
Nations agree to ban fishing in Arctic Ocean for at least 16 years - jonbaer
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/12/nations-agree-ban-fishing-arctic-ocean-least-16-years
======
aleyan
The author wrote twelve paragraphs, yet didn't care to mention explicitly
which nine nations reached a deal. The answer according to NY Times[1] is the
following:

> To take effect, the agreement on a high-latitude fishing ban must be signed
> by all the countries involved: the United States, Norway, Denmark, Canada
> and Russia, which all have Arctic shorelines; and South Korea, China, Japan,
> the European Union and Iceland, which operate ocean trawling fleets.

Thank you NY Times for actually listing the countries involved so succinctly.
Unfortunately I have to fault your reporting too. Treaties don't take effect
domestically until they are ratified by the involved countries legislatures,
not are merely signed. Additionally some treaties have clauses so that they
don't take effect until the treaty is ratified by some subset of signatories
or by all signatories. It isn't clear which is the case here, but the treaty
certainly won't take effect from merely being signed by the nine countries and
the EU. It may take years to get the various countries legislatures to ratify.
US for example has signed but hasn't ratified the Forced Labour Convention of
1930 [2] or a more recent Convention on the Rights of the Child of 1989 [3].

[1] [https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-
arcti...](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/world/europe/russia-arctic-ocean-
fishing-thaw.html)

[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_Labour_Convention)

[3]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_th...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Convention_on_the_Rights_of_the_Child)

~~~
gldalmaso
Trump really ruined it.

All I can think about now is, is this another agreement that the US is gonna
sign and then bail? When are agreements for real for the US?

These kinds of multinational agreements are made to tackle the big problems
with long run goals. If every other executive office is gonna hand pick which
agreements to meet, they are meaningless.

~~~
jerf
Signing agreements with no intent to enforce them is a universal problem, not
a particularly US problem, nor is failing to fully ratify them even after a
"signature". The political calculus is simple; you win plaudits from people
who pay attention to words over results (which is a LOT of people in politics,
including a lot of people in charge of money flow), and signatures are cheap,
results are expensive. There's a lot of signing things that don't ever happen.
In general when I hear about an international agreement, I tend to assume it's
a no-op until proved further. You can't even get international cooperation
with something as economically beneficial to its participants as OPEC, let
alone things bigger than that and with fewer positive monetary implications.

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dalbasal
Here is the question that interests me...

For over 100 years, commercial fishing has been an issue. Atlantic cod was the
canonical tragedy of the commons, with early multinational agreements that
attempted to fix it. They're still shaky.

On land, we hit a point a long time ago. American Bison are a very
illustrative example. Guns and railroads could harvest the whole population in
a few seasons. Factory conveyor belts could use all the hides hunters could
harvest. Industrial society and commercial hunting just didn't go together.
Wild populations can't produce on the scale we can consume.

So basically..the oceans are bigger than the prairies, but arent they
essentially the same?

Have we outgrown commercial fishing?

~~~
_ph_
Commercial fishing is fine, as is hunting - as long as there are healthy
populations and the fishing/hunting is within the bounds by which the
population of the animals can regrow. Ironically, without the absurd
overfishing of the past, we could sustain much higher fishing quotas today
than we can with the decimated fish population.

~~~
dalbasal
There a couple of relatives in there.

Sustainable -how sustainable? If the only bar is sustaining the annual harvest
for the medium term, that's not the highest bar. Commercial fishing can have
it mpacts within those bounds that we might still find unacceptable.
.Especially so if you consider how little knowledge we really have about ocean
ecologies.

I for one think the goal should be recovery. If you look at old records of
major fisheries, I think it's clear that they're depleted now relative to the
past. Atlantic cod is well documented. You can see footage of old Australian
tuna fishing operations. Clearly, current populations are far smaller. East
Atlantic Mackerel fisheries. Herring. The entire mediteranean sea. Salmon...

The other relative is relative value. Even if fisheries can support 1950s
(pick a year) harvests, the size/value of that harvest as a percentage of our
economy is a lot smaller. This is a long term trend. Relative importance of
commercial fish harvests declines over time.

What I am suggesting is that there is a point where it's not worth it.

~~~
_ph_
Well, yes. I was speaking about the fundamental question talking about healt
ecosystems. With todays almost erradicated populations there is little doubt
that we should mostly stop fishing.

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JustAnotherPat
Does this just apply to ships registered with a country? What's to stop a ship
from registering in Brazil, porting in Russia, and selling cod for dirt cheap
to Japan?

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beambot
How is it enforced, and what are the penalties?

~~~
matt4077
It's enforced by fishing in the high artic being pretty conspicuous.

Regarding penalties: With ratification, such treaties become law. There are no
penalties specified, but courts are empowered to enforce them by whatever
means they deem effective. Environmental groups, for example, could sue the
US, in US courts.

Beyond that, international cooperation doesn't rely on penalties or similar
sanction mechanisms as much as, for example, criminal law. There simply is no
"world government" that would have the power to "enforce by force". But,
contrary to armchair politicians everywhere, that doesn't render international
law meaningless. It's a system of thousands of treaties and other agreements
that, collectively, are net-positive for every country involved. The
alternative to respecting them is to be seen as an untrustworthy partner,
making it harder, or impossible, to reach future agreements or keep others to
their word.

A great, current example is the possibility of the US pulling out of the Iran
Deal: Not only would it legitimately allow Iran to then restart their nuclear
program. It is also a major factor in the tensions between the US and North
Korea. Because NK, quite obviously, is asking themselves: Why should we engage
in negotiating a deal, if the US does not feel bound by it?

(The same works in reverse, because NK has also been less-than-stellar in
following previous agreements)

~~~
jcranmer
Trump has not pulled the US out of any treaties. Treaties, as you say, become
law upon ratification; therefore, it requires an act of Congress to repeal
them. Now, the Paris climate agreement is an "executive agreement" which does
not require ratification of the Senate, and so therefore can be unilaterally
withdrawn by the President.

Nor did the US pull out of the Iran deal. Congress attached a rider to the
ratification requiring the president to periodically certify Iran's commitment
to the deal to continue with the unwinding of sanctions. Trump declined to so
certify Iran, but that doesn't affect the treaty in any legal sense. (It
certainly does affect the foreign politics of the situation, but at this point
it seems clear that the world knows to ignore Trump and just flatter him into
thinking he's important and useful).

~~~
matt4077
If you read the post more carefully, specifically _the possibility of the US
pulling out of the Iran Deal: Not only would it legitimately [...]_ , you'll
notice that I never claim Trump pulling out of any treaties– _possibility_ and
_would_ indicate the conditionality here. Arguably, the effects I mentioned
could also result just from high-level politicians talking about the
possibility of unilaterally withdrawing from such deals.

I also didn't use the word 'treaty' anywhere near my mention of Trump, nor did
I mention the Paris agreement.

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diogenescynic
China won’t listen. They under report their fishing by orders of magnitude.

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bakersdaughter
That's awesome. Nations need to take more steps like these

