BLOOM ATTACKS FRENCH GOVERNMENT’S MARINE ENVIRONMENTAL SHAM

BLOOM attacks French government’s marine environmental sham before the Council of State. BLOOM challenges Macron’s government before the French Council of State (Conseil d’État) regarding an anti-ecological decree that undermines ocean protection. Concurrently, BLOOM releases an exclusive investigation that reveals the intensity of industrial fishing activities in French marine areas, which are in fact anything but ‘protected’.

In the absence of any response from the government and after a legal four-month period concerning the appeal filed by BLOOM on 8 June, BLOOM has decided to attack the decree before the Council of State, as it poses a serious threat to the ocean and marine ecosystems. Under technical appearances, the text dramatically reduces the protection of ‘marine protected areas’.

Read Claire Nouvian’s editorial in Le Monde on the government’s cynical calculation with this decree

BLOOM also releases a ground-breaking study proving that in France, so-called ‘marine protected areas’(MPAs) are not protected at all. BLOOM’s research, conducted by Paco Lefrançois and using satellite data from fishing vessels reveals that in 2021, industrial fisheries spent more than half their time (59%) fishing in supposedly ‘protected’ areas.

The time span of the analysis – from 1 January 2015 to 31 July 2022 – reveals that industrial vessels spend as much or sometimes more time in the so-called ‘protected’ areas than in waters that are not protected. Indeed, in France, it is perfectly possible to extract resources or to fish with towed gears that scrape the seabed, such as bottom trawling or demersal seining, in so-called ‘protected’ marine areas.

Read the comprehensive results of BLOOM’s study, Decree n°2022-527 of April 12, 2022, taken in application of Article L. 110-4 of the Environmental Code, defining the notion of strong protection and the modalities for the implementation of said strong protection.

Bloom analysed the trajectories of industrial fishing vessels in the exclusive economic zone (EEZ) of Metropolitan France using Global Fishing Watch data.

While the International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) has clarified that all industrial activities must be banned from a marine area in order for it to be called ‘protected’,Macron’s government has chosen to issue a decree that gives a blank check to destructive activities within ‘strong protection’ zones, which should, by definition, be the most protected of all protected areas.

The decree — issued on 12 April 2022 — indeed proposes to classify as ‘strong protection zones’ marine areas in which industrial activities are not formally prohibited. In other words, this decree ‘launders’ destructive activities in ‘strong protection’ areas, when these areas should prohibit all human activities, not only the most destructive types.

It is worth noting that the international community agreed that any ‘marine protected area’ should prohibit industrial activities and infrastructures (including trawling, resource extraction, etc.) and that within marine protected areas, there could exist different levels of protection, including ‘strict protection’ or ‘no-take’, which prohibits all human extraction, even artisanal vessels under 12 meters.

It is obviously these strict no-take zones that provide spectacular restoration of marine ecosystems and the greatest ecological, climatic and socio-economic benefits, allowing fish stocks, and thus the surrounding fisheries, to recover and replenish.

See the call of 300 scientists for truly protected marine areas

 In 2020, the European Union has itself set the goal of protecting 30% of its waters, of which one third (i.e., 10%) should be under ‘strict protection’. But despite all the pledges made by Emmanuel Macron, his government is undermining Europe’s ecological ambition for the ocean by creating a legal definition into which extractive industries will be able to continue their climate-destroying activities in supposedly ‘protected’ areas.

On 21 September 2022, French President Emmanuel Macron announced at the United Nations in New York that “we must protect our carbon sinks and our treasures of biodiversity together”. A few weeks before the Climate COP27 and the Biodiversity COP15, France must move from words to actions and adopt a ‘strict protection’ regime that complies with international scientific recommendations in 10% of its waters, and ban industrial fishing, including bottom trawling, in all its marine areas known as ‘protected’.