Charles Clover

How China’s fishermen are impoverishing Africa

SAIDU BAH/AFP via Getty Images

If Donald Trump didn’t have other things on his mind, here is a story that would make even him an environmentalist. The Chinese global fishing fleet, the largest in the world, is much larger than we thought. It is larger than even the Chinese believed and it is four times larger than the Chinese government says it wants it to be. The Chinese distant water fleet numbers at least 12,490 vessels and nearly 17,000 vessels are estimated to have the capacity to fish beyond China’s national waters. 

We knew China was the world’s fishing superpower but the new figures compiled by researchers for the London-based Overseas Development Institute (ODI), show that the Chinese fleet is vastly in excess of the 3,432 vessels it was assumed to be in 2014. Trawling – one of the most destructive of activities – accounts for the largest number of vessels in the Chinese fleet and the largest number of those vessels are in the north west Pacific. The most intense activity is squid jigging in the southeast Pacific and the southwest Atlantic. Perhaps the most disturbing aspect of distant water fishing, though, is that it competes with the interests of local people in developing countries. The impact of the Chinese fleet upon Africa is frankly shocking.

The largest registry of Chinese vessels outside China is in Ghana, with 137 ships according to ODI. Virtually all the trawlers in Ghana are Chinese and the trawler agents – the people who profit from arranging the sale of licences to fish – are MPs. Yet in Ghana, over two million local people depend directly or indirectly on marine fisheries for income or employment. The incomes of artisanal fishermen have fallen by 40 per cent since the turn of the century, according to the ODI report. There is a growing tide of criticism on social media of the damage Ghana’s politicians are doing to their own country.

Tragedy looms for fish stocks and fishing communities unless African politicians learn to say no to foreign trawlers

It is a similar story in the nine countries of West Africa, where according to World Bank figures, there were 602 foreign trawlers in 2018, 78 per cent of them Chinese.

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