Africa
BLOOM is continuing to dive into the obscure world of tuna fishing and today reveals the shocking results of a ground-breaking study on lobbyists within official delegations during twenty years of negotiations on tropical tuna in Africa, between 2002 and 2022.
BLOOM has led an exhaustive analysis of every negotiating delegation formed by the European Union while, on behalf of 447 million citizens, it negotiates the rights and fishing conditions of European fishing fleets with African and Indian Ocean countries. Today, for the first time, we are shining a light on the overwhelming power of industrial tuna lobbies at the heart of public decisions.
The European Union’s squashing of Indian Ocean countries
Ahead of two meetings on the future of tuna fishing in Kenya taking place at the end of January [1], we show that far from respecting the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission, IOTC, objectives of cooperation and sustainability, the European Union, in a shocking generalized collusion with its French and Spanish industrial fishing fleets, is contributing to the overexploitation of fish populations, the degradation of both the climate and the health of the Indian Ocean, as well as maintaining poverty in developing countries.
Our analysis, focusing on 2,778 negotiators from 30 countries making up the delegations at the IOTC annual meetings since 2002, shows that from the moment in 2015 when neighbouring countries demanded a more equal share of marine resources and the implementation of environmental protection measures, the European Union suddenly doubled the size of its delegations from 22 people before 2015 to an average of 40 people after 2015, in order to block any form of environmental progress and economic emancipation in Africa and the Indian Ocean.
A.I
Tags: BLOOM European Union IOTC
