A new report, out today, states that the Commonwealth of Nations can be a crucial instrument in turning round the world-wide crisis in marine fish stocks.
The product of a two year Commonwealth Fisheries Programme, it calls on Commonwealth leaders meeting in Trinidad in November to set up a Ministerial Task Force to harness the resources of 53 member states - only six of which are landlocked - and take initiatives to conserve a key source of food and income.
Twenty six expert authors, in "From Hook to Plate: the State of Marine Fisheries - A Commonwealth Perspective" provide a state-of-the-art analysis of capture fisheries, both deep sea and near-shore, and their related institutional, governance and human issues. With catches declining in many seas since the mid ’90s, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75 per cent of all fisheries are now being exploited at or beyond their maximum sustainable yield. Two authors, Sumaila and Cheung, have produced a graph which shows a fall of around a quarter in the total fish take between 1970 and 2005 for the exclusive economic zones of Commonwealth states.
The report’s editors, Richard Bourne and Mark Collins, argue that the situation is serious, but not irreversible.
<Bloged starts>
I managed to catch up with Mark during the book launch and collared him with a few questions about the book. If you can’t see the audio player below, just open this link to hear it.
<Bloged finishes>
They call for:
Application of proven management solutions, such as lower catch quotas, and rights-based community management
Replacement of legal, institutional and subsidy mechanisms that create incentives to over-fish
Enhancement and enforcement of international controls on illegal, unreported and unregulated fishing
Restoration of habitats on which coastal fisheries depend
Support for consumer-led sustainability programmes
Greater support for subsistence fishing communities impacted by industrial fisheries.
This report will go to governments ahead of the Commonwealth summit, in Trinidad and Tobago, at the end of November. The proposed Ministerial Task Force can examine and recommend practical policies to restore fisheries in member states’ waters, using the formidable expertise available from governments, scientists, fishers and environmentalists. It would link to a special fisheries conference, and the establishment of a Fisheries Fund to promote capacity.
“Democracy means more, much more, than the right to vote and one vote for every man and every woman of the prescribed age. . .(it) means equality of opportunity for all in education, in the public service, and in private employment(…). Democracy means the protection of the weak against the strong. (It) means the obligation of the minority to recognise the right of the majority. Democracy means responsibility of the Government to its citizens, the protection of the citizens from the exercise of arbitrary power and the violation of human freedoms and individual rights. Democracy means freedom of worship for all and the subordination of the right of any race to the overriding right of the human race. Democracy means freedom of expression and assembly of organisation. All that is Democracy.”
These are the words of the late Dr Eric Williams, first Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago on the occasion of its Independence on August 1st 1962.
The civil society forum in a real way seeks to address the extent to which Dr Williams’ own vision holds true in the contemporary context not just for the nation which he was addressing but for the commonwealth as a whole. It must also be remembered that Dr Williams was no stranger to examining our collective condition either as colony or coloniser.
The role of civil society for much of the commonwealth is pre ordained by a history of subservience and domination. Hence its role starts as being reactive given that the essence of democracy of which Dr Williams spoke was not characteristic of any colony.
Many rights and freedoms were the focus of many struggles which today are still ongoing. Unfortunately the civil society organisations find themselves as by products of a failed social compact between the government (either colonial or post colonial), and the people and seek to intervene to address the elements outlined above as insular issues. Hence we have organisations which serve to protect the weak within our society, those which serve to ensure the equality of access to education and employment, those who seek to ensure that basic human rights are preserved in the wake of the exercise of arbitrary power by governments and those who address issue of racism and genocide and freedom of expression.
The fundamental question which civil society organisations must ask themselves is “To what extent is the organisation’s existence a premise in the argument against the existence of democracy?”
Shouldn’t the Judiciary of a country be independent of the government of the day? Yet, in its third draft, the draft constitution of Trinidad and Tobago gives untold powers to an Executive President and worst, wants carte blanche administration of the judiciary.
The current Chief justice says:
“The danger lies in its potential to gradually and systematically strip the judiciary of its independence and the citizens of their protection through ordinary and subordinate legislation requiring no special majority”.
“The Draft violates the constitutional ideal of the separation of powers, by allowing MPs the final say in the selection of a Chief Justice by a veto, and by creating a Ministry of Justice to let the Government administer the Judiciary, despite Mr. Manning’s protests that the Ministry won’t interfere in judges’ individual rulings.”
Since independence, Death Penalty has remained a major part of the Nigerian Law with countless individuals being placed on death row every year and many others facing charges which carries the maximum sentence. DEATH
Specifically, Section 33(1) of the 1999 constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria gives constitutional backing to the existence of Death Penalty in Nigeria.
As a matter of fact, between 1970 and 1999, more than 2,600 death row prisoners have been executed. For the Government, the deterrence capacity of the Death Penalty is sufficient explanation for its continued retention. For other citizens, retaining the death penalty would be more cost effective for the country than a life sentence as it would cost far less to bury an alleged criminal than to maintain him in prison.
Despite all these, the effectiveness of the Death Penalty as a deterrence factor remains obscure to me with crime rates on the increase. For the criminals, in a corrupt environment, death sentence is the least of their worries.
Also, the method of execution which is by hanging is not only crude but dehumanizing. Jerking of the hands and limbs, little blood marks on the face and eyes from burst blood capillaries, protruding tongue. Where is the dignity of human life?
The irreversible nature of the execution also remains an issue. If an execution is done in error, there can be no remedy. In the last ten years, no prisoner has been executed in Nigeria because nobody seems to want death on their hands. More appalling is the fact that some inmates have been on the death row for more than twenty years!
At this point, I think it would be more dignifying for Nigeria to denounce capital punishment and embrace life. After all, it’s God’s special gift.
Do you think there are cases where state sponsored execution is justifiable?
Whew! It’s hot these days in Trinidad, a lot hotter than ever before. One can’t help but give more serious thought to this whole business of Climate Change.
Glaciers, we are told, and massive ice sheets like the Greenland
Ice Sheet are melting at a fast rate while Pacific islands like Tuvalu and the Maldives have started to go under from sea level rise.
David Taylor reporting for World Watch talks about the challenges to be faced by Caribbean countries in the future. It is estimated that sea levels will rise by approximately 50 centimetres in the next hundred years, an occurrence which will wipe out much of the land in small islands like Antigua as well as erode coastal towns in Cuba.
Scientists talk now about ‘carbon sinks’ when referring to the absorption of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Sinks include forests and oceans. According to the World Resources Institute eighty percent of the world’s forested areas are already gone. This has contributed thirty percent of excess carbon dioxide to the atmosphere and hence, global warming.
Are governments listening to any of this? It doesn’t seem so. Last year 800 hectares of prime forested land were cleared in rural Trinidad to make way for an aluminium smelter plant. Large areas of coastal mangrove are also carded for removal to build a port facility for the smelter plant export operations. It was enormous and concerted pressure by civil society groups that brought the smelter plant project to an abrupt halt. Hats off to them!
Civil society groups are doing a marvellous job in the environmental sphere in Trinidad. Many have teamed up with the Ministry of Forestry and are responsible for replanting large areas of denuded forests and protecting the island’s fragile biodiversity.
Swine flu comes from an H1N1 Influenza virus that infects birds. The incidence of the disease is reported in 210 countries and deaths in 39 of them. Since May of this year the predominance of this disease as the number one item on news desks worldwide has fizzled somewhat. Gone are the scenes of face masked citizens moving around in cities around the world. But, WHO warns bitterly about complacency and predicts an upsurge of the virus in the near future.
Indeed, Colombian president Alvaro Uribe had it, so did President Oscar Arias of Costa Rica according to a Reuters report of August 2009, quoted in The Washington Post. The 57 year old Uribe attended a meeting of South American presidents in Argentina where he fell ill. In more stunning news, Ecuador’s head of security, John Merino, died in August of the same virus after ailing for some 28 days (Health News, Sept 7th 2009).
So far, forty-four persons have died from the dreaded flu in Ecuador and thirty four in Colombia, compared to twenty nine in Britain. Sir William Donaldson, UK`s Chief Medical Officer in a BBC interview mentioned the upsurge of cases in Latin America as compared to Europe may be due to a lack of anti viral treatment.
In Trinidad and Tobago, two primary schools have been closed this week due to four confirmed cases of swine flu. The issue of swine flu is not a big item on the CHOGM meeting in November in Trinidad and Tobago, it seems.
Let’s hope, then, that Commonwealth countries can battle this contagious disease.
What are the WHO`s guidelines? - Early detection and treatment of the virus, for one. Then, of course, there is the bigger issue of vaccination. The good news, according to BBC`s Health Reporter Nick Triggle’s (August 2009), is the coming on stream of a vaccine later this year.
Unarguably, the laws relating to abortion in Nigeria are about the most restrictive in the world. This is because the combine provisions of Sections 228, 229 and 230 of the Criminal Code applicable in the South and Sections 232, 233 and 234 of the Penal Code applicable in the North allows for abortion only where the life of the mother is at risk.
To ensure the enforcement of this law, the Code exposes the provider of the abortion, the woman and the person who supplies the instruments for the abortion to a jail term of between 3 – 14 years.
The continued retention of this “obsolete” law which is a verbatim reproduction of the English Abortion Act of 1861 is not unconnected with the moral commitment and religious devotion of Nigerians. For the Moslems and Christians in Nigeria alike, killing of a foetus is a great sin. For others, it simply erodes our tradition.
Although our tradition finds it abominable, our laws forbids it, the Bible and the Quran frowns at it, it remains a truism that more respite is found in the breach of the abortion laws than its observance.
Every year, over 300,000 Nigerian women die of abortion related deaths.
Every year, there is a staggering increase in maternal deaths.
Every year, Nigeria continues to erode on the rights of the Nigerian women to determine what happens in her body.
Every year, this country compels its women to bring forth severely deformed babies without providing any national healthcare scheme or facilities to support them.
The question is, truthfully, is this law really worth keeping?
Lastly, don’t forget to subscribe to future updates. You can do so via the email subscription box on the right hand side. For the more technically minded types, there are RSS related subscription feeds just beneath the email notification signup.
Nations can be a crucial instrument in turning round the world-wide crisis in marine fish stocks. 
state-of-the-art analysis of capture fisheries, both deep sea and near-shore, and their related institutional, governance and human issues. With catches declining in many seas since the mid ’90s, the Food and Agriculture Organisation estimates that 75 per cent of all fisheries are now being exploited at or beyond their maximum sustainable yield. Two authors, Sumaila and Cheung, have produced a graph which shows a fall of around a quarter in the total fish take between 1970 and 2005 for the exclusive economic zones of Commonwealth states. 
Loading …
