Upcoming CITES World Conference

This year, March 13th-25th, the CITES world conference will be held in Doha, Qatar to discuss the proposal to list the bluefin tuna as endangered. This would ban international trade of the species. Japan has vocalized their disapproval of the proposal due to the profound economic and cultural affects it would cause. Although Japan has been in the spotlight as a main objector, other countries would also have to make a lot of changes if this proposal were to pass. The EU in particular acts as a strong advocate for sustaining the bluefin tuna population, however, it seems that they have also been supporting its demise. In a conference with the Green MEP, Raul Romeva commented that:

"While the EU has been talking conservation on bluefin tuna, it has been bankrolling its slide towards extinction. Since 2000, as bluefin tuna stocks have plummeted, the EU budget alone has yielded €34.5 million in subsidies to build or modernize vessels that target this fish. (1) This puts a Euro value on the EU's hypocrisy. The Commission has known for years that the bluefin fleets were too large. It nevertheless allowed Member States to further bloat the fleets with EU aid, supplemented with unknown further funds from their own budgets.

If this proposal should pass it will not only be Japan that needs to make changes, but all countries will have to make economic alterations. The link below is the bluefin tuna proposal for the CITES conference taking place in a couple days.

http://www.cites.org/common/cop/15/raw_props/E-15%20Prop-MC%20T%20thynnus.pdf

-Elaina Barclift