Monday, 21st April 2008
Brussels Briefing, April 2008
Can Europe's fish farms break free from red tape?
The medicine is worse than the cure on climate change
The key issues which have defined the work of the European Parliament over the past year are the three G’s – Globalisation, Global Poverty and Global Warming.
It is perhaps significant that in pursuing these issues the EU is mirroring the key concerns of David Cameron and the UK Conservative Party.
Of course global warming or climate change has risen right to the top of the political agenda. Carbon is the enemy and reducing carbon emissions is the main task confronting the world. If we don’t get it right we will face a new challenge of climate refugees; people fleeing drought and famine brought about by global warming.
We will have to work in partnership with third countries outside the EU to encourage them to join in a sustainable, low carbon future. A low carbon economy can create new jobs and prosperity. On the other hand, the cost of doing nothing will be one order of magnitude greater than the cost of tackling climate change now. The EU is playing a leading role in the climate change debate. If the EU didn’t exist, who else would have taken up this challenge? Not China, not India, not Brazil and certainly not the US! This is exactly the kind of global role where the EU can provide leadership and Conservative MEPs have been at the centre of this debate from the outset.
Nevertheless we have to take care that the policies we pursue are sustainable. There is growing evidence that our 10% target for biofuels is not sustainable. The drive to produce biofuels is causing global deforestation, which as well as releasing massive quantities of CO2 into the atmosphere, could also lead directly to global famine. We are potentially creating a bigger global problem than we set out to resolve. In the US, vast quantities of maize are being converted to bio-ethanol. This in turn has led to huge tracts of the Amazonian rainforest being burned to make way for growing maize and soya as food crops to make up the shortfall.
Meanwhile the Indonesian rain forest is being torn up to make way for biofuel crops like palm oil to supply the EU market. Such policies are thus destroying the world’s air conditioning system while at the same time releasing millions of tonnes of CO2 into the atmosphere. Deforestation now accounts for around 18% of the world’s total greenhouse gas emissions and highlights the insanity of current policies.
Greed instead of care for the environment has become the defining feature of our strategy for tackling climate change and the race to biofuels is potentially threatening the lives of millions of people as the global population soars from its present 6 billion to an estimated 9 billion by 2050. An extra 6 million people are born every month. By 2030 the world population will have expanded by such an extent that we will require a 50% increase in food production to meet anticipated demand. By 2080 global food production would need to double. But the reality is that an area the size of the Ukraine is being taken out of agricultural food production every year due to drought and as a direct consequence of climate change. Global food production is declining rather than expanding and our headlong rush to produce biofuels is taking even more land out of food production.
Linked directly to this argument on sustainability is the question of renewable energy. Recently I visited Iberdrola’s wind farm at Maranchon in Spain where they have 104 giant turbines producing 2.5 mw each. The Windfarm has been built on hard rock in a remote part of central Spain. The tiny village of Maranchon (pop. 350) has benefited from around 30 jobs in the project. There has been no impact on agriculture or wildlife and the area is not significant for tourism, so landscape impact has not been a factor. This is the ideal site for an on-shore Windfarm. However, in Scotland, Alex Salmond seems determined to achieve his target of 40% of energy from renewables, leading to a headlong rush to develop windfarms, many of them in wholly inappropriate locations, such as on our unique peat bogs. I wrote about this in my Brussels Briefing last month, but since then I have invited scientists to Brussels to consolidate the case against such developments on peat.
As the EU always insists that it is led by science, last week I organised a key seminar on this issue in Brussels and invited four of the leading scientific experts on peat in the UK. They were Dr Helena Black from the Macauly Institute in Aberdeen, Dr Sarah Crowe from the University of the Highlands & Islands, Dr Richard Lindsay from the University of East London and Professor Joseph Holden from Leeds University. The seminar was also attended by senior officials from the European Commission and by leading MEPs from the Climate Change and Environment Committees.
All four scientists were unanimous in their view that allowing windfarms to be developed on peatland would be a catastrophic mistake and would cause “irreversible damage.” Dr Lindsay pointed out that there are currently 980 windfarm proposals in the planning pipeline across the UK and 187 of those are projected to be built on peatland.
Peatlands form a crucial part of the world’s air conditioning system. Peatlands and wetland ecosystems accumulate plant material under saturated conditions to form layers of peat soil up to 20 metres thick – storing on average 10 times more carbon per hectare than other ecosystems. Peatlands occur in 180 countries and cover 400 million hectares or 3% of the world’s surface. Scotland has a unique role to play in preserving and maintaining this global resource. Over one sixth of the world’s blanket bog is located in Scotland, despite the fact that we have only one sixtieth of the world’s total landmass.
Nevertheless in the headlong rush to cut carbon emissions the EU and the UK government are throwing money into renewable energy without any coherent planning strategy to determine where wind farms should and shouldn’t be built. The result is that there are dozens of outstanding planning applications to build giant wind turbines on blanket peat bog in Scotland, causing immense damage to the environment and releasing vast quantities of CO2 – in other words achieving the exact opposite of what was intended!
The first thing a contractor does before constructing giant wind turbines, access roads, pylons, borrow pits and associated infrastructure on peatland is to drain the area, thus releasing all of the stored CO2 into the atmosphere. The peatland is also subsequently destroyed as a carbon sump, stopping any further carbon storage. Damage to peat can extend as much as 250m on either side of any excavation, so the peat will gradually dry out over the years resulting in an ongoing release of carbon. The whole hydrology of the area will change forever and once damaged, peat can never be replaced – a terrible legacy to leave to future generations and a loss of a critical carbon sink. By destroying peat bogs in this way, these wind-farms would create more carbon emissions than they would ever save.
Aquaculture is the fastest growing food sector in the world. In Europe we have the perfect environment for fish farming. We have an almost limitless coastline with ideal bays, fjords and sea conditions. We lead the world in the science and technology necessary for a thriving aquaculture sector. And yet, as Richie Flynn, Head of the Irish Fish Farmers Association told the European Parliament’s Fisheries Committee recently in Brussels, “We are in danger of starving in a land of plenty.”
Why is this? It is because aquaculture has become one of the most heavily regulated sectors in the entire food production industry in Europe. EU fish-farmers have to deal with over 400 different pieces of regulation, not to mention additional planning and environmental constraints in the Member States, before they can reel in a single fish. And this is not simply from the Directorate General (DG) for Fish in the European Commission. It is from DG Environment, DG Trade, DG Sanco and a host of other agencies.
Red tape and the seemingly endless production of legislative directives in Europe are a gift to our competitors in China, Japan, Chile, Vietnam and elsewhere. At a time when demand for healthy fish products is rising internationally, while marine fish stocks continue to decline, the opportunities for EU aquaculture to lead the world in fish farming innovation and technological development are being hampered by red tape
When you consider that in modern systems it takes only 1m3 of water to produce 1 Kg of fish, but 40m3 of water to produce 1 Kg of beef, then it is clear that the fish farming industry is one which we should be encouraging not constraining. The efficiency of the fish-farming sector in a global environment, where water is rapidly becoming a significant political issue, is of key importance. If we overcome the constraints to development, aquaculture has a bright future in Europe, producing products of high quality while conserving the natural resources that are required for its very existence.
The principal aquaculture products of the EU are fish such as trout, salmon, seabass and seabream and molluscs such as mussels, oysters and clams. The total value of aquaculture production increased by 49% between 1993 and 2003 to 2.8 bln Euro. Aquaculture constitutes 17% of the volume and 27% of the value of the total fishery production of the Union. The main producing countries are France, Italy, the UK, Spain and Greece, accounting for 80% of aquaculture output. We produce over 1.3 million tonnes of fisheries products per year, providing more than 80,000 full and part-time jobs, often in remote, peripheral areas. For Scotland this is a vitally important sector.
Of course the industry does recognise the fact that sound European regulation provides protection to the consumer in terms of the quality and safety of fish and shellfish products and that consumer confidence is a vitally important issue. But the industry favours regulation, not strangulation! It is ridiculous that we apply tougher conditions to our own home-grown producers than we apply to producers from outside the EU who flood our markets with products.
There is a need, first and foremost, for strategic planning within the Member States, so that available sites for fish farms are clearly identified within integrated inland and coastal zone management structures. These would dramatically reduce the amount of time spent going through the planning process and confronting local objections and environmental restrictions.
There is a great need for financial support for SMEs. And above all, there is a need to look at a simplification of the legislation affecting fish farming with an objective of better implementation at Member State level. Less red tape, less bureaucracy and a one-stop-shop approach to the development of new fish farms is an essential pre-requisite for a successful industry. We also need more flexibility in licensing of therapeutic agents and in the planning and siting of new fish farms.
We need to improve the image of fish farming, which is still regarded as polluting, wasteful in terms of the use of fish meal, disease-ridden, dangerous to consumers due to marine and microbiological toxins, dangerous to wild stocks, poor for animal welfare and producing an inferior product.
All of these notions are wrong, misguided and out of date.
The modern fish farming sector is dynamic, environmentally sustainable, clean, welfare-friendly and safe, producing a valuable, high quality, nutritionally healthy product. Fish farms are also providing an invaluable and reasonably priced food resource at a time of rising demand and collapsing wild fish stocks. But for many people perception is reality and so long as these out-dated and erroneous images of the industry remain, it will affect the way Member States and even the Commission deal with aquaculture and prevent the emergence of a clear overall strategy.
Our farmed fish are produced to the highest standards of any fish farms in the world and we will not do anything to undermine that. However, we must simplify the regulatory regime and free-up Europe’s fish farmers to reclaim their rightful place as world leaders in this exciting industry. So the targets are clear, the prospects are bright and the barriers to progress have been clearly identified. The Commission, the Parliament, the Member States and the sector need to forge a new partnership so that we can once again lead the world in fish farming.
