to the fuel price “crisis” that has the right aims but includes too many potentially counter-productive measures.
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Oslo, 27th June 2008. China, Saudi Arabia, Brazil, and India have continued to obstruct and undermine every substantial proposal for tackling GHG emissions from shipping at an IMO meeting in Oslo his week.
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Brussels, 24th June 2008. Environment groups welcome the Fisheries Council's decision on IUU fisheries, but strongly oppose the proposed measures to tackle rising fuel prices and regret that no precautionary measures to freeze the footprint of deep water fisheries have been adopted.
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London, 7th April 2008. Last week the International Maritime Organisation successfully negotiated an end to the use by ships of polluting residual heavy fuel oil but made little progress on greenhouse gas emissions.
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London, 31st March 2008. The 57th session of the IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee starts today in London, and GHG emissions from shipping is a key item on the agenda.
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Brussels, 23rd May 2008. With fishermen in France, Spain and Portugal pressing their governments for state aid to help with rising fuel bills, Seas At Risk is calling on all European governments to refuse to provide such environmentally harmful subsidies.
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Santa Barbara, 14th February 2008. A global map of total human impact on the oceans shows that no area of the ocean is unaffected and over 40% experiences high levels of human influence.
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Brussels, 19th December 2007. Political short-termism triumphed again last night when the Fisheries Council continued its annual tradition of ignoring scientific advice and authorising continued over-fishing.
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Brussels, 11th December 2007. A battle of wills between the Council and the European Parliament ended today with the adoption of a Marine Strategy Directive unfit for the purpose of protecting European Seas and acting as the “environmental pillar” of the EU’s new maritime policy.
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London, 16th November 2007. The annual meeting of the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission ended today without an agreement to implement the UN General Assembly resolution on bottom fishing.
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Brussels, 27th October 2007. The European Commission proposal for a Regulation to end destructive fishing practices in certain unregulated areas of the high seas and the related Communication are a welcome first step towards the protection of deep sea biodiversity and the strengthening of deep sea fisheries management.
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Brussels, 10th October 2007. Yesterday the European Parliament continued its defence of a strong Marine Strategy Directive; today the Commission published a Communication on an EU maritime policy promoting exactly the kind of maritime industry development the environmental consequences of which the Directive is intended to combat.
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Brussels, 24th July 2007. With today’s adoption of a regulation on “de minimis” (state) aid, the European Commission has opened the door to fuel subsidies in the fisheries sector.
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London, 15th June. An extraordinary meeting of the North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (London, 13-14/6/07) has failed to act on a series of crucial issues, instead agreeing temporary measures until it meets again in November.
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Rome, 24th May 2007. "Clean Up the Med" is the largest voluntary operation that Legambiente has organised in the Mediterranean since 1995. On May 25th, 26th and 27th over 1,200 coastal localities will be freed from rubbish.
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Washington DC, July 2008. In a new report the World Bank and the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation calculate the losses of the world's fishing fleet due to poor management and depleted fish stocks at 50 billion US dollars per year.
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Bremen, 7th May 2007. The conclusions of a stakeholder conference on the EU maritime policy held in Bremen last week appear to have been high-jacked by shipping and port interests.
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Renaca, 4th May 2007. Up to a quarter of the world's high seas are to be protected from bottom trawling, following a landmark agreement by nations fishing in the South Pacific. Similar action is urgently needed in the N.E. Atlantic.
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London, 12th July. Panama today announced that it had completed the process of national ratification of the AFS Convention, ensuring that the Convention will enter into force during 2008.
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Brussels, 23rd April 2007. In a joint letter to European transport ministers, Seas At Risk and WWF are calling on those EU states that have not done so to ratify the AFS Convention and finally bring into force global regulations banning the use of TBT-based antifouling paints.
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Lyme Bay, 23rd January 2007. A storm, a dramatic rescue and now a broken ship beached at a World Heritage Site with its cargo littering the foreshore.
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Brussels, 21st December 2006. EU fisheries ministers today continued their annual Christmas tradition of ignoring scientific advice, authorising continued over-fishing, and condemning fish stocks and fishers to a bleak future.
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Brussels, 18th December 2006. Environment ministers attending today’s EU Environment Council meeting in Brussels have agreed a draft version of the EU’s Marine Strategy Directive that spells tragedy for the marine environment.
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New York, 8th December 2006. The United Nations’ General Assembly (UNGA) concluded its annual debate on oceans and sustainable fisheries today with the formal adoption of two resolutions, one of which includes controversial measures for high-seas bottom trawling.
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New York, 23rd November 2006. Hopes for effective UN action to protect vulnerable high-seas habitats from bottom trawling were destroyed today as a small but influential group of fishing nations led by Iceland blocked a compromise agreement on measures that carried the support of most other fishing nations, of conservationists and of the marine scientific community.
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Brussels, 22nd November 2006. After two days of Fisheries Council negotiations EU ministers have agreed a typical EU fudge and gambled that deep-sea stocks will survive another 4-5 years of over-fishing. Seas At Risk condemns ministers for their lack of political courage, and is shocked at their willingness to gamble with the future of whole ecosystems.
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London, 17th November 2006. After a week of negotiations, the inter-governmental commission responsible for managing deep-water fishing in the North East Atlantic made some progress on improving the protection of deep-water fish and corals, but allowed the tougher decisions to be hijacked by the short-term fisheries interests of isolated Contracting Parties.
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Brussels, 29th January 2007. The Commission today published a highly critical review of deep-water fisheries management, but failed to propose an appropriate regulatory response.
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Strasbourg, 14th November 2006. The European Parliament today called for a determined Europe-wide effort to combat marine pollution and the impact of destructive and unsustainable fishing, shipping, offshore oil & gas, and coastal and offshore construction activities, all of which present an escalating threat to Europe’s seas.
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London, 3rd November 2006. A study in the November 3rd edition of Science (Worm et al, 2006) has drawn a clear link between declining biodiversity and the provision of ecosystem services, concluding that “marine biodiversity loss is increasingly impairing the ocean’s ability to provide food, maintain water quality, and recover from perturbations.”
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London, 13th November 2006. The North East Atlantic Fisheries Commission (NEAFC) will hold its 2006 Annual Meeting from the 13-17th November. On the agenda is a prohibition for orange roughy fisheries (pictured) and a freeze on the expansion of deep-sea fisheries into new, un-fished areas of the North East Atlantic.
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Brussels, 11th October 2006. The first step in the process of strengthening the European Commission's proposal for a Marine Strategy Directive (MSD) was taken by the Environment Committee of the European Parliament on Tuesday (10th October).
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Lisbon, 31st May 2006. Will the Government of Portugal, one of the European countries that holds the key to resolving the high seas trawling controversy at the United Nations, make a move to secure a strong majority in favour of a high seas bottom trawl moratorium within the European Union? It is too early to say, but there was a ray of hope yesterday in Lisbon at the DSCC Workshop "High Seas Marine Biodiversity: The Bottom Trawling Challenge and the Role of Portugal", attended by eminent representatives of Portugal's academic, policy and NGO community, together with senior government officials.
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Brussels, 10th May 2007. A picture taken from space graphically illustrates the damage that is being caused around the world by trawling, one of the most environmentally damaging and energy intensive of fishing techniques.
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Brussels, 5th December 2006. Despite consistent advice from fisheries scientists over the last 5 years to stop the catching of cod*, the Commission has again proposed that European fisheries ministers agree fishing opportunities for cod, and reduced those opportunities by just 25% compared with 2006.
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Gothenburg, May 5th 2006. Ministers today ensured the sad end to a once proud process of international cooperation to protect the North Sea. Today’s special meeting, the last in a long series of interministerial North Sea Conference events stretching back to 1984, was convened in recognition of the very significant threat still posed to the environment of the North Sea by the shipping and fishing industries.
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Brussels, 29th September 2006. Seas At Risk and the DSCC today accused the European Commission of greenwashing a set of proposals designed to undermine the growing support for a high seas moratorium on bottom trawl fishing.
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Brussels, 19th October 2006. Seas At Risk is reaching the end of a period of review and reorganisation and a number of exciting changes will strengthen the organisation and improve the effectiveness of its future work.
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Gothenburg, 26th June 2008. Twelve of Sweden’s biggest importers and exporters have signed a letter of intent that will lead to the collection of data and use of environmental criteria in their shipping procurement.
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Brussels, 22nd April 2009. The European Commission has published its Green Paper on the Reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. The document contains an analysis of the problems underlying the current policy and provides a basis for discussions on reform.
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London, 11th March 2009. Commercial fishing in the north-east Atlantic could be harming deep-sea fish populations a kilometre below the deepest reach of fishing trawlers, according to a 25-year study undertaken by a consortium of research institutes.
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Brussels, 3rd March 2009. The Council of Ministers has rejected a Commission proposal to count ship emissions towards national totals under a new global climate treaty if the IMO fails to agree reductions.
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London, 10th February 2009. The Marine Conservation Society, Seas At Risk's member in the UK, has joined Google Earth's new Oceans initiative. Their contribution is a featured map layer showing where in the world some of the most sustainably-sourced kinds of fish come from.
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Brussels, 28th January 2009. The European Commission today released its proposals for an EU stance at the forthcoming Copenhagen United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) meeting.
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Brussels, 12th December 2008. Today’s agreement by EU leaders on the most contentious aspects of the EU’s planned response to climate change, known as the climate and energy package, has been condemned as a failure by environment groups who are calling for the Parliament to reject it.
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Brussels, 5th November 2008. A one day Seas At Risk conference on Climate and the Oceans ended today with a clear and urgent signal to the shipping & fishing industries that they must do more to reduce their GHG emissions and help tackle climate change.
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London, 13th October 2008. The Secretary General of the International Maritime Organisation last week described the impacts of climate change as an “Orwellian” prospect, but failed to convince developing nations of the need for IMO action on greenhouse gas emissions from ships.
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