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MOMENT OF TRUTH FOR NORTH SEA MINISTERS AT FISHERIES CONFERENCE
Bergen, Norway 13 March 1997
Greenpeace warned today that European Environment Ministers faced humiliation at a fisheries conference aimed at saving North Sea fishing stock
The two-day Intermediate Ministerial Meeting on the Integration of Fisheries and Environmental Issues opens today in Bergen, Norway. It was called two years ago when Environment ministers agreed at North Sea fisheries were in crisis.
"During these two years, governments have spent vast amounts of time and tax payers money producing a document is essentially worthless," said Greenpeace political adviser, Malcolm MacGarvin. "The raft text as it stand is not worth the paper it is written on, and the Ministers know this. It contains no concrete measures for protecting the North Sea. It will not save one single fish
Greenpeace condemned the role that officials from France, Spain, the Netherlands and Denmark have played in watering down the text, and congratulated those countries who have tried to get progress, such as Norway, Germany, Sweden and Belgium.
But with the two day conference just about to start, Environment and Fisheries Ministers still have a chance to save their reputation, and the North Sea fisherie
Greenpeace is calling on the Ministers to
- implement the precautionary approach
- ban industrial fishing in sensitive areas
- find alternatives to beam trawlers which use heavy chains to dig up the sea bed
- ban the taregeting of spawning shoals of endangered stocks such as herring.
- ban the scandalous practice of discarding.
- establish credible recovery programmes for endangered stocks such as cod and plaice
For further information please contact:
Dr Malcolm MacGarvin +44 468 66 5974.
James Gillies tel: +31 20 524 9548.