Chickening out in Rio?

If you have ever flown to Santos Dumont airport in Rio de Janeiro, you will understand why I refer to it as a chicken run. The plane swoops across the blue waters of Guanabara Bay and the runway appears below the wheels at the very last moment followed by a shuddering reverse thrust and screech of brakes as the other end of the runway – and more blue water – loom ahead.  It’s not really as bad as it looks; it used to be incredibly short but, thanks to health and safety, bits keep getting added on.

Most of the thousands of delegates to last week's Rio + 20 Conference arrived at the larger Galeão International Airport some miles away and were saved from the usual traffic chaos by the well organised event managers. Perhaps an arrival at Santos Dumont would have been more appropriate as the press had presented the event itself as quite a chicken run: a breathtakingly short period of negotiations that could save the planet from destruction. Of course, the reality was nothing like that; most of the final text had been negotiated long in advance, expectations were low, no big countries pulled major initiatives out of the bag and the outcome was somewhat predictable. Reporters, NGOs and many independent observers were dismissive and labelled the event as the failure of a ‘once in a generation opportunity for action’. The pre-conference hype soon fizzled. Worse still, there is likely to be an increasing public antipathy towards international processes and even less trust in public officials; and no Plan B available to address real environmental challenges. But amongst the gloom and weasel words, was anything of value achieved? I will take a harder look at the final agreements on oceans and seas.

Before beginning, I have to declare an interest. I was one of the team preparing the Seas and Oceans text for the original Rio Conference twenty years ago; the biggest gathering of heads of state in the 20th century. I know how these processes work from the inside! The Rio + 20 outcome agreement can be found here and the Oceans and Seas occupy paragraphs 158 to 177.

The Wordle plot I made (see image) really gives the overall big picture. The first seven paragraphs mostly reiterate previous obligations including the ‘Regular Process for Global Reporting and Assessment of the State of the Marine Environment, including Socioeconomic Aspects’ which is obliged to produce its first report by 2014. This is a useful process but it will take a lot of effort to prevent it from becoming a ‘lowest common denominator’ report rather than a challenging and forward looking one. Significant however, is the commitment to develop an international instrument under the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea for the conservation and sustainable use of marine biological diversity in areas beyond national jurisdiction (ie outside the 200 mile zone). The real battleground here will be on bioprospecting and rights over genetic material as well as the potential impacts of deep sea mining. There is also a commitment to take action on plastics in the sea and the importance of this was highlighted by a major international expert poll concluded days before the event that signalled it as the number one oceans issue. The agenda for action is painfully slow however; the wording is “We further commit to take action to, by 2025, based on collected scientific data, achieve significant reductions in marine debris to prevent harm to the coastal and marine environment.” More weasel words than commitment! This could be regarded as kicking the can down the street … and there was a lot of that in Rio.

The next three paragraphs are worth looking at in more detail. Paragraph 165 asks for “enhanced efforts” on sea level rise, an issue that keeps getting brushed under the carpet. Still no firm commitments though. Paragraph 166 is an extensive call for support for initiatives to understand and prevent ocean acidification. Richard Black from the BBC has already pointed out the irony of the wording; at this stage “the need to work collectively to prevent further ocean acidification” is pretty meaningless, given that this will only happen if we stop emissions of CO2 from rising … and nobody agreed to that. Well, at least acidification is on the agenda. So too is the thorny issue of concern about potential environmental impacts of ocean fertilisation. The real concern is not over the little experiments done by scientists but the companies following behind that already purport to offer a ‘quick fix’ to global warming by pumping iron into the sea. It is nice to see the precautionary approach being evoked in this context (well, we did get some things right in 1992).

Eight of the remaining ten paragraphs address fisheries. I have to share an anecdote about the original Rio conference, officially titled the UN Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED). A group of us, all ‘specialist officials’, prepared text that subsequently went to the Member State representatives at ‘Prep Coms’ … and usually came back in shreds. We wrote some carefully worded but bold stuff on the need for more concerted regulation of fisheries, given that most stocks would soon (in 1992) be exploited beyond sustainable limits. ‘If this is a conference about development and there is nothing to develop, fisheries should be removed from the document’ we were told. We wrangled a watered down version back into the text eventually but this gives you some insight as to what negotiators are up against. Don’t shoot the messengers.

Back to the present. There is a strong commitment to meet the 2002 Johannesburg target to achieve Maximum Sustainable Yield (MSY) by 2015. This is a very strong statement that reflects the need for stock restoration, science-based management plans, ecosystem protection, reducing effort where needed and managing discards. Great stuff, but can it be achieved, given the target in the EU’s Marine Strategy Framework Directive to achieve MSY by 2020 and that lack of effective governance frameworks in many regions of the world? The next two paragraphs, on responsible fishing and IUU fishing (Illegal, Unreported and Unregulated) get closer to the heart of the problem; existing agreements aren’t being implemented properly and governance systems are too weak to do more than merely recommend.

This problem is addressed to some extent by the measures in the subsequent two paragraphs. Firstly, the 2009 FAO Agreement on Port State Measures should keep tabs on vessel movements and the source of their catch. Some 14 countries had ratified it or were close to doing so by February this year but it will require 11 more to enter into force. International legal agreements move very very slowly but this one is worth pursuing. Secondly, there is a clearly expressed need to improve the transparency and accountability of regional fisheries management organisations, some of which have been, at best, passive observers of the pillage of their ecosystems. Performance reviews are being implemented but nobody really has the power to insist that the recommendations in the reviews are adopted.

There is a general consensus amongst fisheries scientists that harmful subsidies are helping to drive overcapacity and the unsustainable exploitation of stocks. Paragraph 173, addressing this issue is the longest in the oceans section and gives me the mental image of a cat crossing a muddy bog. It refers back to the World Trade Association Doha Development Agenda, badly stalled since 2002 and the need to treat developed, developing and least developed countries differently and transparently. This is hugely contentious and may take years to resolve … but don’t tell the fish. Two further paragraphs deal with the complex issue of equity and equal opportunities for least developed and small island states and the access rights to fish stocks, markets and conservation measures by small scale fisherfolk. This is another minefield expressed with political correctness but with an unclear agenda. This doesn’t need weasel words, it needs a clear set of actions such as poverty reduction strategies, concessions by developed countries that are buying (or corruptly negotiating) third party access rights to the waters of developing countries, and help to develop fit for purpose local management schemes.

Oh dear; I’m getting a headache and there are still two paragraphs to comment on! The first is a nicely written but toothless statement about coral reef and mangrove systems and the second is on marine protected areas. This is the sting in the tail; full reverse throttle from the 2002 Johannesburg Declaration where some observers claimed that the Oceans were the only beneficiaries from another failed process. Jo’burg set a target of 2012 for a globally coherent network of marine protected areas. Hello, wake up world, we’ve arrived! But no network. No problem, we’ve moved the date to 2020 so everyone should be happy now (and some can go back to sleep).

Are you getting the feeling that I’m ever so slightly depressed about all of this? Fortunately it is mixed with a measure of anger because cynicism would tell me it’s time to quit and hide in a cave somewhere. As it happens, the oceans and seas fared ever so slightly better than other areas. The sad thing though is that we have not come to grips with the fact that our global governance mechanisms are woefully inadequate and unable to keep up with the pace of change, let alone to be proactive and take control of our future. That is the real and important lesson from Rio. It is shocking to think that the combined wit of six billion people can only come up with 19 paragraphs of caveated reaffirmations on our future seas with some words of hope but few lines of responsibility and hardly any milestones. Surely we can do better than this?

White nights at the Terminus

My week begins at the Institute for Social Anthropology of the University of Bergen; a two day indulgence in my KnowSeas research. It’s ‘white nights’ in Bergen, briefly getting ‘sort of’ dark about one or two in the morning. Bergen is incredibly busy in summer and it was difficult to find a hotel room. Eventually my Norwegian colleague Stale booked me into the Terminus: a historic mid-town railway hotel.

Have you have ever had the experience of returning to a special place after a very long absence? I last stayed at the Terminus 33 years ago in 1979. I was twenty eight; a young Brit given the extraordinary responsibility for the construction of Mexico’s first ocean-going research vessel, the $6 million 1000 ton ‘El Puma’. We had a year from design to presentation to the Mexican President in the Caribbean port of Cozumel and I worked with a British-trained Mexican naval architect and a retired Spanish shipbuilder who had built Mexico’s first tuna boats. The specialist family shipbuilder Mjellem and Karlsen won the contract and our job was to design the superstructure, internal layout and arrangements, procure all scientific equipment, conduct sea trials and get the ship over the Atlantic to Cozumel, and eventually though the Panama canal to her home port of Mazatlan. During my many visits to Bergen, I came to know and admire the extraordinarily skilful, warm spirited and adaptable team at the shipyard. Their management system has been an inspiration in my later career. The Norwegian crew during sea trials were the design team that we had worked with ten months earlier. As head of the team, Anders Grimstad switched from the drawing board to overalls as the Chief Engineer. “I like to see my designs working”, he said.

Bergen today is very different from that of 30 years past. Sadly, the shipyard, which operated from 1891, was replaced with a modern office block following closure in 2002. It suffered the same fate as most shipbuilding in Europe. But Bergen and the whole of Norway are hugely prosperous. There is a buzz of positive energy in the air and I do not see the wearied and burdened looks on people’s faces that characterise many cities across Europe. Norwegians have embraced change without trashing their culture and heritage and enjoy their leisure as well. But there are game changers: down near the fish market, some of the same restaurants that were around in 1979 are still open, some still selling whale steaks, but the prices of all seafood are astronomical. It wasn’t like that then. Norwegians pay more for their fish but set high standards in sustainable fishing, are world leaders in aquaculture and have a coherent network of protected areas that puts us to shame. And Norwegians are marketing the sustainability image. On the flight over from Aberdeen, I spotted a quarter page ad in The Observer with smiling Norwegian fishermen reminding us that they had enforced a ban on discards since 1987 (see my last blog). The slogan ‘Fisk Førever’ with the Norwegian flag attached says it all.

I am not identifying Bergen as Shangri La (the uncomfortable business about the whale steaks certainly rules that out!) but there are many lessons to learn. For a start, Norwegians did not hand the ‘family silver’ - their oilfields - over to international private companies. They used the revenues very wisely, maintaining a tough tax regime but investing funds into public works, education and industrial development. A fixed proportion was spent on research to maintain a competitive edge. Norwegians are quite circumspect about their achievements and there is much introspection about the tragedy surrounding the Brevik massacre and its social meaning.

Back to the Terminus. It is a carefully preserved 1920s hotel that is the backdrop for a nearly forgotten tragedy. The story unfolded exactly seventy four years ago, on 17 June 1928. A few weeks earlier, the Italian polar explorer, airship-builder Umberto Nobile had passed through Bergen on an expedition to the North Pole on his new craft, the Italia. On reaching Svalbard in foul conditions, the airship smashed into a rock with most of the crew, including Nobile, left on a Glacier in the smashed gondola and six members swept away on the balloon, never to be seen again. A number of uncoordinated rescue parties set off to find the stranded expedition members. One of them was the famous polar explorer Roald Amundsen who had beaten Scott to the South Pole and, in 1926, led the first expeditionary flight to the North Pole in the Norge, another airship designed and piloted by Nobile.

For the rescue, Amundsen had recruited the services of the French naval command and a Latham 47 flying boat from the factory in Rouen. The Latham, a steel, wood and canvas affair, was quite a powerful machine but wildly inappropriate for an Arctic expedition. It couldn’t land on ice and there was an expectation that enough clear water would be found for a safe landing. Amundsen agreed to rendezvous with the French crew in Bergen and booked them all into the Terminus on the 16th. Amundsen arrived next day and dined with the crew but was eager to push on with the mission; his bed at the Terminus was unused. They set off for Tromsø, travelling all night and arriving safely next day with just enough time to refuel, have food and a smoke and then set off again for Ny-Ålesund (Kings Bay) on Svalbard. But they never arrived, no trace of Amundsen was found, only pieces of wreckage from the Latham. Nobile and the survivors from his expedition were picked up a few days later.

The story of Amundsen reminded me of how much things had changed in recent history. It’s an easy matter to take a commercial flight to Svalbard nowadays. SAMS is a consortium partner of the international Kings Bay Marine Laboratory in Ny Ålesund. Our undergraduate students can take an optional year of Arctic Studies at the University Centre in Svalbard opened in 1993, a facility that has recently expanded into a modern teaching and research establishment. This year, five of our undergraduates will take the trip to Svalbard to join Norwegian and international students in this exciting adventure in the polar landscape. Nobile spent his latter years as a University lecturer, lived to old age, passing away in 1978 but even he could not have imagined anything like this!

Fishing for compliments

Last night when most of us were asleep, fisheries ministers from across Europe were engaged in an 18 hour debate on the reform of the Common Fisheries Policy. I have talked about a few of the issues in previous blogs and just have my foregone coffee break time to update you. There are a lot of announcements on media web sites and on the news concerning the outcome of the discussions. There is a sort of muffled euphoria. We will not know the real outcomes until the red-eyed Eurocrats produce a written detailed draft of the agreement and it is cleared by the various parties. So what has really been agreed?

Firstly, for those that think the process as untransparent, there have been major advances in direct communication. If you want to see the press conference (at about 04:30) this morning, I recommend the following link (you can download Silverline from the same site; it takes 30 seconds):

http://video.consilium.europa.eu/webcast.aspx?ticket=775-979-11413

What you will see are the bones of the agreement; the hugely significant Danish chair (she is an amazing character – such energy, humour and focus) and the very measured response of Commissioner Damanaki. I will talk about the significance of the word ‘measured’ later.

Earlier in the negotiations, each delegation presented its view on the Commission proposal. These are all available on the video hyperlink at the end of this paragraph. I should explain that the country statements are in national languages (what a translation task!) so it is impossible to get a clear picture by listening to this unless you are the ultimate polyglot. If you click on the link, you will see little flags that take you directly to your own country’s position. The statement by Richard Benyon, UK Fisheries Minister is well worth listening to. This is an unequivocal call for reform including the banning of discards within a reasonable timeframe, the use of scientific information to fish within ecosystem limits, the regionalisation of fisheries policy and the strict control on funds that can be used to subsidise overfishing. Brilliant. I listened to the French and Spanish positions as well; both agreed on discard bans (with lots of caveats), avoided the issue of regionalisation, agreed to MSY (maximum sustainable yield) with caveats but, most importantly, focussed on exceptions for vessels under 15 metres. France even proposed extending inshore fisheries to 100 miles at one point. It is the exceptions that are particularly troubling because ‘inshore’ has plenty of interpretations (most of France’s fleet is ‘inshore’ for example) and the new Marine Strategy Framework Directive sets a MSY target for all fisheries and many countries want that changed or reinterpreted. The web link:

http://video.consilium.europa.eu/webcast.aspx?ticket=775-979-11427

So the Council agreed on a phased discard ban, MSY for offshore fisheries by around 2015 (though not fully implemented until 2020, but the dates still need clarification), an undefined move towards regionalisation and reforms in funding through a new Maritime and Fisheries Fund (potentially a major advance as it could lead to cross fertilisation of the maritime economy) as well as moves towards transferrable quotas. This looks like considerable progress; so why is Mrs Damanaki so cautious in her response?

The answer will be in the details. The agreement falls some way short of the Commission’s proposal and there are a lot of weasel words in the statement communicated by the ebullient Chair; after all, it is a compromise. There will be a huge amount of negotiation in the coming months; pull and push between the sector and environmentalists and between member states with hugely different interests and positions. The next step will be the European Parliament, now empowered to scrutinise Fisheries Council agreements. The Parliament is the new gatekeeper and this restores some of the democracy lost in the past. So watch this space. The agreement is a step in the right direction; it sets a frame for negotiation. The saying goes that ‘there are many fish in the sea’ but this applies to the stakeholders and Member States and not, unfortunately to our diminished shared stocks.

A unique new university is born

Shared diversity: Eight of the partner principals and directors at the Reception
L-R Mike Devenney, Moray College; John Spencer, Inverness College; Iain Macmillan, Lews Castle College, Stornaway; Boyd Robertson, Sabhal Mòr Ostaig; Laurence Mee, SAMS; Bill Ross, Orkney College; Michael Breslin, Argyll College  and Hector Morrison, Highland Theological College.

Last week’s newspapers were dominated by the Jubilee celebrations and turbulence; the economic kind hitting Europe and the jet stream unusually far south, soaking the thousands of people gathering to greet the Queen. Late on Wednesday, my daughter Annie and I were in our kayak basking in the warm evening sunshine, shimmering in the limpid waters of Ardmucknish Bay; the southerly jet stream is giving us a dry summer to remember. We were off to Inverness early next morning to participate in the installation of the Princess Royal, Princess Anne, as the first Chancellor of the University of the Highlands of the Islands. SAMS, a founding partner in the UK’s newest university, is one of the 13 hazel leaves on the new UHI coat of arms.

The UHI is a remarkable federation of colleges spread across one of the most sparsely populated regions of Europe. It is not easy to devise an effective and inclusive governance system for such a heterogeneous organisation and this is a topic of intensive discussion at this time. As I sat on the choir stalls of Inverness Cathedral, watching the ceremony with my fellow academic partner principals, I began to reflect on the whole debate between centralised power, federalism and contemporary tribalism. This unresolved debate affects us at all levels: globally, whether or not we intervene in national conflicts (Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, etc) and to protect our shared environment; regionally, whether or not we move towards fiscal union to reinvigorate the European economy; in the UK, whether or not we maintain the Union; locally, the balance of authority between regional and local administrations; and in the workplace with monolithic, corporate and ‘cloud’ management structures. There is no easy answer to these dilemmas and they are deeply ingrained into our value systems and how we define the nature of civilisation.

Despite the lack of a black and white solution, we can employ hindsight for a better sense of when governance goes badly wrong. I remember when I was twelve being taken to the line of razor wire and minefields that snaked across Germany, dividing East from West. It had been constructed two years earlier to embody the ‘iron curtain’ and it divided towns, villages and families. As a self-styled ‘Democratic Republic’, East Germany suffered the hardships and stagnation of totalitarianism and Soviet hegemony whereas the neighbouring ‘Federal Republic’ was a hive of positive-spirited post-war ‘can do’ entrepreneurship. The image has remained with me during subsequent work in some 45 countries and triggered my interest in the diversity of political models that I was experiencing.

The federalist model certainly isn’t ‘one size fits all’ though and for some countries, unitary governance (a single country with low levels of devolution) works well. For success, cultural and geographic diversity needs to be reflected in the political structure but the threshold between unitary, federal and associate (a weaker form of alliance) is circumstantial and inevitably controversial. In my UN career, I facilitated discussions between countries with different political models and these were always complex. Discussions between Uruguay (unitary) and Argentina (federal) on environmental protection of bordering rivers for example, required some negotiations between the two central governments and some between a central government and the neighbouring state government (though this had to be sanctioned by the central foreign ministry). Scotland has responsibility for the environment of its offshore waters (devolved under the UK Marine and Coastal Access Bill) but fishing in these waters is controlled by legislation from Brussels (the EU Common Fisheries Policy, CFP) and Scotland is represented in negotiations by a UK government minister. It is not my purpose to comment on the logic of this process but the complexity is glaringly obvious. The UK and Scottish governments are united in their desire for a more regionalised CFP (a move opposed by several countries) and it remains to be seen whether or not this can be achieved and will lead to a more coherent approach to representation.

Another key facet of governance is public trust in the current political model. In their book Disaffected Democracies, political scientists Susan Pharr and Robert Putnam showed a huge decline in confidence in governments, political parties, and political leaders in Western Europe, North America and Japan during the 80s and 90s (and probably beyond). The UK exhibited the largest decline of all: almost 2.4% per year over that period. Our own surveys of trust in governments to manage the oceans have reflected this view. Why has this happened? Pharr and Putnam suggest three basic reasons: (1) the increased information available to the public (mostly from the media) about government performance; (2) the expectations for good governance have increased; and (3) the performance may have genuinely deteriorated. One of the reasons given for a perception of decreased performance is the “growing incongruence between the scope of territorial units and the issues raised by interdependence, reducing the output effectiveness of democratic nation-states”, in other words, disempowerment at a more local level because of the perceived inability to influence higher level decisions. This goes straight back to my point of getting the balance of decision-making right when setting up federative systems.

Back to the ceremony in a packed Inverness Cathedral. Princess Anne said that during national and international travels she had heard many positive comments about the work of SAMS – so now I’m smiling. Like all the other UHI partners, we are working hard to excel in our field but we can also see huge benefits in the alliance and some of the trade-offs this implies. UHI partners have sensibly rejected the easy route of establishing a unitary institution, probably for fear of losing the identity and local networks they had painstakingly established. But they are happy to be here to celebrate the new University based on their shared aspirations for the region and willingness to work together. These aspirations and local social capital are the glue. There is no convenient off the shelf model for the institution, it has to be invented and built on trust, transparently and with objectivity about failures as well as successes. In the words of the Spanish poet, Antonio Machado:

"wanderer, there is no road,

the road is made by walking.

By walking one makes the road,

and upon glancing back

one sees the path

that must never be trod again.

Wanderer, there is no road--

Only wakes upon the sea"