We spoke here about the Pacific Ocean already few weeks ago. As many countries such as, China, Vietnam and Thailand use it as their own landfill, It's among the most polluted seas in the World. For many years plastic and all sort of waste were dumped there indiscriminately, however things have changed in the last few decades, or at least they did Officially. More and more countries became more environmental aware and as a consequence treaties were signed and agreements taken by many countries.
On top of oceans' pollution, illegal fishing is increasingly becoming a plague for the environment. Recently, in Vietnam a vessel with children as young as 11 years old were caught fishing illegally sea food that could have been sold in Europe. Vietnam is the world’s fourth largest seafood exporter. Its products are present in more than 160 countries. It exports nearly $8.5 b worth of seafood per year, with the top export destinations being the EU, and the US.
Vietnam, has been warned by the EU on wild-caught seafood exports in 2017, has issued and enforced new laws to fight overfishing, such as mandatory vessel monitoring systems (kind of a GPS) on vessels.However, scarce implementation of these reforms didn't lead to any positive change. well
While Europe has enforced strict laws and quotas on its fishery industry, which has created many controversies between States, the situation is uncertain in the rest of the World. Sea fauna is very important for the ecosystem and events like the one before-mentioned must be avoided. In the Med for instance, the situation is already critic as fishermen in the past years have already milked most of the fish living in it. Furthermore, proactively fighting against child labour should be one of the main goal of developed countries banning all companies working with illegal fishermen. Children should be fishing as a hobby not because they are forced to.
Unfortunately, the low price of such products makes their demand increase. Nowadays is common to find in European supermarkets many frozen products coming from countries like Vietnam where children are used as part of the crew without being even paid the minimum salary. and there is no control over illegal fishing. As reported by seafoodsource.com, Vietnam’s export towards the E.U. was actually more consistent than the one with the U.S. Vietnam exported seafood volumes worth 1.2 b euro to 14 major buyers in E.U. in the year, increasing by 22.1 percent compared to 2016. Countries as the EU and the US should find a way to contrast this from happening, as taxing products coming from countries that don't comply with certain standards. It will certainly help to discourage some consumers to opt for a slightly more expensive product being sure although that it comes from eco sustainable and fair trade sources.
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Image credit: pixabay
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