The study highlights that after 13 years of such a ban, there would be €3.41 returned for every €1 spent, with a cumulative net gain equivalent to €8.4 billion over a 20-year period.
Key commercial benefits would include the creation of new leisure activities and more and bigger fish for low-impact fishers. More crucially, a healthy sea and resilient ecosystems would bring many positive community impacts in climate regulation, clean water, carbon sequestration and protection against extreme natural events.
“We are in the midst of the 6th mass extinction. Marine protected areas cannot perform their crucial role to protect marine life if destructive fishing activities such as bottom trawling Is allowed to continue”, says Marc-Philip Buckhout, Policy Officer at Seas At Risk. “Banning bottom-trawling from Marine Protected Areas, would allow us to fight biodiversity loss and enable the ocean to mitigate climate change, with net socioeconomic benefits.”
Benefits quickly outweigh costs of banning bottom trawling from Marine Protected Areas
A socioeconomic analysis [1] commissioned by Seas At Risk and carried out by New Economics Foundation has revealed that a ban on bottom-contacting gear (bottom trawling and bottom dredging) in Marine Protected Areas would yield net benefits as soon as four years after the ban comes into force. The study highlights that after 13 years of such a ban, there would be €3.41 returned for every €1 spent, with a cumulative net gain equivalent to €8.4 billion over a 20-year period.
Key commercial benefits would include the creation of new leisure activities and more and bigger fish for low-impact fishers. More crucially, a healthy sea and resilient ecosystems would bring many positive community impacts in climate regulation, clean water, carbon sequestration and protection against extreme natural events.
This week members of the European Parliament (MEPs) will take part in a vote that will prove crucial to the future of our seas, and the communities who depend on them.
This vote is to amend the Fisheries Control Regulation, the EU’s system for monitoring, inspection, and enforcement of fishing in EU waters and the EU fishing fleet’s global operations. The Control Regulation is key to enabling fishers, decision-makers, and civil society to count the fish taken from our seas, and to monitor the impact of fishing activities on fragile marine ecosystems.
Any changes to this regulation should improve the sustainability and long-term prospects for our ocean and for fishers. However, if MEPs vote to accept all of the revisions currently proposed by the European Parliament Committee on Fisheries (PECH), they could be endorsing a backward step for EU fisheries policy.