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Did some looking around and your claims seem correct. I hope we have another UNCLOS convention soon! Too many bad actors, looks like every major distant-fishing

Did some looking around and your claims seem correct. I hope we have another UNCLOS convention soon! Too many bad actors, looks like every major distant-fishing power is polluting / overfishing. I'd quibble with the PRC being the most sustainable producer, there's more to ecology than just fishing vs no fishing, but it's not a major point. And my biggest concern is with absolute scale (44% of the overall fishing effort makes it an outsize impact no matter what! it's kinda like how the US Army ROE matter more than most country army ROE simply because we're engaged more. Hard to address a global problem without focusing on its largest driver.), although, as you probably feel, the solution for that is a new UNCLOS, not singling out the PRC.

maxglute 1y ago
That's part of Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction discussion at UN, ongoing last few years, very slow going because contested. Will be supplementary to UNCLOS if/once passed. TBH there's no way it WON'T single out PRC because PRC has the most adjacent/close maritime neighbours (entire 1st island chain drama) and smallest EEZ : land area ratio... absurdly disproportionately smaller. Something like 0.1 EEZ per unit of land area. Most big countries with shore access has like 0.5-1.0, US 1.2, SKR 3, Japan lol 12. JP/SKR eats ~60kg of fish per capita, PRC "only" 40kg, which is higher than global average 20kg. But consider 60% / 850m Chinese live about as close to shore as the most inland Japanese/Korean (150km from shore), and they're not going to settle for system that grants them less fish per capita as they get wealthier. Ultimately, that's the geopolitics of it, people who like fish aren't going accept eating less fish than other people who like fish. Probably only fair system I can think of is to limit per capita DWF catch to small % of total fishery/seafood output, i.e. 95% has to be domestic aquaculture (again, PRC already near 80%, others big DWF like 30-50%), but that's going to be biased against countries with less land/lakes etc. Or a per capita cap. Everything else is unworkable even if it means unsustainable extraction, like climate change. Or maybe CCP will take the L... but that will get domestically messy. IMO wildcatch:aquaculture ratio most sensible/proper incentive for future. Napkin math is if PRC aquaculture goes 80%->95% from 60m to 70m aquaculture, and drops 66% of wild catch from 15m to 5m metric tons. But that also means JP/SKR/TW... basically eliminate their DWF industry by 75-90+%. You'll know US is serious about IUU, not not weaponizing it when US media screams at partners to hit those quotas... well after US ratifies UNCLOS. Regardless, half the world poorer than (3 billion people / 2 Chinas), the less poor they are, the more fish they'll want to eat, and we want to incentivize more aquaculture seafood considering fish has less feed conversion ratio, it's better people eat fish than check/pigs/cattle when they can afford meat. Obviously less/no meat better, but humans will meat.

maxglute 1y ago

That's part of Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction discussion at UN, ongoing last few years, very slow going because contested. Will be supplementary to UNCLOS if/once passed. TBH there's no way it WON'T single out PRC because PRC has the most adjacent/close maritime neighbours (entire 1st island chain drama) and smallest EEZ : land area ratio... absurdly disproportionately smaller. Something like 0.1 EEZ per unit of land area. Most big countries with shore access has like 0.5-1.0, US 1.2, SKR 3, Japan lol 12. JP/SKR eats ~60kg of fish per capita, PRC "only" 40kg, which is higher than global average 20kg. But consider 60% / 850m Chinese live about as close to shore as the most inland Japanese/Korean (150km from shore), and they're not going to settle for system that grants them less fish per capita as they get wealthier. Ultimately, that's the geopolitics of it, people who like fish aren't going accept eating less fish than other people who like fish. Probably only fair system I can think of is to limit per capita DWF catch to small % of total fishery/seafood output, i.e. 95% has to be domestic aquaculture (again, PRC already near 80%, others big DWF like 30-50%), but that's going to be biased against countries with less land/lakes etc. Or a per capita cap. Everything else is unworkable even if it means unsustainable extraction, like climate change. Or maybe CCP will take the L... but that will get domestically messy. IMO wildcatch:aquaculture ratio most sensible/proper incentive for future. Napkin math is if PRC aquaculture goes 80%->95% from 60m to 70m aquaculture, and drops 66% of wild catch from 15m to 5m metric tons. But that also means JP/SKR/TW... basically eliminate their DWF industry by 75-90+%. You'll know US is serious about IUU, not not weaponizing it when US media screams at partners to hit those quotas... well after US ratifies UNCLOS. Regardless, half the world poorer than (3 billion people / 2 Chinas), the less poor they are, the more fish they'll want to eat, and we want to incentivize more aquaculture seafood considering fish has less feed conversion ratio, it's better people eat fish than check/pigs/cattle when they can afford meat. Obviously less/no meat better, but humans will meat.