Transcript
CAIN NUNNS: It had its ups and downs. The conference started off with a lot of buzz around it after the US president, Barack Obama, announced an expansion of a Hawaiian national marine park in the outer flung reaches of the Hawaiian island chain. But then again cynics would say that countries had signed off on protecting 10% of their EEZ (exclusive economic zone) waters, and that countries like New Zealand and America were choosing places that were extremely remote and didn't have much fishing activity anyway. And they're using those sorts of places to meet their quotas of the 10%. So it was an up and down conference.
JOHNNY BLADES: Do you get the impression that maybe the conference itself was wasteful or almost against conservation?
CN: Well, there you go and this is kind of the rub, isn't it Johnny. There's over ten thousands delegates flying in to the middle of the Pacific ocean from all over the world so just that carbon footprint alone is a lot. The conference was held in the Hawaiian convention centre and that was a 400-million-dollar construction build, and the taxpayers in Hawaii are still on the hook for 390-million-dollars so it seemed like it was a little bit excessive. At times there were rumblings that it was a lot like a trade fair. There was a lot of NGOs for example that were looking for funding money. And there was a lot of companies looking to work into environmental business, because it's a growing and massive business. So you had sponsors such as Toyota. Google was there heavily. National Geographic was there, sort of like a champion of sustainable media. But then again in our part of the world, in the Asia Pacific, National Geographic is kind of a pay-for-play channel which for example will run mini-series or reality TV series about the Taiwanese fishing fleet and what noble causes there are. So yeah I think in any of these sorts of things, there's a fair amount of green washing going on. That's a valid question.
JB: And people were managing to stay awake in the various presentations?
CN: Well, that's the thing. You're in a huge, cavernous space and you do get the sense that some speakers are talking over each other from pavilion to pavilion, and stage to stage. And I would say there was nothing too riveting that kept my interest while I was there...
JB: You did report earlier in the piece about Motion 53 and I think that was one that was passed, what does that look to do?
CN: That one was adopted. Apparently it was backed by Palau. Again, there's no binding resolutions to this. But if national governments in the Pacific want to take this up it will supposedly protect 30 percent of their EEZs from commercial fishing activity. Of course the fishing industry were against this proposal because they seem to think that all it will do is increase fishing pressure in other parts of the South Pacific. But as most environmentalists and scientists down that part of the world will tell you, a lot of these tuna stocks are collapsing right before our eyes so something kind of has to be worked out. But there are no resolutions that actually bind any country to this.
